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Collection Guide: The Max and Frieda Weinstein Archive of YIVO Sound Recordings

This guide provides an overview of how to access the materials in YIVO's Sound Archive.

Accessing Digital Assets

While we encourage in-person research visits whenever possible, if you are unable to make it to the Sound Archive in person, hundreds of songs, radio programs, and more are available online. In this section, you'll be able to find all of those digitized materials.

Check back often! Digitization is on ongoing process.

Ruth Rubin Legacy Archive of Yiddish Folksongs

Ruth Rubin was a performer, folklorist, and musicologist who devoted her life to collecting and preserving Yiddish folklore. YIVO holds her collection of field recordings – over 2,500 songs recorded between 1946 and 1979 – as well as sound documents of Rubin’s lectures, concerts, and interviews. YIVO also stewards materials relating to her personal life, including personal notebooks, articles, correspondence, and Rubin’s never-published dissertation.
 

YIVO Folksong Project

This collection consists of an estimated 320 hours of 2,000 folksongs and oral histories from 75 informants who participated in the YIVO Folksong Project directed by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (BKG) from 1973-1975, under the auspices of YIVO. This collection is a one-of-a-kind, large-scale gathering of oral histories centered around traditional Yiddish music.

A sample of sound recordings are available on the Internet Archive.

WEVD YIVO Podcast

The WEVD YIVO podcast is a podcast of recordings from YIVO's radio program WEVD, which was on air from 1963 to 1976. The postcast highlights excerpts from programs of interviews and lectures, with a focus on the New York Yiddish world.

Internet Archive

The YIVO Sound Archive is in the process of adding digitized sound recordings to its Internet Archive page.

Please note that these materials are available for download, although use of materials available on the Internet Archive are subject to the same Permissions and Reproductions policy as any other YIVO Archives or Library object.

SoundCloud

A number of digitized tracks are available on the Sound Archive's SoundCloud.

YIVO Digital Archive of Jewish Life in Poland

Audio files from the YIVO Digital Archive of Jewish Life in Poland are available here.

YIVO Encyclopedia Online

Audio files from the YIVO Encyclopedia Online are available here.

Papers of Chaim Grade and Inna Hecker Grade

Sound recordings from the papers of Papers of Chaim Grade and Inna Hecker Grade can be found here.

This series contains cassette tapes, as well as eight tape reels. The audio material includes recordings of readings of Chaim Grade’s prose work, Chaim Grade’s lectures and speeches, Inna Hecker Grade’s poetry readings, and personal incoming messages recorded on Inna Hecker Grade’s answering machine. Digitization is in process.