Maria Krupoves

Maria Krupoves, an artist and folklorist, is internationally acclaimed singer and interpreter of the folksongs of Central and Eastern Europe, especially those of her native Vilnius. She has traveled to find such songs, which are in Yiddish, Polish, Lithuanian, Belarusian, Gypsy (Roma), Karaim, Tatar, and other languages. M. Krupoves sings in all of these, and can speak seven of them.

She has performed in Lithuania, Poland, Germany, France, Israel, Japan, Canada, and the United States, and has collaborated with the BBC, the WDR (West Deutsche Rundfunk), Liberty, WOR (New York), and Lithuanian and Polish radio and TV.

Dr. Krupoves is also a scholar. She wrote a dissertation on Polish folksongs of Lithuania in the context of Lithuanian and Belorussian folklore (Warsaw, 1999) and published The Anthology of Polish Folk Songs in Lithuania (Warsaw, 2000). Since 2000 she has collected Yiddish folk songs in Lithuania and Belarus. She teaches the history of Jewish music and the history and folklore of the stateless cultures of Lithuania (Yiddish, Karaim, Tatar, Roma, and Russian Old Believers) at the Vilnius Yiddish Institute.

Her repertory of Yiddish songs includes some she recorded from Holocaust survivors. She speaks fluently Yiddish and has published articles in Yiddish in the New York Forverts and in YIVO Yedies (YIVO News).

She has published five albums with a multicultural repertory, among them Calling from East in collaboration with Polish Radio (Warsaw, 1994); Matulu. Polish Folk Songs Songs (Warsaw, 1995); Songs of the Vilna Ghetto (Vilnius, 2001); Without a Country. Songs of Stateless Peoples in collaboration with a Klezmer duo from New York City (Vilnius, 2005); and Two Faiths One Voice in collaboration with Gerard Edery, Sephardic singer born in Marocco and residing in NYC (Vilnius-New York, 2008).