This week's guest, Henry Sapoznik, is an award-winning producer, musicologist and performer, and writer in the fields of traditional and popular Yiddish and American music and culture. His latest project is the ongoing research about the so-called "shvartze khazonim," the African American cantors of the 1920s and '30s. We speak with Henry about Black Jewish cantor Thomas LaRue Jones, a much-beloved singer of traditional Yiddish songs and cantorial liturgy on the stage and radio and on record, and the recent effort to raise funds for a headstone for LaRue's unmarked grave.

Episode 0291

March 6, 2021

Yiddish Book Center

Amherst, Massachusetts