Hello, and welcome to strangers in a tangled wilderness. I'm your host in manneroin and I use they them pronouns. Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness is a collectively run publisher dedicated to producing and curating inclusive and intersectional culture informed by anarchistic ideals. On this podcast we have audio versions of our monthly featured zine read by a brilliant voice actor. Along with interviews with the author. We also make these really cool little quarter size zines of the monthly feature, which you can get mailed to you anywhere in the world if you sign up for a Zine of the Month Club on Patreon. But you can also read along for free on our website tangledwilderness.org. This month we have something really wonderful. We have a small portion of Little Ek songs of love, Devotion and resistance from the Jewish Exile by Aurora. For this minisign we have compiled a small snapshot of songs and histories from the book, focusing on partisan songs written by resistance fighters of the Vilna ghetto. For the audio feature, we have recordings of Aurora performing three of the songs. Two of them are by Hirsch. Glick zognit came ol or never say. And still they knocked or quiet as the night. For the third we have Better Cotton or Barricades, written by Schmarke Kazarzynski, although we don't have a recording of it being performed. Our minizing also has a version of this is given a summer dog or it was on a summer's day by Rickley Glazer. To follow along in Yiddish or English, check out the free PDF of LittleC on our website or sign up for our Zine of the Month Club to receive it in the mail. The zine includes historical BIOS of the composers, but you can also stick around after the songs for an interview with Aurora about the project, the history and the music featured in this book. These songs, as written and as performed by Aurora, are just truly spellbinding and beautiful, and we feel so very honored to be able to present them to you.

Life that fly just hurt the fox division fall and take your hand. The sleep gives them it not goodness in the hand don't hurt the fox division fall and take your hand. The sleep gives them behind.

The zork.

Needs cane my life to gaze the mad staging get silly at a claiming dad of his son I know it's all. I fell in again. If I see me think well, I know it all. I fell in again.

Read more top News stories stories from Mirror Online hi, and welcome to the Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself with your name and pronouns and I don't know, what are you here for today? What do you do in the world?

My name is Aurora. I see her pronouns and I do many things in the world but my favorite thing is music. And I have been playing music since I was seven years old and have played many different instruments. But for the last ten years or so, the accordion and the guitar are my favorites. And I've known about Yiddish music my whole life, but in the last few years have gotten much deeper into it and that has been kind of the focus of my music world for a while now.

Cool, that's great. And we just heard you play some incredible songs. We haven't recorded them yet, so I haven't actually heard them, but I've heard you play music before and so I'm assuming that they're going to be incredible in future. Me is just baffled by them. But I have read the songs and I have read this beautiful song book that you submitted to us and I want to start off by, I guess asking if you would like to kind of introduce this song book in your own words. What is this project for you?

Yeah, so this book started as a much smaller, just personal project, kind of around the beginning of COVID times like most of us. That was a very dark and very hard time for me, one of the darkest times in a while. And during those days I started listening to some records that I had checked out from the college library like a year before and hadn't listened to them yet. And they were all Yiddish songs from Kanters and folk music and I just couldn't stop listening to them and that sort of was a jumping off point for me to get much deeper into Yiddish folk music. And so after about a year of that, I decided to just make a little book for myself of all of the other songs I had learned, because I had learned quite a few by then, and I intended to just make a little book and maybe give a couple of copies to my friends. And then it turned into a much bigger project, and I started researching the people who the songs were written about and who wrote the songs. And the bulk of the music was partisan songs from World War II, from the Holocaust. And so I started learning about the people involved in that time period and it became a much bigger project and kind of an entire book and then many people wanted it and so that is kind of how I came to this place.

Now, Dang, that is quite like an evolution of a project.

I've never done a project like this. I've always loved music, like I said, and folk music especially. So I've definitely done research before and looked into different folk music traditions and grew up with Yiddish folk music here and there, not a ton. But this is the first time that I've actually created something from that and taken the research that I've done and sort of consolidated it into its own sort of entity. So that feels exciting because I've been interested in these things forever. But this is the first time that I've actually made what kind of feels like an almost ethnographic artifact of this music.

Yeah, I know, it's probably like a pretty I feel like some of the answers are pretty obvious but just to kind of put it in your own words, why is this important or why did this feel important to do as you continue to research and evolve the project?

Yeah, I mean, that does seem like a simple question and yet I feel like I could talk about that for our entire time together. There's so many things in that. But I suppose kind of in a nutshell, I feel like I've been sort of around this music for a long time, as I mentioned, but never super deep in it. And it kind of came to me at a moment in my life where I really needed it, as things like this often do. And so it was kind of through that I felt like so part of the importance to me is that this music and a lot of this music have words and melodies that have been sung by Jewish people for hundreds and sometimes thousands of years. So there's that connection and it feels important to sort of continue, I guess, like carrying those songs into the future. In some of the lyrics themselves. It talks about singing the songs from generation to generation. And there's kind of a continuation of a musical tradition in the Jewish world. And so that's kind of, I think, the main thing that feels important to me. And also, like I said, this music came to me at a particular time. And I think because of that, it sort of helped me understand the importance of continuing to have space for this musical tradition to stay alive.

Yeah. For listeners, the song book that we hope that you're looking at on our website or if you've received it in the mail if you're one of our patreon backers. This is really just like a small snippet of a much larger book that Aurora has put together and we kind of chose to focus for this little collection on some of the partisan songs. And I was wondering, Aurora, if you would want to give a little maybe like a little historical backdrop to the Vilna Ghetto yeah, which I think is where all of the songs that we included are from and maybe you'll fact check me on that.

Yeah, I think all the songs in the book and certainly all of the ones in the mini scene are specifically related to the Vilna ghetto. That's kind of where most of my research was. Vilna is the old name for Vilnius, which is the capital of Lithuania. And so during the Nazi occupation of Lithuania and Poland, which the borders were not exactly what they are today, but they created ghettos in some of the main ones were in Vilna and Warsaw and Krakow and some major cities. But of course, there were smaller ones too, but they made ghettos that they forced the Jews into and they were mostly very small with many people in them. And so the partisans were the resistance fighters and the songs that are in my book are written by and for the partisans, basically. Although many, many people in the ghettos who weren't part of the armed resistance, they also sang and wrote songs. And the Jews in the ghettos were extremely creative and actually very prolific with music and poetry and literature and drama. There was a lot of creativity going on. These songs are kind of just a very small look into that whole world of creativity that was present even in the ghettos. Even as people were being taken away to the death camps and the liquidation of the ghettos, there was still a lot of creativity going on. So this is just like a small.

Glimpse into that and it's a very beautiful glimpse into it. I know that reading a lot of the songs and then the songs are beautiful on their own, and I feel, like, fairly easy for it to contextualize within those settings, but I feel like the addition of a lot of the little BIOS and historical backdrops on the authors and the composers really added another level of, I guess, like, intimacy or context to the songs that made them for me all the more beautiful or all the more sad. But since we did not include those BIOS for our listeners, I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about some of the composers. And I'm going to hopefully pronounce names a little bit. Well, but do you want to tell us a little bit about Hirsch Glick and the two songs that he wrote that we included?

Yeah, definitely. And also, I just want to say I had a similar experience of when I started to research the people. It really made the songs a lot more I think intimate is a really good word for it. And when I first heard a lot of these songs, I didn't really understand Yiddish at that time and I just loved them and learned a lot of the lyrics before I knew Yiddish. And then later, as I was learning Yiddish, I began to understand what all these songs were about and I was blown away at how much the feeling actually comes through even when you don't know the words. And then learning about the people added that whole other layer. So, yeah, that is, I think knowing about the people in the context is really important. So Hirschlick was Yiddish poet and he was born in villain. He was born in 1922 and he was very involved in the artistic community and he was part of the underground in the ghetto. He participated in the 1942 uprising and was a poet and a songwriter. And he wrote after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943, people in Vilna were very inspired by that and hoping to have a more successful uprising in the Ville Negetto. And so Hirschlik wrote his song The NEET Kane Mole, which means Never Say, and that was a very important song and sort of is known as the anthem of the Jewish partisan movement. He also wrote Dildinoff, which is about a sort of legendary act of heroism by Vitna Kemper, which who we'll also talk about. But she snuck into the forest before the partisans were stationed out there, and so the Germans didn't expect to be attacked out there. And as the story goes, she very famously kind of blew up a German train that was full of ammunition. So anyway, Hirschwick wrote that song to commemorate her and that act, which was very inspiring to a lot of people. He escaped from the Villner ghetto when it was being liquidated and was sent to a concentration camp in Estonia, where he continued to write many poems and songs. And eventually he escaped, but then he was never heard from again, and it is assumed that he was captured and executed by the Germans.

Dang yeah, I feel like I don't know. The more that I dive into learning about little bits of history from uprisings that were happening in Jewish ghettos and concentration camps, the more that I like it's sad because there's a lot of similar so many similar stories, but there is also this thread of people doing really incredible things in the face of all of this. I don't know, the more I learn about it, the more inspired and heartbroken that I am.

Those things definitely go together. That makes sense with the context.

Yeah, I guess. What are these two songs by Hirsch? Glick never say and quiet as the night what are those songs kind of going through or saying to you?

Well, they're both kind of inspirational in different ways, so neat. Kane Mole does very much have the spirit of an anthem. It's like the rhythm of it is much more driving. And it's like a march almost. And you can sing it really loud, like yell it with lots of people because it's basically like a manifesto almost, in a way. Or like a call to never say that you've reached the end of the road, basically, is the first line. And it's a call to remember. It's kind of like never say die. It's like the same kind of spirit of that. And it's also some of these songs are really beautiful and poetic and sweet, and the imagery is, like, kind of softer or talks about nature. And some of the songs are violent and intense in that way. And I appreciate kind of both of those sentiments. And this song is definitely like this song is written in blood. This song is sung with guns in our hands, like, we are never going to stop marching. And this song is going to be passed down generation to generation basically, it's a song to inspire people to never give up and keep fighting no matter what, which is beautiful and very necessary. And then Shil Dinah is also very inspirational and kind of has a different feel to it. And the way that I personally play it is softer and slower than mole. But you can play a song in any way and change the feeling of it. But it's kind of more like a poetic sort of homage to this person and this heroic event and is inspiring. Kind of like a quieter but equally intense way.

Yeah, it's funny that you talk about kind of some of the cadences in the songs because as I was transcribing and copy editing like them, I was like, saying these Yiddish in my head and I don't know Yiddish, but I wanted to transcribe everything correctly. I was, like, saying them in my head. And it was just like slowly developing this rhythm and cadence and seeing the rhyme scheme of a language that I don't know and just being just this little snippet of it being like, oh, wow. There's so much going on in these songs that seem like, at first glance, like, a little bit simple. But then in reciting them or learning the cadences, just being like, oh, wow. Okay. There's a lot.

Yeah, that's amazing. That comes through. Yeah, that's what I mean. Music is so magical in that way. It's amazing.

Yeah. Do you know anything about how, I guess, the melodies or the musicality like parts of these songs, like how they were developed?

There are various ways that that happened. There was a tradition of setting words to already existing melodies. Like with one of the songs she's given as, uma, Thug, it was on a Summer's Day. It's one of the saddest songs that was set to a melody that was a popular Yiddish theater song of the time called Papua, which means cigarettes. And that happened often where there were poets who would write these poems and then they would be put to popular melodies. And I actually read recently so I'm not sure if this is absolutely true, but I read recently that that was done because there were so many songs being written that they couldn't keep up with them and make different melodies for all of them. So they would just put them to already existing melodies. And also, I think my personal thought about that is that people would already know these melodies and so it would be easier for them to then sing these songs and then more people would be able to sing them together. And so I think that that was also part of it. And a lot of these songs are written by poets, people who were not necessarily musicians as well. But sometimes there were musicians who would come up with their own melodies and some of them are either the same as or inspired by much more ancient melodies of much, much older Jewish songs or Jewish melodies. So there's quite a few ways that the melodic component of these songs kind of transpired and evolved.

Dang, that's really cool for that kind of transference of it would be really fun to see kind of like an evolution of side by side of those melodies and songs and stuff. Do you ever think about doing recordings or things like that?

Oh, yeah, that would be so fun.

Yeah, I know me and you have talked about this before, but just the way that songs evolve is just really fascinating to me. Or like the way that they're spread, like hearing I guess my example is always like Irish ballads or Irish and English ballads and seeing a song or something that appears in one tradition and then it's like wildly different in another tradition that it was geographically isolated from. It's just so fun to see the thread of songs.

Yeah. The threads and evolutions and different versions. It's all fascinating because when they're put all together they form kind of a tapestry or like a web of the whole entirety of the spirit of the song.

Yeah. And I'm wondering if you know anything about this. I feel like it's like one of the questions in history, which is like, I know that Hirschklik's songs were wildly spread over the continent in a very short time period. Never say as you say became this anthem. And I read some little bit about it when I was trying to find out more about it that it was like it made it to Russia, it made it to all over Europe and these kind of short time periods. Do you know anything about how his music spread in these moments of isolation and separation?

Yeah, it is really fascinating that it is possible for things like that to spread so much during times like this of war, of isolation, of people being deported and killed and contained. And yet people manage somehow they manage to find each other and spread word. And I think that many people were able to sneak in and out of the ghettos miraculously and go to different towns and they would send news and messages from town to town and it was really hard, really dangerous work to do those things, but people did it. I think that that is how it happened. And it's actually miraculous what people are able to do. And also very special that some of the things that were important to spread were songs because music and artistic things are, well, very important to the Jewish people and during these times were huge and keeping up people's spirits, essentially. And so spreading the music is sometimes just as important as spreading an important message to your comrades in another city.

Yeah, that's so wonderful. And I'm also trying to imagine it from, like, the horrible to think of imagining anything from the perspective of the Nazis, but I'm imagining them hearing the song in Vilna and then getting replaced. I don't know what they call it in somewhere else and, like, hearing it again and being like, what the how did the song get here? The song is following me.

Yeah.

They would probably think, I hope that there are some, like, haunted I really hope that there were some soldiers who were just feeling, like, personally haunted.

I'm sure there were actually. I mean, they probably would just think of some kind of weird Jewish magic or something, but nevertheless, I hope that they were haunted by it.

Yeah. Do you want to tell us a little bit more about speaking of the spread of really rad things, do you want to tell us a little bit more about Vietnam?

She was a very important person during this time period, and her and An Abba Kovner, who is not in my book, but he was the leader of the resistance organization in Vilna, and he and Vitka and also this woman, Rosha Korshak, the three of them were kind of like they were a group. It is said that they were all in love with each other. And so I feel like to mention one of them I need to mention all three of them. I'll talk about Vidka specifically, but yeah, I think in looking at their history, the three of them were often together, were fighting together, planning together, and lived together after the war as well. And so it feels important to say all of their names as a group. But Vidka was born in 1920s, so she was in her early 20s during the occupation of Vilna. And she was part of the Fater Nike de pardisana Organacia, the FPO, which was the United Partisans organization in the village ghetto. And her and Abacovner and Rosha Korshak kind of led the group of partisans and recruited people in the ghetto to fight with them. The main story about Vidica well, one of them that I've already mentioned is that later during the war, the partisans would hide out in the woods, and that was kind of their spot. But before they started doing that, the Nazis were not thinking that they would be in the woods. And so Vitka and one or two other partisans went out into the woods in the night to sabotage a caravan like a train of ammunition. And the legend goes that she destroyed the caravan with a single shot from her pistol, but there are varying accounts of it, so I can't say that one is particularly fact. But that is the legend. And regardless of my personal thought about that is regardless of what actually happened, the story of she did destroy the caravan, whether with one shot or with a bomb. But that story became like this legendary thing that inspired other people to fight and showed people that it was possible to fight back against the Nazis. And so I think that is what is important and the facts are really interesting and also the legend that it created is perhaps more important. And then having that song Shil Dinah written about her for people to sing it connects us to that story and reminds us that it is possible to fight and to win small victories. The last lines of that song are about rejoicing at the small victory for our new free generation which I think is really beautiful. So Vitka and Abacovner and Rosha Korshak all survived the war and after the liberation of Vilna they formed a group called The Avengers and their purpose was to attack, murder and sabotage SS officers and they continued to do that for years and they've were very dedicated to that cause. And there's an interesting history that I won't get into too much here because it's a much larger conversation, but they were early Zionists, essentially, which many people were in the ghettos. Many people weren't, but some were as well. And that was sort of part of their drive for that to continue to brutally sabotage the Nazis, which is fantastic. And also one of their drives that kept them going was this very early form of Zionism, which is that word has lots of stigma these days and I think it's a fascinating thing to talk about the people in the ghettos and how they experienced that. So the three of them ended up living on a kibbutz in Israel together after the war and they all died.

There thing of old age in the city.

Yeah.

That'S really beautiful. We hear all these stories about people doing really awesome things that unfortunately did get them killed and it's so wonderful to have these stories of people doing really incredible things throughout the entire war and then getting out and living past, living entire lives after that is just really nice.

Yeah, I agree. It is amazing that people survived what they did.

Yeah, I don't know. It's fun to see different threads of this was going on in Vilna. And I don't know a ton about this history, but lower I think of the Dutch resistance fighter like Honey Shaft and their whole group, they were doing very similar things in a different part of the world, which was murdering nazis and luring them into the woods to kill them. And I love that the woods kind of occupies this space of Vienna, especially because in folklore in that part of the world, the forest is the dark forest. It is dangerous. And I love that it was so dangerous for the Nazis in such a place. Like death for them.

Yeah, death and the unknown.

We have two more kind of like BIOS and songs in this book and just wondering if you wanted to tell us a little bit about Schmerck Casual Jinski and Rickley Glazer.

Yeah, so let's start with rickla. Her song Cesavin Azumar Tag it was on a Summer's Day is actually one of the first songs that I learned in Yiddish long before I could really understand it. And it's one of the saddest songs, I think. It's very beautiful and it's extremely sad. And it was written by rickla when she was only 18 and she lived in the Vilna ghetto and was a poet. She was also part of the underground and the resistance. She shortly after she wrote this song, she was put on a train that was destined for a death camp, but she escaped somehow and she joined the partisans in the woods and she stayed there and fought with them for the rest of the war. And a number that I have is that of the 60,000 Jews of Vilna that were alive in 1939, rick Le Glazer was one of about 3000 who survived to see the liberation of Vilna. And this song, I feel like, really poetically, really beautifully and really tragically kind of captures that whole story. I've noticed that in many Yiddish songs, whether they are partisan songs or other folk songs, whether they're sad or happy, there's a lot of lines about nature and the images of nature are used in various ways to kind of express the feeling of the song. And in this one, it starts with Sus given a zuma tag VI shandik zunik shane it was on a summer's day and all around was very beautiful and nature had so much charm. The bird sang and hopped around and we are ordered to go into the ghetto as the first verse. And I feel like that is a really kind of intense and poignant way to start this song, which is about people being deported to death camps, people being murdered, all kinds of really terrible graphic things. And it's, I think, really poetically fascinating to have this contrast of nature and sunshine and birds and then this extremely dark and horrific thing happening within that context. And I feel like that's part of Rickla's kind of poetic genius in that song. That's the one that is to the tune. Papyrosen, the popular Yiddish theater song, which is also an interesting combination.

Yeah. What was the vibe of that song?

The original song is just a melody. It doesn't have words that I know and it's a bit faster and it's like kind of a fast dancing song. But with these given a zuma dog, it's much slower and so it kind of has a more haunting quality to it, which is really amazing what you can do when you just change something, like just the tempo in the song.

Yeah. Dang yeah, that's really cool. What has it been like to kind of like have you had to adapt any of these melodies or melodic components yourself or are there a lot of documented examples of things to draw from or what kind of was that process like for you?

Yeah, I mean, kind of a mixture of those things. With some of the songs that I learned, I try to. Be really true to whatever various originals that being in quotations that I've heard of them. Because I think it's really important and really special to sing and play the same or similar melodies and words like I said before, as so many people have done, to create that continuity. And also folk music is the music of the people and so it's constantly evolving and changing and growing with us. And so I think it's also really important to be part of that and to sing songs in our own ways and with our own feelings. And so I feel like I kind of try to do both of those things because I think they're both really important and actually with Body Cotton by Shmerfka Kazzinski, when I was recording it for this, I was realizing that I couldn't quite figure out how to play it like the versions that I'd heard of it. It's kind of like a very fast song. It's one of the songs in the street. It's like one of the songs that people are singing together in the street. And I was just like, how do I capture that? It's just kind of me and my guitar right here. What am I going to do with this? And I was like, I could play it on the accordion and maybe make it like a merching thing or I don't know. And then I decided I was just like, how am I feeling about it right now? How do I want to play it? And so the version that I came up with just for now was a little bit slower and the chords that I chose were kind of gives it a slightly less driving marching vibe. And so I kind of created my own version of it, which I think it basically just allows a different way for the same song to be experienced. Kind of a mixture of all of those things.

Cool. That sounds like a really fun process. Or is that a fun process to change the vibes of the songs?

Oh, yeah, I love it. It's so fun. And you can always change it again. This is how I'm going to play this song right now for this moment in this project. And maybe when I play it again, I'll change it and then another part of the song, another aspect of it will be able to come out.

Nice. Wow, music is so fun.

I agree.

Do you want to tell us a little bit about Schmergate?

Yeah, I guess. Also in mentioning him, I would also mention this man, Abram Suitskiber, kind of like with Vitka and Abner and Rosha. Those two. Shmerka Kazarzynski and Avram Sutskiber. They were often together. So I feel like it is also important to mention their names together. Both of them were poets. Averam Sutzgiver is quite a famous Jewish poet from that time and he and Shmirka were friends and comrades and fought together. Shmerka was born in Velma and also super active in the cultural life there and in the underground. And he wrote many, many songs. And as with many of the poets and musicians, they were writing these songs in part because they wanted to help bring comfort and encouragement to people living in the ghettos with that kind of constant oppression and uncertainty of their lives. They wanted to do whatever they could to try to kind of lift people's spirits and remind them that they have the energy to keep going and keep fighting. And also something really special that Shmerka Kasichinski and Avran Suskiber did is they formed a group called the Paper Brigade because during this time, the Nazis were stealing as many Jewish cultural artifacts as they could, and they were, of course, destroying a lot of them. But also they had this weird thing about cataloging artifacts of the cultures that they were destroying. So the Jews of the Paper Brigade would smuggle these cultural artifacts back into the ghettos and hide them in all kinds of places throughout the ghetto. And sometimes, if they were able to, they would send them away to safer places. And it's because of this group and other groups like it that we have the cultural artifacts that we still have today. And that was a very dangerous and brave thing to do, because if you were caught with even one paper trying to smuggle it back into the ghetto, they would just kill you right there.

Holy shit.

So it's actually incredible the things that they were able to get back from the Nazis and sneak back into the ghetto.

Yeah.

So there was somewhat unsuccessful uprising in the village ghetto in 1943, and after this, Caster Zinski and Abram Suitsgiver and many other partisans left, and that is when they pretty much spent the rest of their time in the surrounding forest. Shmirka was a chronicler of the Jewish experience around that time, and he collected and saved so many books and songs and testimonies, and he compiled them into books in his later years because he believed really strongly in preserving the artifacts and stories that showed what the Jews had faced from the Nazis as well as the creativity and the strength of the Jewish people in the face of this genocide. And in his later life, he lived until 1954. So after the war, he would often travel to give speaking tours about his experience there and about partisan resistance and was very instrumental in preserving what we have left, the evidence we have left at that time. And sadly, he was killed in 1954 in a plane crash in the Andes.

That is very sad, but also just I don't know. It's incredible the amount of work that he did to kind of preserve all of these cultural aspects of the Jewish people in the Villana areas and at large. I don't know. That's really cool. I'm curious. Your perspective on this or the reason that I wanted to include Barracotta in this little collection is I get the sense of it that it's a song that I think sometimes we get these ideas in resistance movements that there's the resistance and then there's everyone else and stuff. And that the fighting is being done by this smaller group of people, which in some ways, that's true. But I feel like this song really displays that it's this huge and large collective effort that is merely done by existing and going about daily life. And I don't know, I found that really beautiful or I guess the more that I learn about all of the different ghetto uprisings that seems to be like or to be like a trend, these are just like hugely large collective struggles.

Yeah, I think both of those things are happening. There is definitely a lot of tension between the resistance fighters and the other people of the ghettos.

Okay.

As there always is when there are different kinds of resistance and when there are groups that are kind of more militant about it, they are often at odds with people who are less militant about it. And just to kind of simplify that, that type of tension is almost always present in communities, in large communities, I think. So that definitely existed and had various repercussions. And also there were times where there was more unification of kind of a greater community resistance and I think especially with some of the kind of uprising tendencies against working conditions, unemployment and poverty because based on things like that sort of tends to spur greater amounts of the population to fight back. And so I feel like when that happens, then the more militant resistance fighters, they can all join together on more of a common ground. And I think Body Cotton is a good example of that kind of unification of many people who maybe don't think exactly the same about what resistance looks like, but can all come together to fight against the enemy. That is oppressing everybody.

Yeah. Thank you for bringing that context in. Yeah, I feel like sorry, I made some kind of assumptions and I'm so thrilled to learn like a deeper context behind it. Was Barricade was it written about the failed uprising?

No, I think it wasn't about that particular one because it talks about like people leaving the factories and workers battalions taking the streets. So it's not so much about the deportation to the ghettos and the Nazi occupation in that specific context. This song is more about workers taking the streets and definitely fighting against some of the same people, but it has a more like we are all leaving the factories and fighting for better lives and better conditions. That's kind of more the vibe of that I see.

It feels like there's so much going on. Would you ever think about doing a larger history or historical contextualization of the villain ghetto?

Well, yes, actually that is my idea for my next project.

A completely unscripted segue.

Perfect. Since you mentioned it, please tell us. Yeah, that is exactly where I want to go. This book, lead Left, my little song book, is just the tip of the iceberg. And when I made it, I didn't even know that much context. And since then, I have learned so much more and I know that there is so much more to dive into. And so I definitely intend to take all of these songs and these people and get deeper into the details of the history and the greater context and kind of build out that web for which the songs are an entry point for me.

I'm so excited for you to do that and for that to exist in the world. And I hope you will consider submitting it to strangers because I'm sure we would love to publish it.

Yes, absolutely.

Just because we're getting on in time as like, I try to keep these to like an hour and 15 minutes or something, but I feel like I want to talk about all of these things with you in a much deeper context, which maybe because we are trying to adapt your Zen into a larger thing, that hopefully people will be able to see more of that pay attention to us. So maybe there will be more opportunities to talk about stuff in the future. But is there anything else that you want to say about this project or this process that we didn't get to over the last hour?

Oh, gosh. I mean, yeah, there are so many things. And also, I feel like what we covered is a really nice glimpse into this world and kind of this history that we're using music kind of as a vehicle to enter into this history, which I think is really beautiful and seems to be my main way of interacting with this history is through the music. There are so many songs and people and voices that are touched on in this book, and they're all very precious to me. And I'm just so happy to be able to share this with other people. And I feel like it is personally important for me to kind of be a keeper of this heritage, these traditions, and to be able to share them with other people feels like an incredible part of that because I think that the music wants people to know about it. And the more we know about this history, the more we can honor it and move forward. And that feels like a really beautiful and important part of this project that I didn't even consider what happened, and I'm very pleased to be able to do that.

Well, thank you so much for sharing it with us. Like I said, eventually we're hoping to release a larger version of this with strangers, but in the meantime, if listeners want to get the full version of this, is that something they can get from you?

I think so, yeah. I have a PDF of it.

Where could folks get a PDF from? Could they contact you for such a thing?

Yeah, they can email me. My email is veradea, which is [email protected] beautiful.

And I know you are not on the internet a lot, but are there other places that people can find music of yours or you on the internet in a place that you would like to be found?

No, I am not on the internet at all. There is nowhere on the internet where my music is. If people would like to hear my music, I can send them a cassette tape. That's about as much as I can do at the moment.

I love that. Sorry, I'm not trying to novelize this piece of view in the world. I love when you can't find things.

Yeah.

And also it feels very deeply honored that we are hosting some musical recordings of yours on the internet. Does that feel fun?

Yeah, it definitely feels novel to me. Yeah. This is the first time that my music will be on the internet in some way.

Cool. So I guess to kind of wrap things up in a switching gears kind of way, I have this new segment for the podcast that I've been wanting to do for a little bit, and I feel like you're a really great person to start it out with. And it's what I'm going to call the word of the month segment. And I'm going to ask you about a word, and I'm going to ask you if you know the origins of it. And if you do, I would be thrilled to hear what you have. But it is a cold question, so no pressure. And then I'm just going to give a little insight into these words. So the word of the month is cobald. Are you familiar with this word cobald?

It sounds familiar, yeah. But I think were I to give.

A definition, it would be what does it sound like? Does it sound like any other words?

It sounds like cobalt and ribald.

So a cobalt may be more apparently recognizable for all of our DND nerds out there, but a cobalt is often depicted in popular culture as a small little goblin like gremlin creature that is very mischievous. And they appear like that in folklore, too. Like goblins are essentially like the word goblin is of uncertain etymology, but a lot of people believe that it is linked to the word cobald. So, like cobalt, goblin kind of similar figurations, but whereas goblin doesn't really have a traceable etymology, cobald you can trace to the Latin kobalis, and then to the Greek kobalaus, meaning rogue or Navish or impudent. It is also related to specifically the word cobalt, which is like a mineral, and it kind of comes from cobalt. The mineral kind of gets its name from the creature cobalt. Cobalt, which were like often miners would encounter them in like, mining for silver. And they would find this other weird material, which is cobalt, this blue, hazy material that is known to give miners, like, hallucinogenic visions. And so there'd be these, like, people wandering around in these mining tunnels, like getting high off of these, like, hallucinogenic fumes and having all these weird things happen and encountering these tiny creatures, which I feel like I don't want to say that the cobalts are just hallucinations. I feel like it's kind of both situations going on. So that is where the mineral cobalt gets its name from, is because people were like, yeah, there's these weird creatures wandering around in the dark doing mischief on people. And so that's where the word cobalt comes from.

Wow, that is amazing. I had no idea. It makes so much sense, though.

Yeah, words are funny like that. Well, thank you so much again for coming on the podcast and yeah, I hope that we get to work together more.

Yeah, thank you so much for having me do this and I definitely look forward to future projects together.

Great. Okay, well, have a good day.

Yeah.

Thanks. Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, please go tell someone about it. Whisper its name in their ear, humm its melodies to the winds of history so that it too can haunt Nazis. Also, you can rate and review and like and subscribe or whatever the algorithm is calling for. Feed it like a hungry god, but.

Really, just tell people about it.

It's the main way that people hear about the show and honestly, one of the best ways to support it. However, if you want to support us in other sillier ways that don't involve feeding a nameless and mysterious entity, consider supporting the show financially by subscribing to our patreon. If you subscribe to our patreon at $10 a month, we will mail to you a zine version of the pieces that you hear here every month, anywhere in the world. You can also get access to an archive of old Strangers content, as well as discounts on things like t shirts and books we publish. Find [email protected] strangersentatangledwilderness. If you would like a full PDF version of Littleac, you can contact Aurora at [email protected]. That's [email protected]. Also, please let her know if you know of any grants or by ways or to funding she can access to conduct a larger study of the history and music of vilna. We have a new book out now, escape from Incsel Island by Margaret Kiljoy, a short action adventure novel about escaping an island full of incels.

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Books in your Distro or bookstore if you're in the US, contact AK Press or distributor. But if you're outside the US, get in touch with us at strangers. [email protected] a dear friend of the Strangers Collective also has a book out now, nourishing Resistance Stories of Food, Protest and Mutual Aid, edited by Reynold rennerie, along with a forward by Cindy Milstein. Ren is an incredible writer, editor and archivist. We just put out a new podcast called the Anarcho Geek Power Hour. It's a blast. It'll feature several different strangers, collective members and guests. The first episode has Margaret and I O talking about Andor, and we'll likely.

Do an in depth interview with Margaret.

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Thank you.

Hans allie paparuna millika boise mutual aid theo hunter shawn SJ paige mickey, nicole, david, dana, chelsea, kat, j starrow, jennifer eleanor kirk, sam chris, MacKayA and haas the dog. Thanks so much for your support. It means so much to us and has allowed us to get so much done as a collective. And lastly, a lot of these features on the podcast come from listeners like you. So if you feel like a stranger that would like to find their story a home in this tangled wilderness, consider submitting it. We long for its melody. Next month, we have a lovely science fiction short story by G J morvedideli called The Case of Arigbine.

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Music you.