An historic cooperative effort between the National Yiddish Book Center and Florida Atlantic University’s Judaica Music Rescue Project has given a 22-year accumulation of vintage 78-rpm recordings of Jewish music a new home. These records, which had been gathering dust in the basement of the National Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, MA, will now become part of an exciting new project dedicated to making this historic music accessible through a catalog on the internet. As part of the Fraiberg Judaica Collections at FAU’s S.E. Wimberly Library, the fragile records are now being cleaned, catalogued and permanently stored.
“This project will do for Yiddish music what the Book Center has done for Yiddish literature,” said Catherine Madsen, associate director of the National Yiddish Book Center, in a letter of support for the FAU Judaica Music Rescue Project.
“I couldn’t believe our good fortune,” said Nathan Tinanoff, director of the Judaica Music Rescue Project, regarding the accumulation of over 4,000 phonograph records. “There was so much more than I could have imagined!”
After Tinanoff visited the Book Center in September 2002, a unique agreement was reached between the two organizations. FAU’s Judaica Music Rescue Project incorporated the old recordings into their own collection and has agreed to take additional albums presented by the Book Center. In return, the Book Center will receive digitized recordings of the music.
The FAU Judaica Music Rescue Project is dedicated to finding, archiving, restoring and digitizing all the Jewish music that has been recorded on 78-rpm phonograph records. It began in the spring of 2002 with a collection of about 1,000 vintage 78-rpm recordings of Jewish music. Today, the collection exceeds 6,000, making it one of the largest collections of vintage Jewish music in the country.
The Florida Atlantic University Judaica Music Rescue Project web site (http://www.fau.edu/jewishmusic) provides information about the project’s history, goals and accomplishments. For further information on the efforts of the Judaica Music Rescue Project, contact Nathan Tinanoff at 561-297-3787 or [email protected].
