Jerry Silverman – författare

More than one hundred songs of the Holocaust in sixteen languages with English translations.Here for the first time is a stirring collection of rare songs of the Holocaust; songs of resistance, despair, rage, hope and even humor, written in the face of utter evil. The very existence of these songs raises haunting questions. The extensive historical notes and insightful survivor testimony in this groundbreaking volume provide moving answers.Musicologist Jerry Silverman has compiled and presents an expansive collection of Holocaust-era folk music in sixteen languages that he situates within a vivid historical framework. This volume represents the work of concentration camp prisoners and inhabitants of the ghettos of Eastern Europe, subversive European cabaret music, anti-Fascist Russian Army songs, and songs of Resistance fighters.Silverman has conducted exhaustive research that took in many countries to unearth this material, and in some cases where the original music has been lost, set the words to music using traditional melodies. Included are songs of prewar Germany and of postwar reflection by such balladeers as Peter Seeger, Janis Ian, and Si Kahn.

New York's fascinating history as presented in song.In New York Sings, musicologist and folklorist Jerry Silverman has compiled a remarkable collection of songs about the people, places, and events of New York's 400-year history-from Henry Hudson's Half Moon to Pete Seeger's Clearwater, from Montauk to Niagara Falls, from the sidewalks of New York to the lumber camps of the Adirondacks. The traditional songs of New York are among the oldest in the vast repertoire of the American songbook, and included here are songs from the colonial period, the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Civil War, and World War I, as well as songs about the immigrant experience, the Erie Canal, baseball, life in sweatshops and on farms, and hard times and ragtimes along the Bowery, Coney Island, and the Great White Way. The book provides the melody, lyrics, and guitar chord symbols for each song, as well as fascinating facts and stories about the songs, their composers, and the historical events and people described.