Psoy Korolenko and Daniel Kahn

Tuesday, September 19, 2017, 7pm

Krannert Center for the Performing Arts Stage 5

Krouse Family Visiting Scholars in Judaism and Western Culture

“The Unternationale: Dialectical Polyglot Klezmer Cabaret” promises to be an amazing event! Psoy Korolenko is a polyglot performer who incorporates Russian, Yiddish, English, French, and other languages into his phenomenal performances. He also has a Ph.D. in Russian literature and tours and talks all over the world, often with Daniel Kahn. Kahn, a Detroit native who has relocated to Berlin, performs widely with the Painted Bird as well as with Korolenko. Kahn says: “I come from Detroit, a worker’s city. I love songwriters like Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan. And especially Yiddish labor songs. You can take a song written a hundred years ago and sing it about unemployment in the US today.  It still works. But while I love political songs, I’ve also translated and sung Sympathy for the Devil by the Rolling Stones in Yiddish. You could say I make a kind of Yiddish punk cabaret.” 

–Brett Kaplan