Dan Carkner
alte.klezmor.im
Dan Carkner
@alte.klezmor.im
Klezmer music history researcher, library technician from Vancouver BC. Doing research into klezmer musician biographies, compositions & social organizations, Indonesian left-wing history, etc. History MA UBC 2019. Wikipedia editor. Social justice minded.
this part is insane lol🤔
January 13, 2026 at 2:39 AM
WWI era set of klezmer tunes I got from the newly released WEVD collection at NYPL. They didn't even charge me for the digitization 🤓 drive.google.com/file/d/1d9C-...
January 13, 2026 at 2:25 AM
another of my side quests from my PMBS research over the last few days are these two related Jewish musician families from Egypt who settled in NYC and joined the PMBS, the Halmescos/Halms and the Brauns. Here's the grave of one of them, William Halmesco, b.1890 Port Said, d.1952 Bronx, and some...
January 10, 2026 at 6:50 PM
a curious little side trip from my Progressive Musical Benevolent Soc. research last night: among the names inscribed on the cemetery gate of the Society in 1923 was M. WINAKOR. Not a common family name so I'm guessing it was the NYC cornetist Moses Winakor (1871-1940). here's his brother, Joseph...
January 9, 2026 at 2:23 PM
Ishtar in sunnier times
January 8, 2026 at 9:45 PM
sadly also impossible to make much out about the musicans on stage. to be the klezmer musicians playing for all the New York klezmer families in 1941 they must have been good 🤓
January 8, 2026 at 6:27 PM
Thanks to Dave Levitt's relative Marcia Levitt Savage who was nice enough to send me a clearer image of the Progressive Musical Benevolent Society's 1941(?) 30th anniversary banquet photo in her possession when I messaged her on Facebook. this was the mutual aid society of NYC Klezmer musicians so..
January 8, 2026 at 6:19 PM
sorry to add tourism into this but I was reminded how I saw Electrecord's office in Bucharest on google maps when I was there overnight in 2017. I went and peeked and there was just a big empty lobby inside with a piano and not a person in sight.
January 7, 2026 at 4:27 PM
among all the blanks I found a few of what is probably Shimele Blank's klezmer band playing for the Bialer landsmanshaft (another one says S. Blank, and it's not a common name among musicians there, aside from his brother Morris

Bialer = Shimele was born here
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bia%C5%...
January 5, 2026 at 2:30 AM
In those 1940s tax photos they stopped to try and centre the shot on every single address so you can often get many views of the same spot angled and lit differently. This is roughly around the same spot as the Blanks' store on E 2nd St but also Evenchick's shop at 188 E 2nd and possibly another one
January 4, 2026 at 6:16 PM
"Filling in the Blanks" on my Progressive Musical Benevolent Society research about the Blanks/Blankleders family of musicians. There were about 10 of them in the P.M.B.S., most related to Shimele Blank AKA Yankel Blankleder, a klezmer violinist who owned this music shop at 190 East 2nd Street.
January 3, 2026 at 7:29 PM
I came across this yesterday but thought it was too stupid to post on NYE 😪 but some thoughtless New York registrar in 1895 really wrote Gusikoff as Gussecough. 😭(an illustrious Jewish musician family going back to Michał Józef Guzikow, 1806-37). you can see by the father's name they weren't sure..
January 2, 2026 at 4:45 AM
ah, to be a fly on the wall... or, in this case a fly on the exterior wall of the Hippodrome. found in a 1935 issue of the apparently short-lived Jewish Music Journal which seemed to mostly cater to Chazzans, art music intellectuals and choirs.
digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/a21b42...
January 1, 2026 at 9:12 PM
Happy New Year from me and Najma. Although I did some good stuff I'm proud of, I'll be happy to see the end of this one. 🥂
January 1, 2026 at 12:36 AM
this guy Max Bergunker (1885–1969, b.Mykolaiv) was in the Progressive Musical Benevolent Society (the klezmer mutual aid society I'm researching) & got big into silent film composing. found some of his 1920s mood-based pieces here at the end of this set.🕵️
www.sfsma.org/wp-content/u...
December 28, 2025 at 2:29 PM
Fleischman was a bit of an odd case in that he was a NY klezmer who was born in Toronto (in 1908). He also played in the 2nd Ave theatre and plenty of other stuff. Here's an ad for his orchestra from 1949 I saw at YIVO, though I don't think his family was from Khotyn, his dad was born in Vilna gub.
December 23, 2025 at 3:12 PM
on the classic hyper confident celebrity cantor I was reminded of this satirical cantor's lines from B. Kovner's Freylekhe Minuten (1919).

"My neck — a fiddle
my throat — a cimbalom
and I myself am a whole orchestra
When I pray, people fall like flies"

🥺
December 22, 2025 at 5:16 PM
Love this kind of weird presentation 😂 he was talking about what faux Hebrew fonts signify when used in advertising (often unclear) and what letters are used
December 21, 2025 at 4:45 PM
My first Yiddish New York lecture getting started and kitty is already interfering
December 21, 2025 at 4:35 PM
I've mentioned him before but this non-Jewish bandleader born in NYC, John Ellis, went on a tear of acting as a reference for nat'l applications for Jewish musicians c.1920🤓 I still don't know what his connection is to them, like was just "oh if you need an American reference this guy'll do it"?
December 21, 2025 at 4:29 PM
Somehow Reddit thought I suddenly wanted to see a steady stream of suggested posts from one of the most brainless know-nothing tryhards in the country.😐
December 21, 2025 at 1:16 AM
and he died in 1956, not in 1963. I should have known because I had this notice from Der Tog in my files back from when I started this project. both he and his wife Freda died within a few months of one another.😢 buried in the Progressive Musical Benevolent Society plot & noted in the map at YIVO.
December 20, 2025 at 10:47 PM
someone forgot to log into their personal account maybe, heh👀
December 20, 2025 at 8:54 PM
I was mixing Abraham up with another guy of the same name who emigrated from Galicia to NYC and lived over roughly the same timeframe. pretty much everything is OK except the birth and death dates/places. but on the topic of old timey transliteration I love his sister in law Bertha as "Beitha"
December 20, 2025 at 5:27 PM
ah, sometimes I go and search music copyrights for the members of the Progressive Musical Benevolent Society to see if anything interesting comes up and here's 2 klezmer copyright scores in the Library of Congress that I missed in my master list 2 years ago.🕵️
December 20, 2025 at 4:59 AM