The Fay Singer South African Jewish Music Centre collection at the Music Library’s Documentation Centre for Music (DOMUS)

The SA Jewish Music Centre (SAJMC) was established by Fay Singer, teacher Stuart Serwator and Cantor and teacher Ivor Joffe and inaugurated on 17 December 1992 in Cape Town. They were encouraged by Geraldine Auerbach, who, during her annual visit to Cape Town, noticed a lack of Jewish music sources in Cape Town. The Centre became affiliated to the Jewish Music Institute (JMI) at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London in 1993. Geraldine Auerbach MBE, Director of the JMI, was the Honorary Patron from the beginning.

Supplemented by documentation in the collection, the SAJMC newsletters inform on the activities and events of the SAJMC. These activities included concerts, choir festivals and lectures on Jewish music. Annual events included the choir festival presented jointly by the Union of Orthodox Synagogues and the SAJMC in honour of Cape Town cantors Max and Philip Badash (in different synagogues in Cape Town) and the Leah Todres Yiddish Song Festival, organised by Philip Todres. The festival was established in 2000 in honour of his mother and took place annually until 2009. Every year there was a different theme, for example: Ba mir bistu sheyn: Songs of life and beauty (2001 – based on the song), L’ Chaim: Songs to life (2004), Ich Zing! Let us sing (2008) and A naye velt: Songs bridging oceans. Fay Singer was involved in selecting the music, while Matthew Reid was the music director. Reid and his Simcha Klezmer Ensemble also performed at the festival, which was a main fundraising event for the Cape Jewish Seniors Association. The image on the programme (below) depicts Leah Todres and her cousin Teddy Ruch (approximately 1918) and has become the logo for the Yiddish Song Festival. The festival included music, film and Yiddish language courses.

The main aims of the SAJMC were to collect, preserve and promote Jewish music through lectures and performances, and the urgency of preservation is illustrated by the following extract from a draft newsletter of July 1996:

The SAJMC collection reflects the activities of a specific community within a specific geographical location and time. Their materials were collected for their activities and generated from their activities.

The SAJMC collection was donated to Stellenbosch University by Mrs Fay Singer in 2011, thus the Fay Singer South African Jewish Music Centre Collection. This collection consists of items donated by synagogues, cantors and other individuals and includes work documents of the SAJMC, certificates, brochures, newsletters, periodicals, programmes, artwork by Fay Singer, sheet music and sound recordings. Items from the SAJMC collection are available on the Stellenbosch University Library and Information Service’s digital collections platform, SUNDigital.

 

Author: Santie de Jongh