Di Rusishe Progresiv Muzikal Yunyon no. 1 fun Amerike: the first klezmer union in America

Judaism, Wntr, 1998 by James Loeffler

What are we to make of this chain of events, especially given that we hear so little from later immigrant klezmorim about the role of the union in their lives? Is Gordin's portrayal an accurate critique or a melodramatic mischaracterization of the union as it existed then? By the end of World War I, New York's Jewish musicians already were integrating themselves into the mainstream union locals of the American Federation of Musicians, but the drama of this collective move obscures the preceding stage of their own labor history.(3)

There is much speculation as to the activities and experiences of klezmorim before World War I. But short of saying that klezmorim found work in the Yiddish theater and at weddings, restaurants, and cafes on the Lower East Side, we really know little else about the pre-recording, pre-World War I community of klezmorim in New York. To some extent this chronological gap stems from a lack of information - sources are rare and the wave of klezmer oral history began too late to catch survivors from this period. But it is also characteristic of a certain trend in Jewish-American history, that of canonizing certain cultural epochs and institutions at the expense of others. Few remember that before the Jewish Daily Forward (1897) there was a good twenty years of Yiddish journalism in America or that before Ellis Island there was the even more notorious immigrant processing center known as Castle Garden. So too is it with the first generation of American klezmorim. The interwar recording age of American klezmer music is well documented and promoted as the classical period, the Golden Age.(4) What follows is a brief attempt to rescue another early Jewish-American institution from historical oblivion - di rusishe progresiv muzikal yunyon no. 1 fun amerike - the first Jewish musicians' union in the United States and the foundation of the interwar Golden Age of New York klezmer music.

Destined to become the single most important force in the lives of Jewish immigrants within the next decade, during the 1880s the Jewish labor movement was still struggling to gain a foothold in the community. Organizations such as the Russian Progressive Union, the Central Labor Union, the Knights of Labor, the Socialist Labor Party, and even the Libertarian Socialists (anarchists) each made several unsuccessful attempts to organize Jewish unions throughout the early and mid-1880s. The birth of a Jewish musicians' union owed everything to the establishment of what was to be for decades the foremost institution in New York Jewish politics: the fareynikte idishe geverkshaftn, or United Hebrew Trades (hereafter UHT). Conceived and initiated in October 1888 as a federation of Jewish unions, the UHT quickly found that it would have to take the lead in creating unions itself or else remain "a mere shell."(5) So in early 1889 the UHT launched an aggressive organizing campaign.(6) Early successes included the Yiddish theater actors, cloakmakers, man's-tailors, and soda-water makers. Amidst this flurry of labor activism, in March 1889, there appeared "a yidishe muziker yunyon."(7) A few months later, the UHT delegate to the Second Socialist International Congress in Paris reported that the "rusishe muzikalishe yunyon" counted as one of his federation's ten member unions.(8)

The next solid evidence regarding this Jewish musicians' union comes from the Yiddish press for the following year. The Arbayter Tsaytung was a newspaper closely linked to the UHT and therefore from its first issue on March 7, 1890, it began to publish union notices and brief minutes from the UHT member unions. Thus we have an advertisement from that first issue for the rusishe progresiv muzikal yunyon no. 1 fun amerike [Russian Progressive Musical Union No. 1 of America, hereafter RPMU], which "represented in the UHT recommend themselves for weddings, balls, and parades and suggest that all unions and worker organizations, lodges and associations for moderate prices should make arrangements in their local, 412 Grand Street, New York."(9)

Reading through the Arbayter Tsaytung issues for the next few years gives one a strong sense of both the general role and specific details of the RPMU, making it an invaluable window into this union of klezmer musicians. The origin of the name RPMU is unclear. While most unions in the UHT had quite mundane names such as the Cloakmakers' Union or the Knee-Pants Makers' Union, the musicians chose a very distinct and clearly contemporary title. One possibility is that they proposed something more politicized to clarify their otherwise ambiguous presence as professionals among trade and factory workers. The word "Progressive" would also have located the union squarely in the mainstream of the social consciousness of the time. The adjective "Russian" could have multiple connotations, suggesting an affinity with Europe and socialist politics, hearkening back to the earlier Russian Progressive Union and Russian Labor Lyceum, or merely keeping court with the standard euphemism for Eastern European Jews in the United States.(10) That said, the names used to describe the union appear in many variations during the first few years, making it difficult to draw larger conclusions.