Notes from Limmud 2005: Judaeo-Spanish Poetry and Song
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lethargic_manNotes from Limmud 2005
Judaeo-Spanish Poetry and Song
Sharonah Fredrick
After the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and the persecution of those that remained secretly Jewish by the Inquisition, a type of music called the Romancero survived in Latin America, but died in Spain because by the eighteenth century there were no longer any Crypto-Jews in Spain. (A few survived into the twenty-first century in Portugal [some of whom I was privileged to meet on my Berlin trip, now rejoining the Jewish fold under Masorti Olami].)
Many of the Sephardim went to South America, which was then under Spanish control. The Inquisition had seats in Lima, Peru, Mexico City and Santo Domingo (on the island of Hispaniola). (They also did in Brazil, but, being a Portuguese colony, that's outside of the scope of this talk.) However, Latin America is big, and the distances were too big to be effectively policed. The Inquisition did send spies and malsinar out, but it could not control these vast areas.
As a result, Crypto-Jewish communities started springing up all through Argentina, particularly along the border with Chile - in the moutains. The same happened in the Peruvian Andes.
Whilst there were autos da fé in Peru, the Inquisition wildly overestimated the number of Jews; at the end of the seventeenth century they estimated over 100k; at its highest the community numbered no more than 50k.
A song which died out in Spain but was preserved in Latin America is the most well-known song in Sephardi culture: Avraham Avinu. It is in Ladino. Ladino is not like Yiddish; it's much purer Spanish, with only 5% of Hebrew and Arabic loan-words. It's the dialect spoken in Andalucia at the time of the Expulsion.
The words shows a profound influence from the Catholic Church; the music a profound influence from Muslim, Moroccan music. (Unlike other Arabic melodies, Moroccan music uses more major scales, and is easier on western ears.)
When King Nimrod went out into the countryside
He looked in the sky in the Jewish neighbourhood [juderia]
He saw a sacred light coming out of the Jewish quarter
Our father Avraham Avinu was about to be born.Chorus:
Avraham Avinu, beloved father
Avraham Avinu, light of Israel
Avraham Avinu, blessed father
Avraham Avinu, light of IsraelThe wife of Terach was walking around pregnant
She wandered from cave to cave
Why is your face so changed?
Because Avraham Avinu is about to be born.Chorus
Cuando el rey Nimrod al campo salia
Mirava en el cielo y en la estreyeria
Vido una luz santa en la juderia
Que havia de nacer Avraham avinuAvraham avinu padre querido
Padre bendicho luz de Israel
Avraham avinu padre querido
Padre bendicho luz de IsraelLa mujer de Terah quedo prenada
E de dia en dia el la preguntaba:
¿De que tenes la cara tan demudada?
Ella ya sabia el bien que tenia.Chorus
(Okay, so the version I googled in Spanish doesn't have the same words as the Los Desterrados one Dr Fredrick translated. I don't speak Spanish; I couldn't take the lyrics down at the speed she read them.)
The Jews had to emphasis a figure in contradistinction to Jesus. When you are a small oppressed community, one of the most effective ways to do that was to underline the parallels between your religion and the dominant religion. You have Jesus, we have Abraham.
The instrumentation includes an oud. The English word "lute" comes from "al-oud"; it's also the origin of the guitar. [Huh, what about the cithara of Graeco-Roman culture? Maybe the oud is the proximate ancestor for the instrument rather than the word? Anyone help me out here?] It has from seven up to twenty-four strings, and a big body. The classic instrument was brought from Morocco into Spain when they invaded in 711. Muslim music remains the basis of Sephardi music.
Why did the Sephardim go to Latin America when there were so many Muslim countries willing to take them in - and did do so. Answer: There was a strong attachment to Spain regardless of all the bad things it did to them. (Of which Sharonah Fredrick herself is a good example!)
The singing in the Los Desterrados version Dr Fredrick played to us of this song is male voices only; this is unusual in Sephardic music. Most of the songs were sung in the home, so were usually, but not enclusively, sung by women.
The style of singing, with an emotional and almost hoarse voice, goes back to old Spain: "unaccompanied Flamenco". Most true Flamenco songs (as opposed to pop-culture Flamenco-derivative) are songs of protest. It also shows the influence of Arabic ululation.
The makam [mode] used does not finish on the octave above the start note; this adds flexibility, because it allows mixing of major and minor scales. [I might post some notes from Yoel Ben-Simhon's session on Moroccan Jewish music at some point.]
There is also choral singing, with palmoteando - rapid clapping - a Flamenco motive, derived from a Gypsy tradition.
The Gypsies were kicked out of Spain at the same time as the Jews and the Muslims. They too were a despised religious minority. Many fled to Argentina, where they influenced the Jews. They were allowed back in Spain after the collapse of the Inquisition in the nineteenth century.
"Open your closed door" was not a beloved song of the religious establishment, who saw the title was a sexual reference.
The tradition of love songs in Spanish Jewish music goes back to at least the twelfth century, when Jewish composers in Spain begin to experiment with secular themes. These were often interpolated into the prayer service, adopted and adapted [i.e. filked?] into the prayer mode. At this time, the rabbinical councils had no control over what went on in these tiny communities, because officially they did not exist.
There was also much less inhibition to discuss romantic and sexual themes on the part of the community. When you're leaving a double life as a Crypto-Jew, your family is manoeuvring so you won't be found out. This could mean all kind of weird changes, such as your wife sometimes having to adopt a man's role. Also, many of the martyrs of the Inquisition were woman. Seeing women burned brought home that women were not protected, and being not protected they were more forthright.
When news of the blood libel, which myth had begun in Norwich, spread to Spain, and aided the first pogrom in Toledo, there was another factor in the background which led to this, which was a love affair that had taken place between a Jewish woman, Rebecca, and a non-Jew, Diego. At that point it was very common for the non-Jew to convert in such situations. When the Inquisition started prosecuting people for judaising, part of the reason for the paranoia was because there were quite a few people who had converted for this reason.
According to Sephardi folk-myth (which may be accurate), Rebecca spurned Diego; he got very angry and wanted to take revenge, and decided to spread, in Toledo, the rumour of what the Jews did in Norwich; and it was this that led to the pogrom.
The Jewish woman in Spanish culture is viewed as very attractive, but also rather vampirical. In the rural Appalachian mountains in North America, much English, Scottish and Irish folklore is maintained from the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. A song was discovered from there, dating from the early seventeenth century in England - as evidenced from its also being found on an old MS in the Bodleian Library - called "Don't go into the Jewess's room", which talked about how she would seduce you and suck your blood. [We hope this song is no longer sung in the rural Appalachians today...]
Such images of the Jewish woman permeated a lot of Jewish [?] folklore at the time. The Inquisition - as very much distinct from the Jesuits, indeed, Antonio da Verra challenged the Vatican and Madrid strongly on the issue of the Inquisition - were trying to staunch any example of sensuality, but this of course pretty much had the reverse effect. By forbidding fornication, it made people interested in sex, and there was a flourishing of love music in both the Jewish and non-Jewish music in Latin America.
Open your closed door
In your balcony there is no light
Love flies towards you
Come with me, my rose, and let us leave from hereI fell in love with your beauty
just as G-d had made you
Your beauty is pure
Come, my love, and let's go from here.Avre tu puerta cerrada,
qu´en tu balcòn luz no hay
el amor a ti te vela,
partemos Rosa, partemos de aqui.Yo demandi por la tu hermozura,
como te la dio el Dio
la hermozura tuya es pura,
la meresco solo yo.
This is very much a song from after the exile from Spain: it was born in the Spanish diaspora; where, Dr Fredrick does not know. Though sung all over Latin America, it was also very popular in Salonica, and was known in Greece, Turkey and Bulgaria.
This has more Spanish influence in the melody line, with the guitar (or in its Greek version the bouzouki) replacing the oud.
The song also involves the violin, which came from Gypsy music.
Ocho candelicas (Eight Little Candles)
Beautiful Chanukkah is here
Eight candles for me.One candle, two candles, three candles
Four candles, five candles,
Six candles, seven candles, eight candles for me.Many parties I will give
With happiness and pleasure.Chorus
Little pies I will eat
With almonds and honey.Chorus
Hanukah linda sta aqui, ocho kandelas para mi,
Hanukah linda sta aqui, ocho kandelas para mi.Una kandelika, dos kandelikas, tres kandelikas,
kuatro kandelikas, sintyu kandelikas,
seysh kandelikas, siete kandelikas, ocho kandelikas para mi.Muchas fiestas vo fazer, con alegrias i plazer.
Muchas fiestas vo fazer, con alegrias i plazer.Chorus
Los pastelikas vo kumer, con almendrikas i la miel
Los pastelikas vo kumer, con almendrikas i la miel
Chorus
The Jews obviously could not celebrate Chanukah overtly. One of the things they did was to use a round ceramic bowl with a covering, with a little slit in the top: you could put a candle inside, but it would not be visible from the outside. This was used as a menorah substitute and has been found across Latin America. Many modern Mexican and Texan Crypto-Jews (Texas having originally been part of New Spain) now reconverting to Judaism (under Masorti) have preserved these, which have been in their families since the seventeenth century, when there was a wave of Crypto-Jews emigrating to Latin America.
Another song also found in Salonica and Latin America: the USAn southwest and Mexico. Evidently there were Jews going back and forth between Latin America and the Ottoman Empire. If you were a declared, open, Jew the Inquisition could not touch you. Spain denied access to all such... but coima, bribery, quite happily got around that.
The Anglo-Jewish community was semi-legalised under Cromwell, but how did it get that status? Antonio de Montesinos, a Portuguese Jew based in Holland travelled around Latin America and did something very risky. Using the legal loophole referred to above, he disembarked at Lima and started proclaiming loudly, "Soy Judeo". He got imprisoned by the Inquisition and deported from Peru to the northern Andes in Ecuador: They expected he was going to die there. But he didn't, and went on to make friends with the local Jawar Indians. He got arrested, thrown out and deported eighteen times before the Inquisition deported him to Portugal, where his family was originally from. This was very dangerous, but by that stage he was so famous they couldn't touch him, and deported him back to the Netherlands, after he had spent a year and a half away.
He then wrote a book claiming to have found one of the ten lost tribes in Ecuador. He knew this was nonsense, but was doing it to irk the Inquisition.
R. Menasse ben Israel (in the Netherlands) read this, knew it was a forgery - we know this from his diaries - but decided to send it to Oliver Cromwell, who believed that when the Jews were scattered to the corners of the Earth [including England, interpreting Angleterre as "corner of the Earth"], the Second Coming of Jesus would happen.
Cromwell now believed that there were Jews in Latin America, semi-legalised the status of Jews in England, and legalised immigration of Jews into England. And the rest, as they say, is history.
бытовая техника Kenwood
Date: 2011-04-26 08:37 am (UTC)