­The Barry Sisters: America’s Yiddish Swingsters, with Andy Muchin

Click here to register for this free virtual program, co-presented by the Jewish Folk Chorus of San Francisco, Klezcalifornia, New Lehrhaus, and the Workers Circle / Arbeter Ring of Northern California.

Claire and Merna Barry—born Clara and Minnie Bagelman in New York City—were a popular singing duo who performed on radio, television, records, and in concert halls and nightclubs from 1937 to 1973. In their elegant form-fitting gowns and coiffed hair, they popularized Yiddish Swing, which melded Yiddish theater tunes with a big-band beat. The sisters also performed highly polished arrangements of English-language pop songs and eventually Hebrew folk tunes. This presentation will survey their career and feature numerous clips from their recordings.

Andy Muchin has hosted the “Sounds Jewish” radio program on Mississippi Public Broadcasting since 2010. He has written about Jewish music for national and regional Jewish publications and contributes to the “Spiritually Speaking” column in the Victoria, British Columbia, Times Colonist. As a master’s degree student in public history at the University of Victoria, he has taken a deep dive into the Barry Sisters’ career and mid-twentieth-century American Jewish popular music.

Program made possible, in part, by Dr. Sandra Cohen.