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February 27, 2025

Preserving, and Reviving, the Music of the Shtetl

Wax cylinders and sheet music.

In 1912, Russia’s leading Jewish philanthropist sponsored an ethnographic expedition—led by the writer, revolutionary, and activist S. Ansky—through Russian Ukraine to study and document everyday Jewish life. The team recorded hundreds of folksongs, preserved on wax cylinders. The project was renewed over a decade later, writes Jennifer A. Stern:

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