The Jewish Studies Program, in conjunction with Jacobs School of Music, hosted poet and songwriter Psoy Korolenko in Ford-Crawford Hall on Wednesday night to perform “Yiddish Slavic and Sound.”
Over the course of an hour and a half, Korolenko sang 18 traditional Yiddish and Slavic songs, briefly explaining their meanings before each. The concert also featured an introduction from Dov-Ber Kerler, professor of Germanic and Yiddish studies at IU.
Korolenko has worked as a poet, songwriter and translator since 2002, participating in numerous klezmer festivals, which are festivals highlighting music inspired by traditional folk music of the Ashkenazi Jewish and Eastern European cultures, and co-founding the JetLAG Festival. He has also translated songs, poems and children’s books from Yiddish into Russian.
The solo performance of “Yiddish Slavic Soul and Sound” aimed to showcase Korolenko’s experience between both cultures. The songs performed featured both translated and original songs in Korolenko’s repertoire.
Thomas Koehnline, an usher for the concert, works with Kerler in the Jewish Studies Department, specifically on Yiddish language projects.
Koehnline had only ever known Korolenko by reputation before the concert, and he was excited to see what the in-person experience would be like. He especially appreciated the multilingual aspect of the show, highlighting Korolenko’s experience growing up in the Soviet Union and growing up between both cultures.
To start the concert, Kerler took the stage and introduced Korolenko, explaining his significance and the appeal to bring him to IU.
Korolenko and Kerler have worked together before numerous times, one of the last times being at the Yiddish Institute in Lithuania a few years ago.
“I’m looking forward to the concert,” Kerler said during his introduction. “I’ve seen Psoy something like five times in Jerusalem at least, and it was always a deep, emotional, aesthetic, intellectual and uplifting experience.”
After Kerler’s brief introduction, Korolenko walked onstage and sat at the piano; the audience welcoming him with a wave of applause. After an explanation of his composition, “Because of What,” he began with a lively beat on the piano.
Before the next song, titled “When the Jews...”, Korolenko explained the background and significance behind his stage name, which is a pseudonym for Pavel Lion, his legal name.
He explained his choice of pseudonym derives from the Russian author Vladimir Korolenko, a Russian author and publisher in the 19th century who supported young Russian-Jewish authors.
The next song in the program was titled “Katerina-Moloditsa,” which was followed by “Rabeynu Tan.” As Korolenko got in a rhythm performing songs, then telling a short story or explaining the history behind the song, he worked his way through the 18 songs on the program, finishing off the concert with a song titled “Tam/Over There,” which he performed in Ukrainian.
Among the sea of green chairs of Ford-Crawford Hall, Grigory Kalinovsky, a violin professor at IU, sat to watch the concert. Kalinovsky hadn’t heard of Korolenko before the concert but knew the traditional repertoire he performed.
“Very, very different than what I was used to; the mixture of languages was great,” Kalinovsky said. “I didn’t know his songs before, it was a lot of fun listening.”
