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A link to the audio file is available here for logged-in, authorized users.
Welcome to David Kohan’s Jewish Music Archive Wiki!
This is the place where you can listen to more than 600 hours of Jewish music collected by the hazzan (cantor) and musicologist David Kohan.
The accumulation of musical material took place from 1945 until about 1990. David Kohan had 325 tapes (reels and cassettes) stored in Berlin. Anne Böhme digitized them at the Department of Religious Studies, then headed by Prof. Dr. Karl E. Grözinger, at Potsdam University during [2001/2-06?]. (Susi Hudak? was genau getan??) Paul Borchert imported those more than 12.000 tracks into David Kohan's Jewish Music Archive Wiki and is the technical mind behind this project.
Read more about David Kohan and his archive.
Here you see an example of the structure of the articles for the tracks.
The overall structure of the database still lacks a lot. So far, two ways of structuring have been started.
Firstly, the recordings are arranged according to the CD's that resulted from the digitizing process. Actually, this structure is not too helpful, as these CD's do not match albums. Rather, they are mosaic stones patched together of different sources and performers.
Secondly, a structure based on the workload still necessary has been created which is called "Page status".
More structuring is very much welcome.
The Wiki as a platform was chosen to facilitate the dialogue between academics, musicologists, musicians, Yiddish researchers and who else has valuable statements to describe and analyze those resources of the Jewish music history and practice.
In the era of Web 2.0, the creation of a living archive through this interdisciplinary knowledge of specialists worldwide will contribute to further interactive ways of gaining new insights.
In this spirit, take notice that every page has a "discussion" button at the top - please feel absolutely free to use this feature! You do not always have to change the track page right away; in case you are unsure about the information you would like to add or in case a problem arises - use this discussion button. It is a great possibility to reconsider doubtful or arguable data. Of course, this only works if other knowledgable people respond to it...
In addition, do not hesitate to correct the currently non native speaker English of the David Kohan Jewish Music Archive Wiki. - This is only a beginning now.
