Workshop: CHAIA, composer, Yiddishist, DJ presents The Art of Unaccompanied Yiddish Folksong

Part of The Portland Jewish Music Festival 2026!

Learn how to imitate the tone and inflection of unaccompanied Yiddish folksong in this deep dive workshop! Join Chaia, New York-based Yiddish vocalist, as she guides us through her favorite folksongs from historic Yiddish singer Lifshe Schaechter-Widman and teaches us the tips and tricks of the style! All levels welcome.

All Ages, $22/Adv, $25/Door

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.