Remembering Theo Bikel and the American Folk Music Revival

July 21 is the eighth yortsayt of Theodore Bikel, at least according to the western calendar. He passed in 2015, at the age of 91. Bikel led the kind of outsized life which is almost impossible to sum up. His Wikipedia page lists his many careers as “actor, folk singer, musician, composer, unionist, and political activist.” But those many careers overlapped and reinforced each other, with the sum of the parts adding up to a whole which was extraordinary. 

He acted on Broadway, in the movies, and on television. He fought on behalf of American civil rights and for Soviet Jews. He created the role of Captain von Trapp in “The Sound of Music” on Broadway, was the president of the Actor’s Equity union, and appeared as Worf’s adoptive Jewish father on "Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Theo Bikel was a giant, not just on the stage, but on the world stage. 

In remembering Bikel today, I want to focus on just one slice of his astoundingly diverse body of work: his career as a folk musician. Even his folk music oeuvre is too great to summarize here. He started recording “folk music” albums in 1955, putting out 18 albums for the Elektra label alone. Jewish material was just one part of his global repertoire. 

In 1958 he recorded “Theodore Bikel sings Jewish Folks Songs”

 

 In 1965, he recorded “Theodore Bikel Sings Yiddish Theater and Folk Songs” for Elektra

   

In 1959, he was one of the co-founders of the Newport Folk Festival, along with Pete Seeger. Seeger was another long lived, American cultural giant, as a musician, activist and co-founder of the folk revival magazine, Sing Out! in 1950. I recently spent some time wandering through the pages of Sing Out’s early issues, now available digitally on archive.org. You can read my latest GOLDEN CITY column about it, here.

Of course, Theo Bikel was a frequent presence in the pages of Sing Out! in those years. In April 1960, he was on Broadway in “The Sound of Music” when he appeared on the cover of the magazine. 

A note on the inside cover describes Bikel as having “achieved an enviable reputation and popularity.”  At that time, Bikel was as close as the magazine would come to huge mainstream crossover potential (and advertiser appeal, too.) 

Inside the magazine you find “A Backstage Chat” with Bikel, as well as reprints of songs from his repertoire. 

In the Summer 1961 issue, to take another example, you could find his name in an “industry roundup” column, noting that he had just signed on with talent impresario Sol Hurok

You’d also see him name checked in one of the many Yiddish folk songs the magazine published, here, Di mezinke oysgegebn. The editors note that a recording of the song can be found on Bikel’s album, “Jewish Folk Songs.”

 And finally, he is at the center of this two-page advertising spread:

One page is selling the Goya model guitar. Facing that is the upcoming Grossinger’s First Annual Folk Music and Guitar Festival, September 1961. Bikel meant big business for Sing Out!

Yet, the magazine didn’t pull punches where there was criticism to be made. In the April-May issue of 1961, Ruth Rubin, the groundbreaking folklorist and regular contributor to Sing Out!, published a long and rather devastating review of Bikel’s new song collection, “Folksongs and Footnotes” (the same book advertised as a premium giveaway with the Goya sponsored Grossinger Folk Fest.)  

First off, she says, many of these cannot even be considered folksongs, but for Bikel's choice to falsify their authorship.

From Rubin's review of Bikel's collection, "Folksongs and Footnotes."

Bikel, she says, has rushed in "where angels fear to tread..." 

Nor can he spot, she says, the difference between an earnest folk song and obvious satire

Ouch

It’s pretty clear that a negative review in Sing Out! had approximately zero effect on Bikel’s career. The magazine needed a popular draw like Bikel far more than he needed them, that’s for sure.

And at a time when many assimilating Jews were embarrassed of Yiddish, or thought it too provincial, Bikel’s mix-and-match strategy of combining songs from many traditions, while not appealing to folklore purists, placed Yiddish on equal footing with other global cultures. 

In June 1960, Bikel released “From Bondage to Freedom: Songs of Many Lands, of Tyrants and Slaves, of Free Men and Liberty,” for Elektra records. Yiddish songs like “Di shvue” (the Bundist anthem) “Un du akerst” (so you plow) appear alongside “Les guitares de l’exil” and “Scots Wha Hae.” 

In her April-May 1961 review of Bikel’s songbook, Bikel’s version of “Un du akerst” is another target for Rubin’s ire. She dings him for his “limited knowledge” of even the “basic facts” about the song. 

What basic facts are those? It was Rubin who tracked down the history of the text, back to an 1864 German song later adapted into Yiddish by Chaim Zhitlowsky. Rubin published her findings in her own songbook, “A Treasury of Jewish Folksong” (1950).

I can imagine Rubin’s irritation that, firstly, Bikel’s book, with a no doubt quite significant mass commercial audience, would introduce factual errors about the song. Secondly, it demonstrated that Bikel was unfamiliar with the important folkloristic work she had already published ten years previously. 

(Listen to a version of “Un du akerst” Rubin collected in Montreal in 1955) 

For Rubin, this isn't just sloppiness, it's "chutspe." 

OOF

If you’re my age (or older), you probably grew up with at least a few of Bikel’s records in your house, maybe you even had some of the Yiddish ones. In addition to his many brilliant contributions to American (and world) culture, Bikel's records were a crucial vehicle for bringing global folksong into American homes. Even today, his version of “Un du akerst” feels fresh and stirring (if not a bit overly macho.)

 

Ruth Rubin’s criticisms remind me of arguments which persist today in the Yiddish world. Is it better to maintain the Yiddishist’s focus on accuracy and purist respect for the totality of Yiddish culture? Or should we be open to more popular/populist interest in Yiddish, even if it means accepting a certain amount of errors, misapprehensions and, at times, insulting Yinglish misconceptions about the language and culture? 

Though I tend to fall on the side of the humorless Yiddishist, when it comes to the life’s work left by Theo Bikel, I must disagree with the most esteemed Ruth Rubin. I am grateful to Bikel, his work, and his lifelong commitment to Yiddish culture. Even the mistakes. All of us would be incalculably poorer without it. Koved zayn ondenk.