Judeo-Spanish music and songs
The tradition of Jewish liturgical chant dates back to Biblical era. But the profane Jewish singing acquired its breadth and diversity in the Diaspora, due to the cultural and musical influences of the various cultures with whom the Jewish communities were -willingly or by force- in contact. Poetry alike, Sephardic music remained the privileged witness of the strange adventure of the Jews from the Iberian Peninsula who successively underwent tolerance, success, persecution and deportation. In spite of dispersion and acculturation, Jews have preserved their language and specific cultural values
Sephardic is a Hebrew word meaning ‘Spain’. Sfaradim names the descendants of the Jews from the Iberian Peninsula. At the time of Islamic rule over Spain (from 8th to mid 13th century), a large Jewish community lived there. Apart from short times of persecution and forced conversions, Jews were tolerated as economically useful and they participated -together with the Muslims and Christians- to a real scientific and cultural symbiosis, from which emanated great names like Maimonides, Averroes or Alfonso the Wise. The 12th century can be considered as a "golden age", as Jewish communities only depended of the king and had a large administrative and judicial autonomy. Each center of the Spanish Judaism, particularly in Andalusia (Cordoba, Granada, Malaga, Sevilla, Toledo, etc.) had his own poetic style and its musical tradition specific.
In the mid-14th century, the plague and the political disorders overcame this tolerance. The reconquest of Spain by the Catholics and the obligation for Jews to convert ended seven centuries of harmonious coexistence of the three religions. The Inquisition, established in the mid-15th century, accused many ‘conversos’ (converts, contemptuously nicknamed ‘Marranos’, pigs) of practicing secretly their old religion. On March 30, 1492, less than three months after the surrender of the Moors, the Catholic monarchs Ferdinando and Isabella promulgated an edict, expelling the Jews out of the kingdom within four months, abandoning their properties. Most of them took refuge in the Ottoman Empire (Salonica, Smyrna, Rhodes, Constantinople, Adrianople, Bosnia, Serbia, Romania and Macedonia), but also in North Africa (Tetouan, Tangiers), in southern Italy, France (Marseilles, Bordeaux) and in northern Europe (Amsterdam). The expelled took with them their cultural heritage, their language, their songs and stories, a major source of spiritual enrichment, which were transmitted, particularly by women, from generation to generation.
For five centuries they preserved their language, the Judeo-Spanish (also called, spaniol, spanioliko, djidio, djudesmo or khaketia in Morocco, yahudice in Turkey or ladino), a medieval Spanish enriched with Hebrew words (like the Yiddish but in a lesser extent), and subsequently many words borrowed from the languages of the cultures of residence (Turkish, Greek, Arabic, French).
The Judeo-Spanish songs have undergone a similar destiny and countless Jewish writings were destroyed by order of the Church, so it is impossible to know exactly what the Judeo-Spanish music was in the 14th century. If some texts and lyrics date back to the Middle Ages and Renaissance (and are used today for research on medieval Spanish literature!), most of them are newer and have even been borrowed from the cultures of the host countries or, through travelers, from modern Spain. The melodies of these songs adopted the musical patterns of hosting cultures, in spite of to widespread idea, relating them straight to medieval Spain! Thus, the musical repertoire of the Jewish communities of the East (former Ottoman Empire, Balkans and Eastern Mediterranean See) diverged significantly from that of the Jews of Morocco. What we file today under ‘Judeo-Spanish songs’ is mainly the result of a ‘musical syncretism’ or a ‘creative incorporation’ of ancient and modern Judeo-Spanish texts with a mainly eastern music. This geographical and cultural complexity distinguishes musically the Sephardic Jews of the Ashkenazi, more homogeneous in its often hostile East European environment and which were not spread widely until the late 19th century.
Formerly, women used to sing ballads and romances privately, a cappella or accompanied by simple percussion. The songs were adapted to various circumstances of life: birth, rocking, bar-mitzvah, shared or disappointed love, wedding, family matters, separation, death... or even related to the calendar: Shabbat songs, coplas of Purim, Tisha be 'av lamentations, etc. Expressing a wide range of feelings and emotions -ranging from the noblest and the most heroic to the most tragic and vulgar-, their concise and -at first sight- simple style contains lots of allusions and undertone, whose understanding requires listener’s active participation. Their lyrics form a mosaic with eclectic topics where sacred and profane coexist cheerfully: para-liturgical piyutim, religious themes, lyrical poems, love songs, topical (e.g. fire in Salonica in 1917), parodies, satires and libertine songs. This constantly enriched directory enabled and still allows Sephardic Jews to affirm their culture: Jewish and Spanish.
In the 20th century, the advent of recordings and the concept of ‘concert’ have led to new interpretations, often by male and accompanied by modern instruments, sometimes with no direct link with the tradition. The oral transmission of traditional Judeo-Spanish songs was brutally interrupted by the destruction of important Sephardic communities during the Holocaust, but, like Yiddish songs and klezmer music, this legacy raises since the 1970s a renewed interest all around the world.
Michel Borzykowski
last update: 17 juin 2009