Today on the podcast Dan is joined by the Magid Ensemble for a conversation with his largest group of guests yet! The Magid Ensemble – klezmer musicians and composers Rachel Leader, Mattias Kaufmann, Raffi Boden, Yiddishist and storyteller Weaver, and visual artist Kiah Raymond – has taken the scene by storm with their multimedia piece Shterna and the Lost Voice. Shterna is many things: technically it is a live performance of a crankie (a long scroll wound onto two spools that illustrates the story as it unwinds) with live storytelling and music. It’s also a theater piece, a new Yiddish folk tale, and a deeply affecting work. Dan talks with the Ensemble about how this work came about: the process of creating it, how it has changed over its private, pre-performed lifetime, and over it’s time being performed by the ensemble. We talk about influences coming from wherever they come from, the potential connections between Japanese video game and animated film music with a Yiddish or klezmer music aesthetic, and all the ways concepts we associate with fantasy or sci-fi can be found in these old sources (midrash as multiverse, anyone?), This conversation shows how far out and in we can go as artists and people from a rooted place, like how we are rooted in our love and interest in Yiddish culture.
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