Singing the Yiddish Folksong: An Interactive Workshop

Learn how to imitate the tone and inflection of unaccompanied Yiddish folksong in this deep dive workshop! Together, we’ll listen closely to historic recordings by legendary Yiddish singer Lifshe Schaechter-Widman and examine how her artistry shaped the sound and interpretation of traditional songs. Chaia will guide participants through several of her favorite folksongs from Schaechter-Widman’s repertoire, breaking down the stylistic elements that make these performances so distinctive. We'll explore ornamentation, storytelling through vocal color, flexible rhythm, and the subtle shifts in tone that give Yiddish folksong its expressive character. No prior experience with Yiddish or singing necessary!

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Chaia is a composer combining Yiddish archival practice and electronic club music. She weaves archival Yiddish audio with techno and ambient frameworks, creating hybrid folk-electronic compositions that situate ancestral sound within global and liberatory rave culture. In live performance, she brings together accordion, vocals, and samples, inviting audiences to engage with ritual and the echoes of ancestral memory.

Chaia was raised in the klezmer tradition and mentored by Yiddish music pioneers Hankus Netsky, Jeff Warschauer, and Basya Schechter. She now works closely with Yiddish archives to identify, highlight, and catalog Yiddish material for her electronic work. These include the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, The Yiddish Book Center, Yiddish Song of the Week, and the personal archives of Netsky and the Hoffman Family. Chaia’s work has been supported by New York State’s Council for the Arts, the Brooklyn Arts Council, The Goethe Institute, and the Center for Traditional Music and Dance.

Chaia’s mixes, featured on The Lot Radio, dublab, Res Radio, and Great Circles (among others), showcase curated libraries of samples from Yiddish archives mixed into ambient techno. Her recent tours have included shows at Standard Time, Lobe Studio (4DSOUND), 2220 Arts + Archives, and Public Records, among others. Chaia has been profiled by Grammy.com, NPR’s Art of the Story, Annabel Ross, and others. She has collaborated with Russell Elevado, Dan Tombs, Sidney Mills and the Klezmatics.

This summer, Chaia released her debut album, “Yiddish Electronic”. Her next EP, “Romanian Fantasies,” will be released on Delusional Records in Fall 2026.