{"id":55939,"date":"2020-07-16T06:12:06","date_gmt":"2020-07-16T12:12:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/?p=55939"},"modified":"2020-07-16T06:12:06","modified_gmt":"2020-07-16T12:12:06","slug":"the-yiddish-song-that-kicked-off-the-swing-era-is-due-for-a-comeback","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/the-yiddish-song-that-kicked-off-the-swing-era-is-due-for-a-comeback\/","title":{"rendered":"The Yiddish song that kicked off the Swing Era is due for a comeback"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By ARIELLE KAPLAN<\/p>\n<p>Printed in black and white and bigotry all over, Nazi official Hans Severus Ziegler\u2019s brochure for his public exhibit in Dusseldorf featured an African American jazz musician with a Star of David on his lapel. Designed to ridicule and belittle Jewish musicians for performing \u201cNegro music\u201d as another tactic to contaminate German culture, \u201cEntartete Musik\u201d (\u201cDegenerate Music\u201d) opened in May, 1938 \u2014 just four months before Kristallnacht.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_55944\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/bemir1-1080x600-1.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-55944\" class=\"wp-image-55944 size-medium lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/bemir1-1080x600-1-300x167.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"167\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/bemir1-1080x600-1-300x167.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/bemir1-1080x600-1-1024x569.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/bemir1-1080x600-1-768x427.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/bemir1-1080x600-1.jpg 1080w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 300px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 300\/167;\" \/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-55944\" class=\"wp-image-55944 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/bemir1-1080x600-1-300x167.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"167\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/bemir1-1080x600-1-300x167.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/bemir1-1080x600-1-1024x569.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/bemir1-1080x600-1-768x427.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/bemir1-1080x600-1.jpg 1080w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-55944\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Andrews Sisters. (Image by Michael Ochs Archives&nbsp;\/&nbsp;Stringer\/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>By then a ban on \u201cNegro jazz\u201d had already been instated, three years prior, on German radio for its \u201chysterical rhythmic reverses characteristic of the barbarian races.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And yet, in spite of this, a curious historical phenomena transpired the same year this exhibit opened its doors: Hitler\u2019s Germany was obsessed with \u201cBei Mir Bist du Sch\u00f6n\u201d (\u201cTo Me You Are Beautiful\u201d), the 1937 song that catalyzed the era of Yiddish swing. A sub-genre of jazz, swing music is more upbeat and easy to dance, or \u201cswing,\u201d to than the style of jazz that originated in New Orleans that was born out of African music. In its golden age, Benny Goodman, the Jewish King of Swing, fought for integration in Tin Pan Alley and hired African American musicians to bring the new musical style to the masses.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe fundamentals of jazz are the syncopation and rhythmic accents of the Negro,\u201d American music theorist Henry Cowell wrote in 1930. \u201cTheir modernization is the word of New York Jews\u2026 So jazz is Negro music seen through the eyes of the Jews.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Hailed by Jewish music scholar Neil W. Levin as \u201cthe world\u2019s best-known and longest-reigning Yiddish theater song of all time,\u201d \u201cBei Mir Bist Du Schein\u201d was written by Jews, performed by Black musicians, popularized by a Lutheran trio of Norwegian sisters, and beloved by the Nazis \u2014 until they discovered its Jewish roots, that is. (Under its Germanized title, \u201cBei Mir Bist du Sch\u00f6n,\u201d many assumed the language was a southern German dialect.)<\/p>\n<p>A song so powerful that even the Third Reich couldn\u2019t resist, \u201cBei Mir Bist Du Schein\u201d launched the Andrews Sisters to fame overnight, fueled a growing counterculture against German fascism, and by way of blending American music with sounds of the shtetl, it helped ease Jewish immigrants\u2019 assimilation into American society.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Andrew Sisters - Bei Mir Bist Du Shein\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Xe2UXccid40?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" class=\"lazyload\" data-load-mode=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The song was originally written by Sholem Secunda for a Yiddish operetta in 1935. After hearing the African American jazz duo Johnnie and George perform the song in the Catskills, Jewish lyricist Sammy Cahn bought the rights and rewrote the lyrics in English, preserving just the titular chorus in Yiddish. Within a month of the Andrews Sisters\u2019 recording of the song, some 250,000 records and 200,000 copies of sheet music were sold. (Hilariously, American fans couldn\u2019t quite catch the song\u2019s title, confusing it for \u201cBuy a Beer, Mr. Shane\u201d or, my personal favorite, \u201cMy Mere Bits of Shame.\u201d)<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe lyrics were revamped for popular release to transcend the song\u2019s Jewish roots and celebrate America\u2019s melting of multiple languages and cultures,\u201d writes Charles B. Hersch in his book, \u201cJews and Jazz: Improvising Ethnicity.\u201d \u201cAs the song\u2019s lovestruck protagonist imagines saying \u2018bella bella\u2018 or \u2018sehr wunderbar,\u2019 each foreign tongue is simply a vehicle to express how \u201cgrand\u201d the beloved is.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>In America, the success of \u201cBei Mir\u201d helped Jews feel they made the right choice in fleeing pogroms of Europe \u2014 through theatre and music they could, and did, cement themselves in the New World. Benny Goodman furthered the Yiddish jazz craze with his iconic 1938 performance of \u201cBei Mir\u201d at Harlem\u2019s iconic Apollo Theatre \u2014 within months, a myriad of popular artists like Ella Fitzgerald, Belle Baker, Kate Smith, and the Barry Sisters recorded covers, hoping to cash in on the fad.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen - Ella Fitzgerald (1937)\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/t8TkXaDbvb8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" class=\"lazyload\" data-load-mode=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>To highlight the new musical fusion of klezmer and jazz, New York\u2019s WHN created \u201cYiddish Melodies in Swing,\u201d a program that lasted two decades. The feat was a \u201csense of mastery over the challenge of integrating in the American mainstream while maintaining ties to their distinctive immigrant heritage,\u201d writes Hersch.&nbsp;<br \/>\nBack in Germany, swing music was hardly a relief from the woes of war and Nazi violence. While Hitlerjugend \u2014 Hitler Youth, the Nazi\u2019s youth organization \u2014 grew in popularity, so did the countermovement known as Swingjugend. Rejecting societal oppression, uniformity, and police brutality, these teens separated themselves from the Nazi state by dancing the Charleston in speakeasy bars filled with the sounds of swing music, a genre that emulated free love, independence and peace.<\/p>\n<p>Members of Swingjugend let their hair grow long. The men carried umbrellas, the women wore heavy makeup and collectively they mocked Hitlerjugend\u2019s infamous \u201cSieg Heil\u201d with proclamations of \u201cSwing Heil.\u201d With songs like \u201cBei Mir\u201d beating in their hearts, the 1993 movie \u201cSwing Kids\u201d depicts the counterculture German rebels as they are confronted by the Nazis. The movie is fiction, but the historical atrocities are chillingly accurate: In 1941, 300 swing kids were punished for praising the \u201cdegenerate music\u201d of Jewish and Black people \u2014 some were given haircuts, others were sent back to school, many were deported to Nazi concentration camps.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Swing Kids--Bei Mir Bist Du Schon-- Janis Siegel\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/K7I5M3BtDDU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" class=\"lazyload\" data-load-mode=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>But even in the Nazi-drawn ghettos, the popularity of swing endured. In 1942 Theresienstadt \u2014the \u201cmodel\u201d concentration camp, designed to fool the world into believing all was well and dandy in the Third Reich \u2014 Eric Vogul led the Ghetto Swingers, a jazz orchestra forced to perform in the main square for long hours. A disturbing charade, the Jewish musicians still found joy in performing jazz and swing music. In their darkest hours it was an escape.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen I played I forgot where I was. The world seemed in order, the suffering of people around me disappeared \u2014 life was beautiful,\u201d wrote Ghetto Swingers guitarist Coco Schumann in his autobiography. \u201cWe knew everything and forgot everything the moment we played a few bars.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBei Mir Bist Du Schein,\u201d of course, was one of the songs that \u201ctranquilized ourselves into the dream world produced by the Germans for reasons of propaganda,\u201d Vogel said. Filled with notes of hope and love that transcend language, that blissful bubble burst in 1944 when the camp was cleared and most of the remaining prisoners were sent to Auschwitz.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Ghetto Swingers - Bei mir du bist sch\u00f6n\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/68_sPfglLGo?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" class=\"lazyload\" data-load-mode=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>By the end of World War II in 1945, swing music was replaced with new sounds like Bebop and rhythm and blues. As Jews embraced a state of their own in 1948 with Hebrew as the lingua franca, Yiddish was swept to the side, left to gather dust along with the memories of pogroms and gas chambers.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIsrael was happening and Israelism was a way for Jewish people to be more American, more assimilated, more macho, more cowboy-like than the old skinny, left-wing, intellectual type so common with Yiddish culture,\u201d Alicia Svigals, a founding member of the Klezmatics, tells The Washington Post.<\/p>\n<p>Nearly a century after the golden era of klezmer-meets-jazz, I think the song that started it all is due for a comeback. So much of the landscape that gave way to Yiddish swing has returned, and the parallels are chilling: recent acts of police brutality launched a fiery wave of Black Lives Matter protests; anti-Semitism is at an all-time high; the crushed economy in the United States is being likened to the Great Depression, the very historic crisis that gave way to the swing era.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Made most famous by three non-Jewish sisters, \u201cBei Mir Bist Du Schein\u201d is hardly the only Yiddish swing tune we should revere and revive as an unlikely protest song. But it\u2019s the rich history of Black and Jewish musicians who made this \u201cdegenerate music\u201d irresistible to the Nazis that makes this shtetl swing melody an ultimate song of resistance.<\/p>\n<p><em>(This article originally appeared on Kveller.)<\/em><\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" data-src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" class=\"lazyload\" \/><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/noscript><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"Tumblr\",\"Email\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"The%20Yiddish%20song%20that%20kicked%20off%20the%20Swing%20Era%20is%20due%20for%20a%20comeback\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7137],"tags":[10771,10770,8790,8795,8788,10772],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55939"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55939"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55945,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55939\/revisions\/55945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}