Jakub KAGAN (b. 1896 in Nowogrodek near Wilno; d. in 1942, murdered by nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto). He was one of most outstanding Polish-Jewish composers in 1920/30s. Kagan was educated in Warsaw Music Institute before 1918, and he was admitted to the newly established Association of Polish Composers and Stage Authors in Warsaw. Two years later he took part, as a Polish soldier, in the defense of Warsaw during Polish-Bolshevik war of 1920.
After the War he established his own „Kagan's Jazz Band", in 1922 he started performing in a cabaret „Mirage" and in operetta theatre „Nowości" (Novelties) in Warsaw. In years 1926-27 his band established contract with „Bristol" -- the most elegant hotel of Warsaw. Kagan also started composing and his tango „Złota pantera" (The Golden Panther) -- which was played for the first time in the mountain spa of Żegiestów in Poland in 1929 -- immediately became a gross hit, especially when Andrzej Włast - director of the revue theatre „Morskie Oko" in Warsaw - included Kagan's hit into his grand revue „1000 pięknych dziewcząt" (Thousand Of Pretty Girls) in the fall season of 1929. Soon „Złota pantera" was performed as a fashionable tango, also in Germany, Austria and Hungary. The reason for this success was, no doubt, the unusual - and very typical for Kagan- minor key melodic line, interestingly asymmetric and apparently undisciplined in a tango-rhythm, adding to the tune a spice of mystery and suspence. The later Kagan's compositions confirmed his outstanding position among Polist cabaret authors of the time- tango „Jesienna piosenka" (Autumn Song) which was turned into a hit by the Warsaw diseuse, Hanka Ordonówna, or another tango „Tyś mych uczuć niewarta" (You're Not Worth My Feelings). The Trirties were for Kagan the decade of his gross successes and a high living standard.
He had a large and modern flat in Aleje Ujazdowskie - the „Champs Elysees of Warsaw" - his orchestra performed in best hotels and night-clubs of Poland („Adria", „Carlton" or „Casanova" in Warsaw, „Feniks" in Cracow, „Patria" in the mountain spa Krynica or „Ritz" in Bialystok). Kagan was also the director of the house orchestra „Cristall-Electro" record factory, as well as he directed musical productions in the theatre-cinema „Colosseum" in Warsaw.
All this ended in September 1939. Kagan had to move from the „Champs Elysees of Warsaw" into the nazi ghetto. He tried to survive, playing piano in the restaurant „Splendid", he also took part as a pianist in several productions of the Ghetto music theatre „Melody Palace". As most of the Warsaw Jewish life, he perished from hands of the nazis in 1942.
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This clip contains drawings of Bruno SCHULZ -- a Polish writer (1892-1942) strongly identifying his work with his Jewish identity. His two novels -- „The Cinammon Shops" (published in POlish in 1934; in English-speaking countries, it is most often referred to as „The Street of Crocodiles", a title derived from one of the chapters) and three years later „The Hourglass Sanatorium", made him one of great Polish-language prose stylists of the 20th century. Translated into all possible languages in the world, he also was an awesome drawer, who illustrated himself his own works (all his life he worked in gymnasium, as a teacher of drawing). Having lived all his life in a provicial town od Drohobycz (being until 1945 a part of Poland, then -- USSR, now in Ukraine) he never abandoned it, even in the time of nazi occupation of Poland, after September 1939. Completely impractical in his everyday life and unable to make any kind of a self-protecting arrangement about himself, he failed to join the rescue plan, made for him by his literary friends in Warsaw. He, instead, stayed in Drohobycz, to teach drawing the children of one of higher-rank nazi officers -- the one, who was, as it seemed, willing to find a way to save the life of his children beloved teacher. Bruno Schulz was shot in the street by a German soldier, just on the first day of the liquidation of the Drohobycz ghetto.
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This song's text was written by Andrzej Włast -- the most prolific pre-war lyricist in Warsaw (and also director of revue theatre „Morskie Oko") -- and it is an example of the most sado-masochistic kind of a pseudo-poetry in Warsaw in turn of 1920/30s! I put it together with drawings of Bruno Schulz only becouse on the level of the sexual passion these two worlds meet: the highest literatue of Bruno Schulz's -- and the cabaret world of „low down" fears and desires, spoken out by that text. The motifs of the wipping women or the falling-to-their-feet man, or the ones who creep and who beg for mercy - are beloved motifs of cabaret songs in 1920s. Yet, the enormous talent of artists like Bruno Schulz is able to turn the trivial into the art, as we can see here.
Tags: Bruno Schulz stare piosenki polskie żydowskie tango Warszawa przedwojenna Polska sado masochism żydowska piosenka
