Josh Waletzky

Brooklyn-born Josh Waletzky has been performing, teaching, and composing Yiddish song since childhood. His early musical career in the 1960s and 1970s at Camp Boiberik, Workers Circle shules, the Yugntruf Ensemble, the YIVO Yiddish Summer Program, and Kapelye prepared him for (the past) thirty years of Yiddish songwriting. He is the only representative of his generation represented in the canonic Mlotek Yiddish songbooks. In view of the more than 40 original songs he has written over the past three decades, ethnomusicologist Mark Slobin has called him “the poet-laureate of new Yiddish song.” Most importantly, Josh has had the honor of collaborating with many of the leading Yiddish musicians of our day and mentoring some of the talented singer-songwriters on our current scene.