Once Upon a Time the Fire Burned Brighter: Ballads from the Yiddish Gothic

In the multimedia album Once Upon a Time the Fire Burned Brighter: Ballads from the Yiddish Gothic, scholar and musician Jeremiah Lockwood opens a doorway into the rich sensorium of the Yiddish ballad. Drawing deeply from the work of legendary Yiddish folk singer Lifshe Schaechter-Widman, the collection reimagines and recasts Yiddish ballads through audio and video performances by Gordon Lockwood (the musical project of Lockwood and drummer Ricky Gordon), which appear beside archival visuals, lyric adaptations, and textual explorations. Once Upon a Time the Fire Burned Brighter invites us to experience a body of Jewish song that emerges from a world of fantasy, memory, and symbol—constituting a Yiddish gothic, a folk expressionism unapologetic in the extremes of its enticing imagery.

Once Upon a Time the Fire Burned Brighter: Ballads from the Yiddish Gothic will be available for free audio download from the folio’s introduction until April 1, 2023! It is also available to listeners on Spotify and iTunes/Apple Music!

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