Sofia Magid

Dan Carkner: /* Academic career */

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'''Sofia Magid''' ( ''Sofiya Davidovna Magid-Ékmekchi'', c. 1893-1954) was a [[Soviet Union|Soviet]] Jewish [[Ethnography|Ethnographer]] and [[Folklore studies|Folklorist]] who collected and analyzed [[Yiddish language]] folk music during the 1920s and 1930s. Although she was largely unknown abroad during her lifetime, in recent years she has been seen alongside [[Moshe Beregovski]] and other Soviet Jewish ethnographers as an important scholar and collector of Jewish music.

==Biography==
===Early life===
Sofia Magid was born on September 22, 1892<ref name="Grözinger 2008">Liquid error: wrong number of arguments (given 1, expected 2)</ref> or possibly on January 3, 1893<ref name="Frenkel 2015" /> to a Jewish family in [[Saint Petersburg]], [[Russian Empire]]. Her mother was a dentist and her father, David Gilelevich Magid, was a writer and librarian.<ref name="Grözinger 2008" /> In 1909, Sofia graduated from secondary school in Saint Petersburg and entered the [[Saint Petersburg Conservatory]] in 1912 to study piano.<ref name="Grözinger 2008" /> She graduated in 1917 and started to work as a music teacher.<ref name="Grözinger 2008" />

===Academic career===
In 1922 Magid pursued further studies in musicology and started to work as an assistant in folklore research.<ref name="Grözinger 2008" /> In 1928 she was in a small working group, along with [[Susman Kiselgof]] and other veterans of the pre-Soviet [[Society for Jewish Folk Music]], to establish a more organized body to collect and study Jewish folklore.<ref name="Frenkel 2015" /> She made her first folklore collecting expedition to the [[Volhynia]] region in 1928, and revisited the region again in 1930 and 1931.<ref name="Grözinger 2008" /> After 1931 she worked as a sound archive assistant in the Folklore department of the [[Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union]].<ref name="Grözinger 2008" /> That same year, she prepared a song anthology for publication titled "Folksongs and Instrumental Music of the Ukrainian Jews," but it was never published.<ref name="Grözinger 2008" />

After 1932 she stopped working as a music teacher and dedicated herself completely to folkloric field work, not only of Jewish music, but also of the music of [[Azerbaijan]], [[Kurdistan]], [[Armenia]], and other areas.<ref name="Grözinger 2008" /> She was collecting Jewish folk music at the same time as her more well-known counterpart [[Moshe Beregovski]], but apparently the two never met.<ref name="Feldman 129">Liquid error: wrong number of arguments (given 1, expected 2)</ref> After gaining a high profile for her work, she was given a permanent position in 1934 as a senior research assistant in the Folklore section of the [[Institute of Anthropology and Ethnography]].<ref name="Grözinger 2008" /> That year she prepared another song anthology for publication, consisting of Russian Revolutionary songs from 1890-1905, but it too was never published.<ref name="Grözinger 2008" />

In the winter of 1936 she started to prepare to write her dissertation about [[Ballads]] in Jewish folklore, and she visited [[Belarus]] and [[Ukraine]] to do research.<ref name="Grözinger 2008" /> She finished writing it in 1938 and successfully defended it in 1939.<ref name="Grözinger 2008" />

In 1941 she managed to publish an anthology of songs of [[Belarusian Jew|Belarusian Jews]].<ref name="Grözinger 2008" /> After the [[Nazi invasion of Russia]], she was dismissed from her academic position due to budget cuts, and spent time aiding in the defense of [[Leningrad]] before being evacuated to [[Kazakhstan]] in 1943.<ref name="Grözinger 2008" /> While there, she did research on [[Kazakh music]].<ref name="Grözinger 2008" />

In 1944, she was able to return to Leningrad, and resumed her academic position in 1946.<ref name="Grözinger 2008" /> By May 1948 she was promoted to main research assistant in the area of Russian Folklore.<ref name="Grözinger 2008" />

After 1950 she left her academic post and spent her last years doing research for the [[Union of Soviet Composers]] in Leningrad.<ref name="Frenkel 2015" /> There, she did research into the use of Russian folk materials in composition and into field research which had been done in [[Leningrad Oblast]] in 1951-2.<ref name="Frenkel 2015" />

Magid died in 1954. She was buried in the Preobrazhénskoye Jewish cemetary in Saint Petersburg.<ref name="Frenkel 2015">Liquid error: wrong number of arguments (given 1, expected 2)</ref>

==Legacy==
Many of the materials collected by Magid are now preserved in the [[Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine]], although some are in the collections of the [[Pushkin House]] in Saint Petersburg.<ref name="Feldman 24">Liquid error: wrong number of arguments (given 1, expected 2)</ref>

Although she was little known outside of the Soviet Union during her lifetime, in recent years Magid has increasingly received attention from scholars of Jewish music.<ref name="Frenkel 2015" /> In particular, her research was published as part of a German book in 2008, titled .<ref>Liquid error: wrong number of arguments (given 1, expected 2)</ref> In 2019 [[klezmer]] musician [[Joel Rubin]] and the group [[Veretski Pass]] released an album interpreting work Magid collected, called ''The Magid Chronicles''.<ref></ref>

==References==



[[Category:1892 births]]
[[Category:1954 deaths]]
[[Category:Yiddish-language folklore]]
[[Category:Soviet Jews]]
[[Category:People from Saint Petersburg]]
[[Category:Ethnomusicologists]]
[[Category:Soviet music educators]]
[[Category:Russian Empire music educators]]
[[Category:Russian women academics]]
[[Category:Saint Petersburg Conservatory alumni]]

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