The Yiddish Wedding Folk Songs of East European Jews: Function, Ethnography, Sociology, Texts, and Music

Abstract:The genre of Yiddish wedding songs as such did not exist in the Jewish music tradition and the wedding songs could be only identified by content, but not by function. The wedding songs were mainly performed before the wedding (by women) and less at wedding events (by men). However, although the Yiddish wedding folk songs didn't play a major ritual role in the actual wedding ceremony, their narrative and musical content represent an extremely important material that helped explain a deep, hidden, emotional context of the wedding and events preceding it. This article aims at a comprehensive analysis of this unique type of song in a broader sociological context, and identifies and reviews several categories of such songs in accordance with their place in the sequence of pre-wedding, wedding, and post-wedding events.