Available Now: Shotns/Shadows, Songs from Testimonies, Volume 3

We are pleased to announce that Shotns/Shadows, Songs from Testimonies, Volume 3, by Zisl Slepovitch Ensemble & Sasha Lurje is available now on Bandcamp and Spotify as well as the Fortunoff Video Archive webpage.

The Songs From Testimonies project is a musical research and performance based on poems and songs in the interviews with Holocaust survivors recorded at Yale’s Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. There are more than 100 testimonies in the collection in which survivors recount poetry or sing musical compositions from the prewar, wartime and postwar periods.

The Fortunoff Archive asked musician-in-residence, Zisl Slepovitch, to locate these songs, conduct research about the origins of each song, and then arrange and record versions with his ensemble, featuring Sasha Lurje.

The songs and poems included on the third volume, Shotns/Shadows, were sung or recounted in a number of testimonies and reflect the richness of Holocaust video testimonies as a unique form of documentation. Originally, these songs were sung individually and collectively, but in survivors’ testimonies they are recounted or performed by individuals. They thus remind us that the survivor singing them represents all those who did not survive to sing again, and remind us of the absence of the original audience.

Explore Volumes 1, 2, and 3 on our webpage.