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MBS with the sanctum sanctorum of hazzanuz and the Jewish Caruso

4th September 2020 – Shabbat is almost here

And Warsaw and its History of hazzanut at the Great Synagogue will guide us to a vanished time, through the voice of Gershon Yitzchok Sirota

Hello! How are you? Yes, I am a bit delayed today!!! But this is still before Shabbat! I have had very busy days and here I am again.

In this occasion, we follow the thread of Thomas La-Rue, the black cantor’s story, who performed in Warsaw at a time where the Great Synagogue at Tłomackie Street was the landmark of hazzanut. La-Rue didn’t perform there, but many other cantors did, like our protagonist of today, Gershon Sirota, whose life is connected, for better and for worse, with the city.

I won’t hide that I have a special love for Poland, that country in which, according to my dear Janusz Prusinowski, there is still the feeling of something that is lacking: it is the presence of Jews. He also considers that “Polish and Jewish cultures have quite much in common, so I can understand better Polish culture thank to Jewish music/culture knowledge.” Read more about these reflexions by Janusz, here.

I invite you to listen to a recording that takes us back in time to the Wielka Synagoga w Warszawie, with the voice of the hazzan who was its Obercantor from 1907 until 1926.

As usual, you have the video at the bottom. And if you like this, as usual, please: share it with your friends! Thank you in advance.
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The Great Synagogue in Warsaw

There isn’t any synagogue now in Tłomackie Street. According to Sztetl.org.pl “On 16 May 1943, explosives were set up around the site and the synagogue was blown up personally by General Stroop to mark the end of his mission to exterminate all Warsaw Jews”.

Nevertheless, f*** you, Stroop: the synagogue dissapeared but the headquarters of the Main Judaic Library and of the Institute for Judaic Studies, that are here in the picture on the left, are now the Jewish Historical Institute and the Jews were not erased from Polish land. This picture is from its website:

This is how it looks like today in Google Maps:
The cornerstone of the Great Synagogue was laid in a ceremony held on 14 May 1876. The architect was Leandro Marconi, who also built the Synagogue Nożyków, the only one that survived the World War II (more info, at the website of Jewish.org.pl). The grand opening and consecration of the synagogue took place on the day of Rosh Hashanah of the year 5639 (on 26 September 1878). Find much more information about the building and its history and the use by the community in Sztetl, a website by POLIN Museum. 

Let’s visit the Great Synagogue

Arik Boas Animation made a few years ago this animation you have below, for The Museum of the Jewish People (Beit Hatfutsot).

Pay attention to the face of the chazzan! Doesn’t he look like Gershon Yitzchok Sirota? In fact he does, but note that the singer in this animation is accredited to be another superb cantor, also born in Ukraine, but about whom I haven’t found references of his presence in Warsaw at the Great Synagogue: Yossele Rosenblatt, who will be our star in a future MBS –>

Anyway, immerse yourself in the Great Synagogue! 

The great chazzan at the most prestigious position in the cantorial world

Gershon Sirota became the Obercantor in the Great Synagogue in 1907. The World War II brought the end of the Synagogue and also of Sirota.

According to Rabbi Geoffrey Shisler, “Not without good reason was Gershon Sirota spoken of as the ‘Jewish Caruso.’ Even with the poor quality recordings that we have of him today, it’s quite clear that he had a most extraordinary voice and since he was a contemporary of Caruso (1873 – 1938), the comparison was bound to be made. An apocryphal story has it that Caruso would come to hear Sirota sing or conduct a service whenever they were in the same town at the same time.”

Gershon was born in Podolia in 1874. His father was a cantor in the local synagogue and, already as a child, Gershon helped his father in the services. The family moved to Odessa, where he would be cantor in Shalashner Shul. Later he gave service at the Shtat Synagogue of Vilna. His performances granted him more and more popularity and was called to make special concerts in many cities around, first in Russia and Poland, and later much further. He was the first cantor to record his voice on phonograph records and he became world famous thanks to this. 

Between 1912 and 1927 he toured in many ocassions at the USA. It made him lose his position in the Great Synagogue, because he was absent too much time, specially in the High Holy Days. No problem. He was already a very demanded star.

He toured at the USA for his last time in 1938. It is sad that he didn’t decide to stay there. He had to return to Warsaw because his wife was very ill. The start of the war found him there. The family was imprisoned in the Guetto, where he would conduct the High Holy Day services in 1941.

In the first months of 1943, a strong resistence arised in the Guetto of Warsaw and an uprising started on April 19. The bombing of our Synagogue, that was out of the Guetto, was the symbol of the end of that uprising. Sirota was murdered with his family in the last day of Pessah, during the destruction of the Guetto.

The sources for this brief bio have been: Jewish Music Research Center, Music and the Holocaust.

The voice of the “Jewish Caruso”

I have chosen his rendition of Avinu Maikenu. Check also the version of İsak Maçoro in this previous edition of Music Before Shabbat.
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Click the picture to listen to the recording:

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I hope you’ll like it and, if so, feel free to share it and invite your friends to join us.
It is as symple as sending … this link to sign up

Shabbat Shalom.

Araceli Tzigane | Mapamundi Música

And we share with you one hour of music for joy in this playlist.
To know more about our artists, click here.

May you always find the light in your path.

These is our artistic offer for live show:
Gulaza – Janusz Prusinowski Kompania Jewish Memory

Vigüela at the Jeonju International Sori Festival, South Korea

The pandemic didn’t allow us to travel to Jeonju, but anyway, Vigüela will have the joy of participating in the Gala of the Jeonju International Sori Festival.

I was there the last year with Janusz Prusinowski Kompania and Manu Sabate and it was an amazing experience.

In this occasion we will count on Toni Quintana, from Jennyrecords, who has been Vigüela’s sound engineer for the last albums, and Jaime Massieu, in charge of the video, with whom we have also collaborated before.

This video below is just a little advance to greet our future public from Jeonju, recorded and subtitled by me (Araceli Tzigane):

MBS with the black cantor Thomas La-Rue, through Henry Sapoznik

21th August 2020 – Shabbat is almost here

And today we travel with our imagination to the USA of one century ago with Henry Sapoznik to answer this question: How does a non-Jewish African-American boy born at the beginning of the 20th century end up making a living singing liturgical music in Yiddish?

Hello, how are you? I hope well. This week I have had two reasons to celebrate:

  • my birthday, that is on August 26th
  • and to discover the amazing blog by Henry Sapoznik and his series of posts about the black cantors in the 1920s and 1930s at the USA.
I invite you to listen to a recording that tells us so many things! It wouldn’t be available without Henry’s work.
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As usual, you have the video at the bottom. And if you like this, as usual, please: share it with your friends! Thank you in advance.
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Who is Henry Sapoznik

I have the feeling that at the USA, any person interested in Jewish culture knows Henry. Despite the globalization, there is still a big gap between North America and Europe in the field of not mainstream culture, so let me introduce him.

I took this picture from his Facebook profile. It is meaningful: he is a Jew who plays banjo. But he is much more. According with his website, he is a native Yiddish speaker and child of Holocaust survivors, award-winning producer, musicologist and performer, and writer in the fields of traditional and popular Yiddish and American music and culture.

He explained to me that he started his blog as an answer to the situation produced by the pandemic. We are experiencing much suffering because of it but at least some little jewels are being born in this dramatic conditions. He also told me that he has the idea of starting a podcast. I will be checking to update you.

Sapoznik was the founding director of the sound archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York from 1982 to 1995, as well as founder and director of KlezKamp, beginning in 1985 for the next 30 years.

Henry’s parents were both from Rovno, between Lvov and Kiev. It is the region of Volhynia, also known as Volinskaya, Wolin, Wolyn, Wolina, Wolinsk, Volinski, Wolinski, Volenskii, Wolenskj, Wolenskja, Volin and Volyn, according to the JewishGen website. It is a land that has changed from the hands of Poland, Ukraine and Soviets. Nowadays it is part of Ukraine. Apart from the extermination of the Jews of Volhynia, that began in the first days after the outbreak of the war between Germany and the Soviet Union, according to the Jewish Virtual Library, in 1943–44 the region was the scene of ethnic massacres in which some 100,000 Poles died and some 20,000 Ukrainians were killed in revenge. The Polish film of 2016 Wołyń, in which my colaborator Janusz Prusinowski played, shows this situation.

According to JGuideEurope, on 6 November 1941, the 17500 inhabitants of Rovno’s ghetto were executed in a single day and left to rot in a huge, circular mass grave. The Sosonki memorial, on the road to Kiev, around two miles from Rovno, reminds this massacre.

Rovno has a synagogue very near the former (and bigger and newer) synagogue and Google Maps is very nice to show them to us:

You know this Music Before Shabbat uses music for the joy in itself and as the thead to learn more about history and I feel this very close to Henry’s vision. I can’t hide what a big joy it has been for me to meet this man and talk with him at the Facebook.

Toyve Ha’Cohen or the black cantor Thomas La-Rue

This amazing story is widely told by Henry in his blog in this post about Larue, and in this one about the tour he made in 1930. I strongly recommend you to check those links. Here I will just make a brief summary of Henry’s work. This poster is from his website too. 

Thomas was born in 1902, son of a single mother. They lived in Newark (New Yersey) and she faced much racism. She could make friends only in the Jewish women. With the time, she started to become into their religious believings. Her son and her daughter received a traditional Jewish primary school education. It is not clear if she converted. 

How did he start to become a professional singer in Yiddish?

According to Henry’s blog: «One anecdote about LaRue which was repeated so often it has the burnished patina of a creation myth, concerns a Sabbath service he attended as a young boy. During the service, the cantor was taken ill so LaRue quickly put on a prayer shawl and, before the congregation could orient itself, took to the lectern and in his soprano voice began to intone the prayers. The congregation was ready to storm the podium to take him down but he sang with such great feeling that they remained standing and began praying.» True or false, who knows. Thomas was hired by a manager and his career started in 1921 and soon he became usual at the stage in shows of Yiddish theatre. And the recording below is from June 1923.

In 1930 he made a tour in Egypt, Palestine, Israel, Germany and Poland. He was welcome in Warsaw with big scepticism. It was at the time the landmark for cantorial art, specially by the role of the Great Tłomackie synagogue, that will be our focus in a future edition of MBS. This wonderful picture below is from the website of the Jewish Historical Institute.

For that tour, the productor, Edvin Relkin, invented a totally fake story in which his mother died when he was young and his father was a high official in the local Abyssinian government, they were descendents of the Ten Lost Tribes.

Thomas’ last performance documented is in 1953 in Newark. It is not known his date of death nor where is he buried.

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The song encouraging the Polish Jews to keep the hope

From the available recordings by Thomas La-Rue in Henry’s Youtube channel, I have chossen the one that I prefer the least in terms of melody but that has very meaningful lyrics, specially taking into consideration the story of Henry’s parents. The whole lyrics are in this post by Henry and I will just copy a little part. You’ll understand what I mean:
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Don’t give up hope yet, Mr. Jew
One day it will all work out for you
Pharaoh, Haman and Amolek taught a bitter lesson
But those days are through
Czar Nikolai, has met his destiny
And from Poland, you’ll be free

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Click the picture to listen to the recording of Thomas La-Rue:

I hope you’ll like it and, if so, feel free to share it and invite your friends to join us.
It is as symple as sending … this link to sign up

Shabbat Shalom.

Araceli Tzigane | Mapamundi Música

And we share with you one hour of music for joy in this playlist.
To know more about our artists, click here.

May you always find the light in your path.

These is our artistic offer for live show:
Jako el Muzikante – Gulaza – Janusz Prusinowski Kompania Jewish Memory

A life that deserves a movie: Andrzej Bieńkowski & Muzyka Odnaleziona

Have you ever listened to music so captivating, so crazy and so different from anything else that you wondered ‘For God’s sake, what do these people have inside them to make that music?’ Sometimes, I even want to sneak into their minds to understand the source of that beauty…

This is just the start of a report written by Araceli Tzigane and that has been recently published in Culture.pl, the outstanding communicative project by the Instytut Adama Mickiewicza. It includes a brief bio of Andrzej Bieńkowski and his partner Malgorzata, as well as an interview, translated from Polish to English by Ewa Gomółka.

Andrzej’s life is one of those that make a change in the world. Andrzej, a painter and a teacher at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, was widely disdained at the time by his colleagues because of his obsession with rural musicians from around Radom: he would constantly play their music at his house and they were practically the only motif in Andrzej’s paintings over the last few years. He had opted out of a promising career as a painter, even though he was demanded and valued in Switzerland and Italy, so that he did not to have to leave his rural Poland. For years, he recorded without respite those old forsaken musicians from the Radom region, one of the poorest and most isolated in Poland.

Read all the thrilling report here: https://culture.pl/en/article/music-lost-refound-an-interview-with-andrzej-bienkowski You’ll understand how this demanding obsession developed to be one of the most relevant shapers of the current escene of folk music in Poland. 

Małgorzata Bieńkowska & Andrzej Bieńkowski with musicians, photo: Muzyka Odnaleziona archive
Małgorzata Bieńkowska & Andrzej Bieńkowski with musicians, photo: Muzyka Odnaleziona archive

The subtle eroticism of traditional Central Iberian music in this son, by Vigüela

Wage claims, feminism and sublimated eroticism in the Central Iberian musical tradition

Translating lyrics from the traditional village music is a challenge. Nevertheless I think it is worth the effort when it is to share lyrics like these. In the video below you have the piece with the subtitles. And the truth is that the message is quite clear and, at the same time, it is said very elegantly.

In the center of Spain there is a music style that is even more unknown than jota, rarely performed nowadays, because few people know the languaje: it is the son.

About jota, we have something ready with the basics, specifically for non Spanish people, here. Like the jota, son is improvised combining melodies from a body of guiding melodies from the people, that are in the personal baggage of the singer. The singer redress the melody in real time. The same happens with the lyrics. The shape of the son allows the group to sing together, as it includes repetitions, so anybody can join to sing in that part.

And it is a huge body of lyrics, most of them short, than can be combined to produce the messages you want. There is also a massive amount of enchanting melodies with an ancient bewitching sound.

Son is performed mainly with percussion and voices. A light accompaniment with string on drone, with the rabel (rebec), can be included. In the picture above you see some instruments used for the son: frying pan, saucepan, mortar, cañera, zambomba, frame drum, bladder rebec.

If there are plunged strings, they are used like percussion, because son is modal, not tonal. The drone can be provided also by the zambomba, that is tuned. In this piece below, the singers sing in several different tones, all of them are allowed by the armonics of the zambomba. Despite being a percussion instrument, zambomba can be tuned to produce the armonics you want.

Vigüela are preparing their new album, which will include some sones. In the meantime, you can listen to this piece that we recorded last Tuesday. 

Araceli Tzigane, Mapamundi Música, Spain. +34 676302882 

MBS with a suite of zemirot. Aren’t you hungry? ??

21th August 2020 – Shabbat is almost here

And food will have a special attention today, with a zemirot set sang by a non-professional artist whose singing is delighting and deep: Gadi Erenberg

Hello, how are you? I hope well. The last days we are not having very good news in Sepharad about the pandemic. Things are getting more complicated and it is making me quite sad. I am used to work with much time in advance, to build plans involving travels and many people and now we don’t know if we will even be able to cross the border with another country next week.

In this context, we can find relief in music. And also in food and wine! Zemirot music pieces are sang around a table in Shabbat. I hope you’ll enjoy this edition of MBS 🙂

As usual, you have the video at the bottom. And if you like this, as usual, please: share it with your friends! Thank you in advance. 

What is a zemirot

I am subscribed to the emailing of My Jewish Learning and they dedicated recently a post about zemirot. It gave me the idea for this edition. I recommend you to take a look at their website.

According to Jewish Encyclopedia, the zemirot are the Hebrew hymns chanted in the domestic circle, particularly those which precede or follow the grace after the chief meal on the eve and the afternoon of the Sabbath.

There are zemirot for the dinner on Shabbat’s evening and different ones for the lunch of Sabbath day. Later, they appeared also some zemirot to sing at the end of Shabbat. Many of the melodies used in the zemirot are folk songs from the time they started to be sung. The lyrics are also not very old. There is one identified from the Middle Ages but most of the lyrics use to be from the time of the last payyeṭanim (authors of piyyutim). So, mainly from the XVII and XVIII centuries.

The zemirot Asader L’Seudasa by Gadi Erenberg

Somehow I reached the recording of a suite of zemirot at Youtube, by Gadi Erenberg. He is a not professional artist who sings wonderfully. In his channel Epes-A-Nigun, he shares prayers and songs from the Ashkenazi tradition that he sings as he heard from his ancestors and other sources.

Asader L’Seudasa means I will arrange a meal. It is the first melody of the suite in the recording by Gadi. He learnt it from his grandfather, who was from Poland but who settled in Jerusalem. You can find many awful versions in Youtube. If you are curious, check them. I wonder how such a beautiful melody can be arranged to become something so ugly.

In the comments of the video, the melody is mentioned to be from Sighet, in the North of Romania, in Maramures region. It was a prosperous city where Jewish, who were near half of the population in the decades of 1920 and 1930, lived in peace until the World War II. At the end of XIX century it was the printing center of Jewish books. In 1944 they were sent by train to Auschwitz. Around the 80% of the 10 thousand Jews from Sighet were killed.

The History of the Jewish people in Sighet is very nicely explained in the website of Foundation Tarbut Sighet. This picture is from that website and I really recommend to take a look:

Back to the song, if you speak Hebrew, the lyrics are available in the website of Zemirot Database. And if you don’t speak Hebrew, in Chabad.org you have the lyrics in English and the transliteration.

In Sefaria.org the lyrics are acredited to Yitzhak Luria, one of the most relevant disseminators of Kabbalah, born in Jerusalem in 1534 and active in the second half of XVI century. His grave in the cemetery of Safed is still a referential pilgrimage site. He is known also as The Arizal and I will come back to him in a near future.

Gadi sings for more than 20 minutes and he combines Asader L’Seudasa with some other zemirot. I just pay attention to this specific one that opens the recording but all of it is really moving.

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Clic the picture to listen to the zemirot set
by Gadi Erenberg:

I hope you’ll like it and, if so, feel free to share it and invite your friends to join us.
It is as symple as sending … this link to sign up

Shabbat Shalom.

Araceli Tzigane | Mapamundi Música

And we share with you one hour of music for joy in this playlist.
To know more about our artists, click here.

May you always find the light in your path.

These is our artistic offer for live show:
Jako el Muzikante – Gulaza – Janusz Prusinowski Kompania Jewish Memory

What is “jota”? Didn’t you ever heard that word? Learn the basics of the most popular traditional style all over Spain

JOTA FOR NON-SPANISH
Learn the basics of the most popular traditional style of music in Spain

 “After decades of flamenco fusions and mestizo mélanges, Spain is probably in dire need of some raw, honest roots music […] Folk group Vigüela have the ultimate credentials.” 
Since I read these words by Chris Moss in Songlines, it has been in my mind the idea of how needed it is to disseminate the traditional music from the center of Spain. A music that is so unknown, not only abroad (that is logical, as very few efforts have been done so far to explain it for the international audiences), but also very neglected inside our country.

I won’t hide how much perseverance this vision made us develope, but also what a pleasure is for us to share it: the music from this land, from this landscape, that inspired such big epitomes of the creation of histories, from Don Quijote to some of the most inspired images of Pedro Almodovar films. In the last months Juan Antonio Torres and me are creating some videos with a didactic approach and now we wanted to share with you this one, made specially for not Spanish people, that explains, from the basic, the style that is the most popular: jota. Here you are the video and, below, you’ll find some concepts that will be useful if you want to delve more.

*** A short digress: we can make a lecture about this and also Vigüela is available to perform in concert. More about the band, here. ***

IF YOU WANT TO DELVE:

As promised above, here you are some concepts to delve into this huge universe of Spanish traditional music:

Concept of style vs. repertoire

This concept must be explained using a term that would like a kind of opposite: the repertoire. Style is not a song, it is not a corpus of songs. It is a language of communication through music.

Style has some rules, codes, ingredients, let’s say. When performing style, the rehearsal is not present. The performers use the code to create a conversation. It is like when you speak English: you don’t know the conversation from before and you don’t make rehearsal of the conversation. You just talk with the other and you wouldn’t say the same things if you were talking with other people in any other moment. It is a conversation between all the people involved. What will be said, is not predetermined. So you have to pay attention to what is been said. Also the moment to end is not set in advance. Style is fluid. Anyone who speaks the language / knows the code of the style can participate. That’s what it makes it so thrilling.

But, in the opposite, the repertoire concept is prefixed. Songs are premade. Only the ones who know the song can participate. The song has the lyrics, melodies… already predefined. In traditional music in Spain sometimes it is used the term “jota of the village X”. And what is performed under this name is like a still picture of the stream of a river. The style is the stream, moving and unpredictable. The repertoire is the still picture. Moreover, that denomination of “jota XXXX whatever name” is most of the times product of a deliberate creation in order to have something to rehearse and to put in a stage.

Other styles

Jota is one of the styles. You find jota all over Spain in the peninsule and also in the Islands. It is probably the most disseminated and popular of the styles. The others are:

  • Son. Learn more in this other video.
  • Fandango. Its family is composed by many variations: rondeña, malagueña, verata… It is not the flamenco fandango, that has other codes.
  • Seguidilla. It also produces many variations, some of them very known, like the “sevillanas“, that are “seguidillas sevillanas“, so, from Sevile city. In the South East there are parrandas, peretas, manchegas, gandulas, poblatas… And, well, even when we love it, the “seguidillas” by Bizet composed for Carmen opera are not proper seguidillas because it doesn’t use the codes of seguidilla X-D.
And we have also free singing, that is tonada. We have videos too: this is the first and this is the second. Tonada is not style.

Magazine #26 August’20 | Babel Music XP, Mikołajki Folkowe & a life that deserves a movie

Magazine #26 | August’20. Babel Music XP, Mikołajki Folkowe & a life that deserves a movie

How are you? Today it would be my grandmother Manuela’s birthday, August 18th. And I still miss her quite often. Even so, I’m glad she’s not going through this nightmare. They already had their disaster… In Spain we are having upbreaks of the virus, you might now. This picture is 10 days old. Masks were already mandatory all over the country, all the time, but this was done somewhere deserted in Castilla-La Mancha, between two magnificent windmills, with no one around. The municipality is Tembleque, in Toledo province.

The day after the picture, we had the first concert by Vigüela after the start of the situation. It was openair, with control of access, with mandatory masks and hydroalcoholic gel for the hands and paired chairs with distance between them. Beside some rare cases, in Spain the population is following the safety measures. We felt totally safe and the public too. This is how the place looked like before the arrival of the public:

 

We still can do this kind of little events, but the restrictions are increasing. In other countries, like Israel, the restrictions are even bigger: there, they can’t host more than 20 people in the audience.

Today, Tuesday 18th, we are together in El Carpio de Tajo, preparing some things related to the online events we will have in September.

Nevertheless, music doesn’t stop and our community keeps the flame alive with thrilling plans. Read the interview with Olivier from Babel Music XP, the reincarnation of Babel Med, and with Agnieszka from Mikołajki Folkowe. All the good for you!

Remember that you can send any suggestion of content for the next editions. And if you like this, tell me and share it with your friends. You can read the previous issues here. 

Thanks for your attention and remember that during the reading you can listen to some great music by our artists collaborators –>

Araceli Tzigane | info@mundimapa.com | +34 676 30 28 82 

Subscription is available here.

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Summary: 
· How is it going to be: Babel Music XP with an interview with Olivier Rey
· Mini interviews with festival manager: Agnieszka Matecka from Mikołajki Folkowe
· In deep with Andrzej Bieńkowski, a life devoted to the dissemination of the traditional music

BABEL MUSIC XP, THE NEW PROFESSIONAL DATE FOR THE COMMUNITY

I call it “new” because, despite collecting the legacy of Babel Med, Babel Music XP has a new vision, a new team and new ambitions. As already mentioned in the previous edition, it will start in two parts: a professional meeting in November 26th-27th and trade fair with concerts in March 25-27th, in Marseille. Olivier Rey, from Dock des Sud, kindly answered our questions. 
Mapamundi Música: What has happened that made this rebirth possible? 
Olivier Rey: A lot of energy and conviction, a new dialogue with institutionnal partner and a new collaboration with Zone Franche.

MM: Why did Babel Med stop?
OR: Probably a lack of understanding with our principal partner, Region Sud, mixed with some political change and decision at this moment. That was the main reasons for the money cuts. In 2017, It was violent for all the members involved in the organisation of Babel Med Music.

“That’s our ambition: to become again a international platform for the music sector, a Mediterranean gate for music exchange”
But we have to say, maybe, the event hadn’t evolved enough. In 2005, Babel Med Music was pioneer – with Womex – in  world music forum. 14 years later, many meetings had grown everywhere with success and music had changed: creativity, tools, business, live, interactions between artists, pros, audience. So Babel Med Music was great to connect all the music family under the same roof (and we want to keep this human atmosphere which is specifical to Babel) but we have now “to upgrade”  the event whith this new context.

That’s our ambition: to become again a international platform for the music sector, a Mediterranean gate for music exchange, to develope economical impact for the world music sector and also to add some new societal contents connected to the musical sphere (innovation, women’s role in the music industry, environmental responsability…).

I have to say that, today, discussions are much more appeased with Region Sud which supports us in this rebirth. We are grateful for this new essential chapter between us.

MM: The name of this initiative is not exactly the same. It was Babel Med, it is Babel Music XP. Has this change of name any transcendental meaning? What is the meaning of “XP”?
OR: We have to mean the change and also to affirm our heritage. So we propose a new experience (XP) of Babel. As we have a much different experience in music. And for many pro in the world, Babel Music is linked with Marseille. So we can be proud of that.

“Past, present and future of music from the world is our credo.”
MM: You have already closed the application period for the showcases. Will the event keep the same artistic line? Babel Med’s offer of showcases was very diverse, with many acts related to the cultures that have been historically connected to France, but not exclusively. There were from totally acoustic and quite traditional performances to miscegenated and electric ones. Will this approach be kept?
OR: Yes, from acoustic to digital music, we want to propose a photography of world music at the instant. Past, present and future of music from the world is our credo.
Same artistic line than Babel Med Music:  open-minded to the world sounds…

MM: I think that many of the selected acts for Babel Med were produced or represented by French companies. Correct me if I am wrong, as I don’t have the data, this is just my insight after the editions I attended so I might be biased. Will Babel Music XP be more open to other countries’ presenters than Babel Med was? 
OR: The selection of bands which have to answer to the call for application. Historically, it was 50% produced or represented by French companies. Today, we have many propositions from Europe, Argentina, Caribean, North African, Mediterranean area, Indian Ocean and Francophonic Africa.  Our project is to work with different musical ambassadors all over the world who can incite local producers to answer to the call for application. That’s a point to expand.
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MM: Who are the people in the jury for the selection of showcases?
OR: They are artistic directors, programmers of festival, journalists or artists. We’ll publish the list this Autumn. The only thing we can say today is the “honorary patron” for this year is Gilles Peterson. He’s an outstanding headhunter and he’s at the same time DJ, producer, label founder, media… A different approach of worldmusic…
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MM: What will happen in the pre-edition in November? If the current situation of the pandemic didn’t allow it to be as planned, do you have a plan B?

OR: The pre-edition in november is a particular rebirth with Covid-crisis. All the musical sector have to gather, to discuss and to imagine new collaboration in this context. The Before Babel Music XP must be used for that. In November, we organize professionnal meetings (without stand or forum) and few concerts. In March we’ll find again the fundaments of Babel: international exhibition, stands, agora, meetings and presentations for pros and 30 concerts for pros and general public.

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MM: Which is the calendar for the next steps? I mean, to register for the events in November, to register for March’s event, to publish the line up of selected artists…
OR: More news in September (and the selection for March will be revealed in November – or at the early December.

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Credits:

  • The portrait of Olivier is provided by himself and the photographer is Jean de Peña.
  • The banner is their cover picture in Facebook.

**** Do you have a world music festival and you want to be included in our mini interviews? Contact us. ****

CURRENT AND FUTURE CHALLENGES FOR FESTIVALS 

And this festival that is our focus today is also included in the project MOST, about which I talked in a previous issue.

MINI INTERVIEW WITH AGNIESZKA MATECKA FROM THE MIKOŁAJKI FOLKOWE FESTIVAL (LUBLIN, POLAND)

For already 29 years, Agnieszka and her team have been developing this festival in the beautiful city of Lublin, at the East of Poland. Remember this city hosts also the Jagiellonian Fair, about which we talked with Karolina Waszczuk and Bartek Drozd in this issue.

I met Agnieszka in person was in Scotland, the last September, at The Visit. I hope they will be able to make a proper celebration of the 30 anniversary, and ephemeris worth celebrating. In the meantime, let’s discover more in her own words.
Mapamundi Música – What do you search in an artist when you create the programme? 
Agnieszka Matecka: Mikołajki Folkowe is an intimate festival which takes place in December indoors. We can invite no more than 8-10 artists (groups) a year, this is why we choose the performers very carefully so that their music meets the expectations of our audience. Musicians both from Poland and abroad (3-4 bands) perform at the festival. We typically organize concerts on two stages (for 400 and 150 people). At the main Saturday concert there are usually larger and lively bands who play, as we call it, “folk of the centre”. On the other hand, the Sunday concert, on the smaller stage, presents more avant-garde, experimental music.
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MM – Which are the global objectives of your festival?
AM: Mikołajki Folkowe is an interdisciplinary festival. The goal of our festival is to popularize culture, especially traditional music, in a form that is accessible to modern audiences, while respecting in crudo music. Therefore, an important part of the festival is the competition for beginner musicians, to which foreign artists can also apply. We try to follow the idea that folk culture must be alive in order to survive. It cannot be an archaic closed form.We also want to show through workshops that everyone can benefit from folk culture for their own needs. One does not have to be an educated musician, dancer or visual artist.Another goal of the festival is to break down the national prejudices in accordance with a saying “culture is the best ambassador of nations”. Mikołajki Folkowe is accompanied by an interdisciplinary international scientific conference.We also promote handicraft inspired by folk art, through organizing a handicraft fair.
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MM: What are the most complicated or difficult issues you have to deal with at your festival?
AM: It’s hard to say. After 30 years of work, we have already developed many patterns of conduct. Each year seems different, poses new challenges, but with a well-coordinated organizational team all difficulties can be overcome.
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MM: What are the main challenges for this kind of cultural proposal like yours right now?
AM: Maintaining the interest of the audience and creating an interesting program, taking into account the financial and spatial capacity of the event.
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MM: In one sentence, summarize the reasons why you should go to your festival.
AM: Mikołajki Folkowe is almost a family festival. Owing to its date, all people interested in the same cultural phenomenon stay in one building for three days. One can feel an extraordinary bond that develops among the audience.
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MM: Is this the experience we are experiencing now, the coronavirus crisis, changing your festival in any way (apart from postponing this year’s edition, if so)?
AM: This year’s festival takes place in December (10-13/12) and we still hope it will go on normally. We follow the news about the virus on an ongoing basis and consider various scenarios. In previous years we used to have the program ready before the summer holidays. We are currently waiting for the situation to develop. Will it be a festival with bands from abroad, or a typically Polish edition? How many viewers will be able to take part in the festival and what will happen to revenue from ticket sale? We are also ready for the “virtual variant” of the festival, we plan to broadcast concerts. There are so many unknowns, now there are holidays, but from September we are getting back to hard work. It is a pity that it happened to us just at the 30th jubilee festival.
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Thank you very much, Agnieszka! 

Pictures’ credits:
  • Portrait from her FB profile
  • Banner, cover of the Facebook page of the festival

IN DEEP WITH ANDRZEJ BIEŃKOWSKI

Andrzej’s life would be perfect for a film or a novel without having to invent anything. Learn more, here. 

In this occasion the content is not going to be included here. This is just an announcement of the report that is published at the website Culture.pl about and with an interview with a person that devoted his life and made many sacrifices in order to record and disseminate the legacy of the rural music from his country.

I had the luck of visiting Andrzej in his house in Warsaw 3 years ago, when I made this picture.

More recently, my friend Ewa Gomółka made me the big favour to meet him and record his answers to some questions, thought out using the memory of what he had already told me before and with some new curiosities. She made the translation from Polish to English, so you can imagine what a huge work she did.

By the way, the website Culture.pl is an amazing source of information related to Poland and to the events, culture and art of this country that has been in the axis of the hurricane of Europe’s History.

WHO WE ARE AND SISTER PROJECTS 

Mapamundi Música is an agency of management and booking. Learn more here. Check our proposals at our website.

We also offer you our Mundofonías radio show, probably the leader about world music in Spanish language (on 49 stations in 18 countries). We produce the Transglobal World Music Chart with our partner Ángel Romero from WorldMusicCentral.com. And we lead also the Asociación para la Difusión de los Estilos.

Feel free to request info if you wish. For further information about us, get in touch by email, telephone (+34 676 30 28 82), our website or at our Facebook. 

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Bringing back to live the Soviet Yiddish songs of World War II

14th August 2020 – Shabbat is almost here

And I am so happy for talking about the work of my long-admired producer Daniel Rosenberg and the thrilling project Yiddish Glory!

Hello, how are you? I hope well! In this edition I come back to the todays, with artists that are alive but with a project based on Yiddish songs from the World War II. After many decades considered lost, those songs were found at the Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine. Read more below.

Daniel Rosenberg receives this weekly newsletter and I hope he will have a nice suprise! I didn’t advice him in advance. 🙂

As usual, you have the video at the bottom. And if you like this, as usual, please: share it with your friends! Thank you in advance.

 

The producer, journalist and publicist Daniel Rosenberg

It seems a lie but there was a time when we were able to travel to other continents easily, without masks and without quarantines. This picture was took in Toronto in 2019, where I attended the Canadian Music Week thanks to Music Export Poland. This picture was done the first time we meet, after a big breakfast in a nice cafe and he is Daniel Rosenberg.

Daniel is graduated in molecular biology and in political science. This might have no relationship with the theme of our email, but I want to highlight what an amazing person Dan is. Apart from that, he has been working for more than 20 years in the dissemination of the musics from all over the world, in radio and in compilations.

He has made the selection of many of the albums of the collection Rough Guides, by World Music Network. He has produced and written liner notes for more than 60 CDs, including this Yiddish Glory. He is the producer of this work. He selected the musicians and organiced all the work to make this idea and this documents become a touchable and listenable album.

Before the beginning of the pandemic, he was working in several projects. One of them was the first album by Taraf Syriana, about the music of the Romani people in Syria from before the war, as well as in another amazing project, related also to Jewish culture and history, about which I hope to talk with him in a near future.

You can learn more about Daniel in his official website.

The lost Soviet Yiddish songs of World War II

According to the press release by Rob Jacobs from Six Degrees Records, the label that released this album:

“Yiddish Glory: The Lost Songs of World War II is the new recording of music created during the darkest chapter of European Jewish history. In the midst of World War II, a group of scholars led by ethnomusicologist Moisei Beregovsky (1892 – 1961) discovered songs written by Jewish Red Army soldiers, refugees, victims and survivors of Ukrainian ghettos. One song was written by a 10-year-old orphan who lost his family in the ghetto in Tulchin, another by a teenage prisoner of the Pechora concentration camp, and yet another about a Red Army soldier who learns, upon his return to Kiev, that his family had been murdered in Babi Yar. […]

Following the war, the researchers were arrested during Stalin’s anti-Jewish purge. The scholars’ works were confiscated, and they died thinking the collection was lost to history.  The songs were discovered in unmarked boxes stored in the archives of the Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine in the 1990s.

In the early 2000s, a lucky coincidence brought Yiddish Professor Anna Shternshis to Kiev where she learned that these songs had survived all of these decades following the researchers’ arrests. Quickly deteriorating, fragile documents, some typed, but most hand-written, contained some of the most poignant and historically important Soviet Yiddish songs of World War II.”

The booklet includes much more information about the work in general and about each specific piece. You can order it here.

The song about the massacre of Babi Yar

Babi Yar means the grandmother’s ravine. It is a ravine in the outskirts of Kiev where in September of 1941 there were killed more than 33 thousand Jews in two days. It is considered the biggest slaughtering in the less time. Until the 6th of November of 1943 the number of Jewish from Kiev and surroundings killed would increase to around 200 thousand. I won’t explain more details, as this events are widely documented and you can find information easily at the Internet.

The lyrics of the song are by Golda Rovinskaya, 73 years old, Kiev, 22 June, 1947, recorded by Hina Shargorodsky. It talks from the poing of view of someone returning to Kiev from the front line, happy for being still alive, but finding that all his family and beloved ones have been killed. The music is based on “In droysn geyt a regn,” a folk song, with instrumental parts and arrangement by Sergei Erdenko.

This picture of the Memorial of Babi Yar is from the website of the Mizel Museum:

Clic the picture to listen to Babi Yar from Yiddish Glory, in a live recording from Zoomer Hall Classical FM 96.3:

I hope you’ll like it and, if so, feel free to share it and invite your friends to join us.
It is as symple as sending … this link to sign up

Shabbat Shalom.

Araceli Tzigane | Mapamundi Música

And we share with you one hour of music for joy in this playlist.
To know more about our artists, click here.

May you always find the light in your path.

These is our artistic offer for live show:
Jako el Muzikante – Gulaza – Janusz Prusinowski Kompania Jewish Memory

World Music Central interviews Jako el Muzikante

Check the comprenhensive interview by Ángel Romero with Jako el Muzikante and learn how the Galician artist Xurxo Fernandes incarnates the historic character of the hustler of the café aman.

The interview unveils all what is behind the work Ven al Luna Park, with statements like this:

The Sephardic identity is based on their language, a language in danger of extinction. My fascination with Ladino is linked to a feeling of debt to the community from which I learned so much, and publishing this work in that same language is an acknowledgement I want to give.

Read the complete interview here.