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Arthur Kevess
1916–1973
American translator of Yiddish and German songs whose 1950s English for “Dona Dona,” finished with , is the version the folk revival sang.
(1916–1973) was a New York lyricist and translator, mainly of Yiddish and German songs, and an ASCAP writer. In July 1953 Sing Out! printed his English of “Dana, Dana, Dana,” still more populist than the later standard. In 1956 he and Teddi Schwartz revised it for their Hargail pamphlet Tumbalalaika — seventeen Jewish songs “for singing in English” — and that is the translation , , and most later English singers used. He also English’d the German protest song “Die Gedanken sind frei.”
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