He was born in 1894 as Shloyme Sekunda in Aleksandria city, Kherson Governorate, Russian Empire to the family of Abraham Secunda and Anna Nedobeika. In 1897 the family moved to the BlackSea portcity ofMykolaiv, where they opened an iron bed factory. At age 12 Shloyme played Abraham/Avrom in Abraham Goldfaden's Akeydes Yitskhok and Markus in The Kishef-Makherin. In 1907, like numerous other Jews of the Russian Empire, he emigrated to United States with his family after a series of pogroms that rocked the region in 1905. In January 1908 the family emigrated to New York as steerage passengers on board the SS Carmania and were inspected and briefly detained on Ellis Island. In New York City, young Sholom became a noted child khazn. When his voice changed he studied music and taught piano, then worked in comedy theater in the chorus until his song "Amerike" was accepted by Jennie Goldstein, who sang it with great success in Kornblum's Unzere kinder . In 1913, after studying at the Institute for Musical Arts in New York City, he worked at the Odeon Theater as chorist and composer; 1914 saw the premier of "Yoysher, music by Sholom Secunda and Solmon Shmulevitsh." He began working in "Lyric theater" as choir director, then as director and orchestrator of the old "historic" operetta repertoire; he studied orchestration for a year under Ernest Bloch. In 1918, he became a naturalized US citizen. In 1919-1920 he earned his first solo composer's credits with S. H. Kon's The Rabbi's Daughter and Free Slaves. He worked in Philadelphia's Metropolitan Opera House with director Boris Thomashevsky; in 1921-22 he was director and composer at Clara Young's Liberty Theater. He composed for Di Yidishe Shikse by Anshl Shor and A nakht fun libe by Israel Rosenberg. An exhaustive list of his many works can be found in the Leksikon fun Yidishn Teater. In 1932 he wrote the melody for the popular song "Bay mir bistu sheyn" on the lyrics of Jacob Jacobs for the musical performed at the Parkway Theatre in Brooklyn, which later became a major hit for the Andrews Sisters. Together with Aaron Zeitlin he wrote the famous Yiddish song "Dos kelbl " which was covered by many musicians, including Donovan and Joan Baez. Along with Abraham Ellstein, Joseph Rumshinsky, and Alexander Olshanetsky, he was one of the "big four" composers of his era in New York City's Second AvenueNational Theater scene in the Yiddish Theater District. Secunda also worked at another theater founded by Maurice Schwartz, Yiddishe Art Theater, earning $75/week for conducting an orchestra. In 1938 he gave an interview to the Courier-Post about the hit song, Bei Mir Bistu Shein.
