Archive
The JMI Archive is a living collection of sound, tracing Jewish life across time and place, across generations. Built over decades through the work of families, musicians, and archivists, it brings together recordings and materials from across the diaspora, from Yemen to Ukraine to Tel Aviv.
What began as boxes of records stored in a Surrey container has been restored into a continuously growing archive. The collection includes vinyl records, shellac discs, cassette recordings, and manuscript scores, documenting specific moments, places, and musical traditions.
Each time, we invite a different curator to explore the archive and select a series of highlights, offering a personal view into the collection and the stories it holds.
Led by archivists Edoardo Marcarini and Jim Hickson, and curated by Wajima Tapes, with contributions from Ilan Biber and Jonathan Emeruwa on digitisation, the archive has been carefully prepared for wider access through ongoing digitisation, cataloguing, and research, supported by the Rothschild Foundation Hanadiv Europe.
This work continues to shape how the collection can be experienced, shared, and understood over time.
Explore the current selection below.
Selected from the Archive by Alan Dein
Alan Dein (b. 1961, London) is an oral historian, writer, musicologist, and award-winning BBC radio documentary maker. Over a career spanning more than 30 years, he has made hundreds of documentaries that reflect his passion for oral history and overlooked stories.
His interviews have been commissioned by institutions including the British Library, the Museum of London, the Guardian, the Jewish Museum, Tower Hamlets Local History Library & Archives, and Camden Local Studies. In 2019, he compiled the album Music is the Most Beautiful Language in the World, the first major exploration of Yiddish jazz in London’s East End between the 1920s and 1950s.
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Isa Kremer was one of the most distinctive voices in early 20th-century Yiddish song. Born in Ukraine and trained as a classical singer, she brought Yiddish repertoire into concert halls across Europe and beyond, combining technical precision with emotional clarity.
In this recording, her voice moves between intimacy and projection — a reminder of how these songs existed both in private settings and on public stages.
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From the golden age of American klezmer, this recording captures a moment when the music was still taking shape as both a social dance form and a performance tradition. Max Liebowitz, born in Iași in 1884 and later active in New York, was part of a generation of immigrant musicians who helped define this emerging sound — moving between roles as performers, bandleaders, and arrangers.
Recorded for Columbia, the piece is lively and direct — music made for dancing, full of energy and momentum.
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Before becoming known as a major music manager, Don Arden recorded a small number of songs in the early 1950s. “Eli Eli” sits between popular and devotional music — shaped by post-war sensibilities while still rooted in older traditions.
His delivery is restrained but expressive, carrying a sense of distance as much as devotion, and giving the recording a slightly unexpected, revealing quality.
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Recorded in 1978, this track captures a more informal, immediate kind of music-making. Voices, guitar, and rhythm sit together without polish, closer to a shared moment than a staged performance.
Its value lies in that informality — a document of how music lives outside formal recording contexts.
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