Mucho Lujo: Jevl Katz and the Intricacies of Ethnic Popular Performance in Buenos Aires, 1930–40

This paper follows Jevl Katz’s short but prolific career as a popular artists and ethnic performer.  In 1930, Katz left his home in Lithuania to try his luck in Buenos Aires.  A metalworker by trade and amateur musician, Katz arrived penniless and relied on the support of his brother.  Unable to find work due to the economic slump of 1930, he began to perform as a street musician, despite having only a rudimentary command of Spanish.  When he died in 1940, after barely ten years on Argentine soil, thousands of fans packed the streets of downtown Buenos Aires to accompany his funeral procession to the Jewish cemetery.  The four local daily Yiddish newspapers featured the artist’s demise and the massive public response on their front pages.  The mainstream Argentine periodicals also covered the event, dubbing him “The Jewish Gardel” in reference to the most famous icon of Argentine tango.

This paper delves into Katz’s production and style, from his choice of lyric topics to his adoption of linguistic hybridity, in order to highlight how his performance related to the Jewish immigrant experience in urban Argentina.  Katz did not limit his repertoire to the nostalgic songs of the “Old World.”  Instead, he celebrated and satirized the experiences of his fellow Jewish immigrants in Argentina with his choice of musical genre, the themes and topics of his lyrics, and the very language in which he wrote his songs.  A parodist, Katz adapted popular tangos, foxtrots, and boleros played on the radio to new lyrics about immigrant life in Argentina.  To better convey these experiences, he freely combined Yiddish and Spanish, particularly the dynamic slang-infused dialect of the port city of Buenos Aires.