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Der yidisher-gramofon online!

Michael Aylward writes to the Jewish-Music mailing list:

I am pleased to be able to announce the launch of my website 'Der yidisher gramofon' at: www.yidisher-gramofon.org

I am hugely indebted to Joel Bresler who generously created this website for me. It is only now the project is complete that I realise what enormous demands I have made on Joel, no doubt on occasion testing his patience (and sanity?) to the limit. Without the enormous amount of work he contributed, the site simply would not exist.

The site falls into 3 broad sections:

The first deals with matters arising out of the 'Discography of Early European Recordings of Jewish Music' that I have been working on for the last 14 years.

The second section is devoted to the subject of pre-war radio broadcasts. This research is at present in its infancy, but is already proving a rewarding subject.

The third section is more general in nature, containing bilingual editions (original language and my translation) of source material relating to Jewish music, Yiddish and the Yiddish theatre. These are texts that I have collected over the years as I researched the discography and which I think should be made available to the general public.

This section will also contain a series of original articles that I have been working on for years and which I will begin to publish as and when I can fit the time in.

Finally, you will find a set of Appendices which I hope many will find useful. In particular I would like to draw your attention to the Reissues section where you will find 2 lists, one arranged by title and the other by artist name, of almost 1,600 recordings of CD reissues of recordings originally made on 78 rpm records and cylinders.

This is a very long-term project and in its present form the website represents just the basic foundations upon which in coming years, I hope, a much greater edifice will arise. I am now quite persuaded that publication on the Web is by far and away the most effective form of presenting this kind of information, if only for the far wider audience it can reach.

I hope there is something here for everyone and having 'lurked' on this list for so many years and benefited from it, I am glad to be able finally to make my own contribution.