Shadows - Songs from Testimonies, Vol. 3 audio CD with booklet (liner notes, lyrics with transliterations and translations)
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Side D contains original testimnonies' audio clips from the Fortunoff Video Archive, edited and mastered for this edition.
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about
Di Bone (Oj ta bona!)—די באָנע—Food Voucher.
This composition can hardly be called a song: it is rather a gathering of the rhymes by the so called bona-singers from Warsaw ghetto. Bona was a food voucher: without it, one could not purchase food in the Warsaw ghetto. While scarce in words, these verses convey the unspeakable tragedy of people who were dying from hunger in the street. Their bodies were later collected by the burial agency, the ‘Pinkiert.’ In the rather transparent ghetto lingo, ‘to give away the bona’ meant to die. While it was not correct to blame Pinkiert for anything, and in fact the agency was taking care of public health, in the mind of ghetto prisoners their name was firmly associated with death and starvation. Hella R. and Ada V. were both prisoners in the Warsaw ghetto and they both remembered the bona verses, but in two different languages, Yiddish and Polish. Existing memoirs and research papers on the subject are scarce, but they provide valuable additional insight into both the societal context of the bona-singers’ performances and additional variants of the same basic rhyme, which we have included in this composition. These come from Hanna Wehr, with another Polish variant, and Henryk Grynberg and Jan Kostański, who also provide a line that could be either in German or in Yiddish (“alle gleich.”)
The composition on this album as arranged by D. Zisl Slepovitch, includes several additional tunes that appear between the bona verses. Such tunes were likely to be heard in the streets of the Warsaw ghetto, as Jewish musicians illegally entertained the Polish citizens (the latter prohibited by the Germans from listening to the Jews performing music) and earned their living. To re-enact the soundscape of the ghetto street, we have included in this composition a fragment of the Polka-Mazurka dance tune and a popular Polish song Szła dzieweczka do laseczka (‘A Girl Was Walking to the Forest’), also known with a different tune and Yiddish lyrics under its other title that comes from the initial line of the chorus: Gdzie jest ta ulica… (‘Where Is That Street…’)—וווּ איז דאָס געסעלע... (Vu iz dos gesele).
lyrics
Oy, di bone,
Ikh vil nisht avekgebn di bone
Oy, ikh vil nokh a bisele leybn,
Di bone nisht upgeybn.
Oj, ta bona,
Ja nie chcę oddać bony!
Ja chcę kawałek chleba,
Bo Pinkiert jest cholera.
Oj, ta bona,
Ja nie chcę oddać bony!
Bo Pinkiert jest cholera,
I bony wszystkim zabiera.
Pinkiert, stara cholera,
Bony wszystkim zabiera!
Alle gleich! Alle gleich!
Oj, ta bona,
Ja nie chcę oddać bony!
Bo Pinkiert jest cholera,
I bony nam odbiera.
Oy, di bone,
Ikh vil nisht avekgebn di bone
Oy, ikh vil nokh a bisele leybn,
Di bone nisht upgeybn.
Oj, ta bona,
Ja nie chcę oddać bony!
Ja chcę kawałek chleba,
Bo Pinkiert jest cholera.
אוי, די באָנע,
איך וויל נישט אַוועקגעבן די באָנע,
אוי, איך וויל נאָך אַ ביסעלע לעבן,
די באָנע נישט אָפּגעבן.
Oh, the food voucher,
I don’t want to give away my food voucher.
Oh, I want to live just another day,
And not give away my food voucher (not to die).
Oh, that food voucher,
I don’t want to give away that food voucher,
I want a piece of bread,
Because Pinkiert is evil.
Oh, that food voucher,
I don’t want to give away that food voucher,
Because Pinkiert is shit,
He takes away food vouchers from everyone.
Pinkiert, old shit,
takes food vouchers from everyone.
All are equal! All are equal!
credits
from Shadows - Songs from Testimonies, Vol. 3,
released January 19, 2024
Music and lyrics: unknown. Composition and arrangement by D. Zisl Slepovitch. Performed by Hella R. (testimony hvt.4179, tape2) in Yiddish and Ada V. (testimony hvt.3707, tape 2) in Polish.
One of the best new albums of Yiddish and Klezmer music on Bandcamp in my opinion. The collaboration of two sensitive artists of different generations who know a lot about Yiddish and American music.
dcarkner
One of my favourite musical discoveries in a while. These musicians are seriously talented. I can’t help imagining that there would have been a whole significant subculture of Yiddish psych rock like this in a different, kinder universe. For now, this is a window into that world that might have been. And I love every second of it. Audrey
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