EMIL SEKULETS

EMIL SEKULETS (b. 1916)

            He was born in Botoșani, Moldavia, to a father, a furrier who loved to sing.  Emil studied music with musicians.  From 1932 he collected folksongs and in 1948 published a lithographed notebook entitled Lider un folkslider (Songs and folksongs).  He wrote music for poems in Yiddish and Romanian.  In 1949 he published folklore collections in the journal Kultur vegvayzer (Culture guide) in Bucharest, and in 1959 a volume of his appeared entitled Yidish folks-lider (Jewish folksongs), collected, edited, and accompanied with a detailed musical preface.  The book included 145 songs with variants, folkloric and folkloristic (Bucharest: Kompozitorn-farband, R. P. R. [Romanian People’s Republic]), 235 pp.  His “Varshever hore” (Warsaw hora) was awarded second prize at the Warsaw youth festival in 1955.  From 1965 he was living in Israel and was preparing a further volume of Hassidic songs.

Sources: Ikuf-almanakh (IKUF [Jewish Cultural Association] almanac) (New York, 1961), p. 171; Folks-shtime (Warsaw) (September 14, 1961).

Yankev Kahan