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MBS with cantor Israel Shorr, the brilliant composer who left too soon

27th November 2020 – Shabbat is almost here

And we’ll listen to a cantor that is also the author of some of the most celebrated pieces of cantorial repertoire: Israel Schorr, born in 1886 at the Polish Galicia.

Hello, how are you? I hope well. Today it is the black Friday, isn’t it? Well!!! I have a super offer for you: your subscription to Music Before Shabbat, now, half price! ? Guaranteed.

I am having a super demanding week and I must say I am exhausted but when I start to delve in the thrilling Jewish music and history my strengths are renovated.

This week many people have seen the “secret” Hassidic wedding with 7 thousand guests in New York. If you haven’t seen it yet, check this. I hope the time to celebrate with massive amounts of people together will come back soon…  In the meantime, I was thinking what are the usual insights of the population about the Hassidic Jews. Our protagonist of today, Israel Shorr, was from a Hassidic family so I will dedicate a part of this MBS to the Hassidism.

? And remember, there are previous editions of MBS about wonderful hazzanim from the Golden Age: Pierre Pinchik, Yossele Rosenblatt, Gershon Sirota and Moishe Oysher.
– And, as usual, find the music piece at the bottom – ?
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The cantor and composer that left too early

The life of Israel Schorr, as of many great cantors, is reasonably well documented. But Schorr is not as famous as others, because he died quite young at the very early age of 49 on April 9th 1935. This way, he was not a witness of the horror that would trap his mother land.

He was born in 1886 in Khyriv, or Chyrov, that was at that time in the Polish Galicia that was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and that now is Ukraine. But other sources say that he was born in Rymanów, two hours to the West from Khyriv, that is currently Poland.

He started singing as a boy soprano and became the official cantor in L’vov in 1904. He succeed his distant relative, the Hazzan Boruch Schorr, who was very appreciated because of his improvisations and his innovative compositions. There is some nice information about Boruch in this book, Discovering Jewish Music, by Marsha Bryan Edelman.

He served also in Brno, Kraków, Piestany and Zurich before emigrating to the USA in 1924, thanks to a visa for artist that he got with the help of Solomon Bloom. This man deserves attention too, his life is absolutely fascinating. You can start with this.

There at the USA, Schorr served in synagogues in Chicago and New York. Shorr was a composer as well as a cantor himself and one of the most famous pieces for hazzanut art, Sheyibone Beit Hamikdash, has done by him. You can find many renditions of this piece in Youtube. But my favourite is the one by the aforementioned Moishe Oysher, of whom I talked in this previous edition. Israel Shorr died at his 49 years old, because of a heart condition.

Sources for Schorr’s bio (check them to learn more):

Poland at the Google Maps Street View is always sunny. This is Rymanów nowadays (Khyriv is not streetviewed yet):
 

Hassidism in (very) brief 

Do you remember the edition about John Zorn and the piece Sippur? Find it here. In that edition I already talked about the founder of Hassidism, Baal Shem Tov, who made many sippurim, many tales, to teach in an easy and appealing way the ethics and practices of this new line of Judaism. It you are not familiar with it, this video is very nice. Maybe I am a little childish? ? The fact is that it is very nice!

The happy way of approaching the religious celebration that you can see in this wedding in New York is explained in the way Hassidism understands life and the relationship with the divinity.

Listen to Av Horachamim by Israel Schorr

Listen to the rendition by Israel Schorr of this Shabbos prayer, Av Horachamim, written in memory of the communities that were wiped out during the Crusades. This brief explaination is from this work by Rabbi Y. Friedman on the web Chareidi and there you can find also a part of the poem: “In his tremendous mercy may [our] merciful Father […] recall in mercy the holy kehillos that gave up their lives in sanctification of [His] Name […]”. The kehillos are the congregations. For the full lyrics in English, check this web page.

There is more information about the use of the poem in Shabbat, on this site of the Ortodox Union.

I found a brief historical explanation about the destruction of the Jewish communities in Germany by the Crusaders in XI century and the use of this poem on this page of the St John’s Wood and The Saatchi Synagogues:

“Its origins lie in the wake of the First Crusade. Many Jewish communities in Germany were decimated as mobs found an outlet for their religious zeal in killing Jews before making their way to the Holy Land to wrest it from the Muslims. Thousands of men, women and children lost their lives in the communities of the Rhineland. Mainz, Worms, Speyer were ravaged over the course of a few weeks as the Crusaders made their way down Europe. […] As the black plague swept across Europe during the mid-fourteenth century, annihilating nearly half the population, Jews were taken as the scapegoat and were accused of having brought about the plague and were persecuted and killed.”

Click the picture to listen to the recording:

 

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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

MBS with Salim Halali and two thrilling tales. Believe or not, it is up to you

November 20th, 2020. Shabbat is almost here 

And we’ll learn about an artist in whose biography myth blends with facts. Born in Algeria in 1920, settled in Paris during the occupation of the nazis, he would later be called the “King of Shaabi”: he is Salim (Simon) Halali.

Hello! How are you? I hope well. In this occasion I want to say thanks to Patricia Álvarez. She is a friend of mine from Madrid, a wonderful dancer and a culture enthusiast, especially from the Mediterranean basin, the Balkans and the Middle East. She introduced me to the work of Salim Halali. So, thank you, Patricia! 

In this bio of Salim (super large, and I still would have been able to follow many more threads) there are facts and tales, that you can believe or not. I will explain the sources and you can judge by yourself but… do you know? The stories are worth of it. I hope you’ll like them.

? And remember, there are previous editions of MBS about Algerian Jews: Reinette L’Oranaise, Saoud L’Oranaise and Cheik Zouzou.

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The Algerian Jewish boy who wanted to be a flamenco singer

Shlomo or Simon Halali was born in Bône, currently Annaba, in 1920, from a family from Souk-Ahras. His father was a Turkish and his mother was a Berber-Jew. He left the country very soon, at his just 14 years old, searching for a career in music (even when he didn’t have any education in music). He wanted to be a flamenco singer.

So in 1934 he got to travel to Marseille, as a stowaway on a ship. Some time after, he went to Paris, where the International Expo would take place in 1937, with the hope to get a job at the Algerian pavilion. There, he found some compatriots, like Mahieddine Bachtarzi, who was the director of the first Andalusian music association of the Maghreb: El Moutribia.

? Listen to Mr. Bachtarzi, here.
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Simon would later be renamed as Salim and he would reach high recognition.

Continue below, under this picture of the Hôtel de Ville of Bône:
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About Souk-Akhras, in ancient time it was Thagaste, a very important Roman city, the birthland of Saint Augustine.

According to the Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World edited by Norman A. Stillman, the modern town began in the 1850s as a French military post, and by 1856 it had a permanent Jewish settlement. Some of the Jewish inhabitants were Baḥuṣim, semi-nomadic Jews from the surrounding region who adopted a sedentary lifestyle in the new town. Others were Jews of Livornese descent (from the city of Livorno, in the North coast of Italy to the Tyrrhenian sea).

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And this is the Hôtel de Ville of Souk-Akhras (picture kindly released for public domain by the author, Abdallahdjabi):

But let’s stop and hear a story. Believe it or not. You decide.

Sources for Salim‘s bio: 

The story of a forbidden love

The first tale

I found this story in the comments of the video in Youtube that you have at the bottom. And the same is in the facebook page La Page Thagastoise. Believe it or not. Salim has openly gay. But during his life he loved a woman. I believe it, as many years ago I was loved by a man who was gay some time after and now he is married with another man.

The story is translated and a little summarized by me, from the original from that mentioned page. The story is about the forbidden love between a Jewish boy and a Muslim girl from a large family of Souk-Ahras: Salim Halali (Simon at the beginning) and Ryma (that is how he nicknamed her, and sometimes he called her Fettouma too).

Simon and Ryma were neighbors and also distant cousins ​​through the Ryma’s paternal grandmother. Indeed, the father of Ryma, a notable of Souk-Ahras was the son of a Jewish lady, converted to Islam, from the very old family of Ouled Kakou, from Souk-Ahras. These two children grew up together. They were inseparable like a brother and sister.

A few years later, having become a very beautiful and young woman, Ryma was forbidden by her father to see Simon again, who had also become a tall and charming boy. But they found a way to meet again discreetly at Ryma’s paternal great-aunt, Rimoun Kakou, who unlike her sister (the grandmother of Ryma) remained of the Jewish faith.

Made aware of this secret relationship, the father of Ryma, furious and with a great anger, hits Simon and outright forbids his daughter to go to her aunt Rimoun.

< The Great Synagogue of Marseille. The newspapers said in 2016 that it had been was sold to an Islamic cultural organization and it would become a mosque. But nowadays it is still a Synagogue and was renamed in 2018 as Breteuil-Beth Yossef, honoring the ex Great Rabbi of Marseille, Joseph Haïm Sitruk. It can be visited and it is a very recognized treasure for its historic relevance.

Far from Ryma, sad and unemployed, Simon leaved Souk-Ahras at the age of 15 (the biographies use to say at 14) and went to Marseille to look for work. Back in Souk-Ahras, two years later, and with a little money, he asks her father for Ryma’s hand, who categorically refuses to marry his daughter to a Jew. Indeed, Ryma’s father had already promised his daughter to a rich and very famous man from Souk-Ahras who ended up marrying her.

Unhappy, Simon leaved Souk-Ahras permanently at the age of 17 for Paris. And he would come back just once, in 1958.

Ryma’s husband died two years after her marriage in a traffic accident. Widowed, Ryma was forced by her father to marry a cousin of his, 25 years older than her. She moved with him to Annaba and later to Tunis. They had two daughters. Upon the death of her second husband, Ryma left Tunis and moved with these two girls to Bordeaux where they successfully completed their brilliant medical studies. In Tunis she got closer to her great-uncle Joseph Kakou, who was a soldier.

In the meantime, Simon moved to Paris, where he sang in cabarets. France was under the colaborationist Vichy government. Fleeing the pro-Nazi French police, Simon took refuge in the great Mosque of Paris for several months. At this time, his name would be changed for Salim. Learn more on the next story, below.

And still in love with Ryma, Simon only sang her name. He dedicated his first and famous song, “Mahani Ezinne” to her, but also “Rimoun Rmetni”, “Fettouma taaz alaya” and many other hits.

In 1958, Salim returned to Souk-Ahras where he gave a concert in Thagaste Square. There he was finally given news of his beloved. He followed her footsteps to Tunis where he learns from Joseph Kakou that she has gone to Bordeaux. He immediately left for Bordeaux to find her but she had left with her eldest daughter for the United States after her marriage to a wealthy American.

Casablanca. Spanish post office and the German consulate in the medina. Date unknown.
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In 1982 Salim installed in Casablanca in Morocco. There he finally had news of his beloved Ryma by a Souk-Ahrassien (Ex Minister and ex Ambassador) married with his young daughter. Note that Salim was already 62 years old and they hadn’t meet each other since he was 17. The daughter organized a meeting between Salim and Ryma in Paris in a famous restaurant. The reunion between the two old lovebirds of Souk-Ahras was sad and very moving.

Salim had improvised while weeping a song for Ryma who was also very moved, the famous Alach Ya Ghzali. He learnt from Ryma that she knew everything about him and his singing career: she listened to him every day and she knew all his songs by heart.

Ryma died in Bordeaux in 1986 at the age of 66, where she is buried. Salim travelled from Morocco especially to attend her funeral where it seems he had read aloud the Fatiha (the first chapter, or sura, of the Quran) in her memory.

The sources mentioned by this person, who doesn’t identify his/herself are:

  • Kamel M
  • Brahim Merakta from Casablanca, close friend of Salim
  • Ryma’s little daughter (now in Bordeaux)
  • Old testimony from one of the sisters of Ryma’s first husband
  • Joseph Kakou’s daughter (Cannes)

 

The Jews and the Great Mosque of Paris at the Vichy period

About this story there is some controversy. Some state that the rector of the Great Mosque of Paris saved thousands of Jews, providing them documents with Muslim identities. Others say they might be around 100.

This wonderful picture of the Great Mosque at a time when Salim could be there is from the website of FranceCulture.fr:
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On the occasion of the release in 2012 of the film Les Hommes Libres by Ismaël Ferroukh, the newspaper Haaretz made a interesting review of the available positions and evidences. Find it complete, here. And I summarice here below. But, before, I quote a paragraph that is specially meaningful:

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“Posing as Muslims would presumably have been technically possible for some of the North African Jews living in France. The Jewish men, like the Muslim ones, were circumcised. Jews and Arabs had shared surnames. Their outward appearance and knowledge of Arabic also helped an unknown number of Jews assimilate into the Muslim community. But the Germans did not easily give up on their demand that someone suspected of being a Jew prove his origins. That was the context for their turning to the Great Mosque of Paris with requests that it rule whether a particular person was Jewish or Muslim.”
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  • Robert Satloff, director of the Washington Institute for Middle East Policy: “uncovered the most important written evidence to date relating to the subject: a note from a bureaucrat in the French foreign affairs ministry to the foreign minister, dated September 24, 1940, which describes the Germans’ activity against the mosque, that says “The occupation authorities suspect the personnel of the Mosque of Paris of fraudulently delivering to individuals of the Jewish race certificates attesting that the interested persons are of the Muslim confession. The imam was summoned, in a threatening manner, to put an end to all such practices. It seems, in effect, that a number of Jews resorted to all sorts of maneuvers of this kind to conceal their identity.”
  • Albert Assouline, North African Jew who fled from Germany to France and found shelter in the Great Mosque: “no fewer than 1,732 Resistance fighters found refuge in the cellars of the mosque”.
  • Dalil Boubakeur, head of the Mosque in 2012, estimated that the Mosque supported around 100 Jews, supplied them with Muslim identity certificates that enabled them to survive.
  • Dr. Simcha Epstein, a Paris-born historian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who studies anti-Semitism and the Holocaust: “The doubt is not about whether the mosque aided or did not aid Jews, but rather regarding the number of Jews the mosque helped.”
  • Prof. Renee Poznanski,of Ben-Gurion University, specialist on French Jewry during the German occupation: “I have not come across any such thing in the documentation and testimonies. If it indeed happened, we are talking about a historically minor phenomenon, of very small dimensions, but important of course.”
  • Yad Vashem: “Yad Vashem made a supreme effort to locate survivors who Benghabrit saved at the time of the Holocaust, and went to great lengths to gather archive material pertaining to the rescue operation at the Mosque of Paris, including applying to the mosque’s archive. Every effort was in vain. No testimonies from survivors or relevant documents were found.”

I strongly recommend you to check the complete report in Hareetz, that has much more interesting facts about the mentioned film and other relevant issues.

 

What is the relationship between Salim and the Great Mosque of Paris?

The second tale

Salim Halali is one of the characters in the film Les Hommes Libres. Remember he set in Paris in 1937. There, he performed at the Maure café of the Great Mosque of Paris. Kaddour Benghabrit, the founder and first rector of the Mosque, who was a musician himself, became friend of Salim and, during the German occupation, would help to hide his Jewish origins by providing him with a false Muslim certificate and engraving the name of his late father on an anonymous grave of the Muslem cemetery of Bobigny (Seine-Saint-Denis).

At this moment I would like to introduce the other tale. It is also from the Facebook page The Page Thagastoise.

In 1942, an Algerian young man from Oran, Younès, came to Paris to earn money to send back to Algeria. He decided to make the black market. One day, he was arrested by the French police. The intelligence officers then proposed to him to cooperate: they will allow his illegal trade but in exchange, he must go to the Paris Great Mosque to spy on the rector, Si Kaddour Benghabrit, and report to them.

The French police collaborator of the Nazis though the rector was providing counterfeit papers to the Jews and to the resistance. Younès accepts the deal. But very quickly, he got deeply in love with a singer from Souk Ahras, a certain Salim Halali, who had found refuge at the Grand Mosque in Paris and had to pass for a Muslim. To remove any doubts, Salim prayed five times. Younès believed that Salim was not a Jew.

The rector had give Salim counterfeit identity documents, changing his name from Simon to Salim, saving him from a certain death. He would keep that new name until his last day.

 

What happened with Salim after the World War II?

According to the Institut Européen des Musiques Juives, his music became quite popular. In 1947 and in 1948 he set two entertainment venues (cabaret).

In 1949, Salim moved to Morocco and bought an old café in the mellah* of Casablanca, which he transformed into a prestigious cabaret: “Le Coq d’Or”. This venue was visited by the rich families of the country and celebrities. But the cabaret was destroyed in a fire and Salim then returned to France at the beginning of the 1960s. He was known for his extravagant parties, in which he even took elephants (and he had two tigers as pets) to the garden in his villa, as well as for his artistic work.

He stopped singing in 1993 (but made one occasional concert in 1994) and left for a retirement home in Vallauris. He died on June 25, 2005 in Antibes (Alpes-Maritimes) and his ashes are scattered in Nice in a garden.

According to the same story as before, from The Page Thagastoise:

Salim confided in this doctor, Dr. Abdallah Khémis, that he had given all his copyrights to the disabled of Algeria and offered to the Algerian embassy in Paris a “great value” carpet, according to his own terms. This physician, who practiced at Larcher Hospital in Nice, confirmed that Salim Halali had never forgotten Souk Ahras and that he had dedicated to the city his celebratory songs El Forga Morra and Ya Ghorbati.

* The mellah is the Jewish quarter of the cities in Morocco, usually surrounded by a wall with a fortified gateway.

Mellah of Casablanca at the beginning of XX century.
Picture of public domain available in Wikipedia. Find more here.

 

Listen to Ya Qalbi Khali Hal by Salim Halili

Listen to the rendition by Salim Halali of this poem, Ya qalbi khali hal, in an Arabo-Andalusi style. Lyrics in English, below.

Click the picture to listen to the recording:

LYRICS:

Oh, my heart, let the situation continue on its way.
Leave all the words and listen carefully to what they say.
Slow down, don’t hurry, the one who waits wins.
Deliverance comes in its own time, from the lord to his creature.
Sadness as well as comfort, all come from God.
Be patient during the tests, until God delivers you.
Judgements are established in advance, God’s verdict is inevitable.
Be patience with me, sorrow is never eternal.
Such is this earthly life, it raises some people and sets others down.

I hope you’ll like it and, if so, feel free to share it and invite your friends to join us.
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Araceli Tzigane | Mapamundi Música 

To know more about our artists, click here.

 

Magazine #29 November’20 – Thrilling experience by Kajsa Bacos, festivals Kamičak Etno & Hillside, Mundial Montreal & before-Babel Music XP and +!

Summary ? 

  • A relevant date for our community (and a reason to be more than proud for me): before-Babel Music XP.
  • A thrilling experience facing the pandemic with live music, by Kajsa Bacos from Kulturverket Onsjö.
  • Mini interviews with festival manager: Anđela Galić from Kamičak Etno Festival and Samir Baijal from Hillside Festival (continuing the series of interviews about challenges for festivals and about MOST Music participants)
  • News from the charts and sister projects
  • What’s next? Mundial Montreal and before-Babel Med XP!
How are you? I hope well. I am not quite happy. My toilet has been flooded due to a breakdown, in a way that I thought that happened only in the films. I am soaked and I am waiting for the plumber… In the meantime, I got to close the water valve and I don’t have water in the house and, did you know? We are in the middle of a pandemic ?
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However, life goes on and during the rest of this month there are some exciting events to pay attention to and interesting colleagues to learn from.

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Do you want to share any useful experience you have had during this difficult time or another content relevant for our community of the global music?

Contact me. And if you find this interesting, 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.

BRIEFTLY, A RELEVANT DATE FOR OUR COMMUNITY

In the latest editions the rebirth of Babel Med, now Babel Music XP, have had some place. I am happy to remind you once more that the before-Babel will take place online on 26 and 27 of November and I will happy particitipate in a round table: New collaborations and solidarity for professionals relaunching their careers. It will be moderated by Ludovic Tomas and I will share the table with Birgit Ellinghaus, Umair Jaffar, Emad Mabrouk and Amobé Mévégué. What a pleasure.


By the way, if you want to learn more about me, check the interview that Erick van Monckhoven made me for his World Music Lab Italia. Remember I made an interview with him in this previous edition. I am pleased that he found my insights interesting and I opened totally.

And the interview announced in the previous edition, with Noam Vazana in her project Why Do it Yourself Music, is available here. We talked more than one hour and it was really fantastic! I felt such an easy communication with this wise lady!

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THE EXPERIENCE OF KAJSA BACOS FROM KULTURVERKET ONSJÖ (HALMSTAD, SWEDEN)

In the latest edition I asked if any of the readers would like to share their experiences of the last months in dealing with the pandemic and the activity of live music and Kajsa Bacos (her portrait is from her profile at Womex website), from Kulturverket Onsjö, in Halmstad, in the province of Halland replied with this experience:

“From April to August we closed down completely. We planned Summer concerts in July but when the rain poured down for 2 weeks we gave that up. We can seldom trust the weather, so it is difficult to plan outside concerts.

In September we started with concerts. We have a small place and 50-60 persona are the maximum. 45 feels full. So we decided to use our funding thus: Instead of one concert with 2 sets (1,5 hour), we had two concerts with one set (60 minutes). The musicians had an hour to rest and eat in between.

“It was a success. People who have been isolated for long, who can’t even go shopping, came.” 

We told the audience that for the first concert only risk group persona were welcome. And only 15 people for each concert. That is 70 + or persons with an underlying condition. The response was big, so we ended up with two concerts for the risk group.It was a success. People who have been isolated for long, who can’t even go shopping, came. We can do this for our venue is not commercially driven, our funding pays for the music.

This way, we keep people happy, we use the funding that either could be paid without the musicians playing or we could pay it back to the government, the musicians are really happy to meet an audience, we show that we still do good work, and we keep our cooperations running, and our network intact. We can’t just give up while we wait for better times. 

“We have to work, musicians have to play. People who come here are really good at keeping a social distance. We just have to learn to adjust. And continue.” 

We have many times organized events for marginalized groups like children, immigrants etc. In Western Europe today we have more and more old people and because of the pandemic they are marginalized. We need to keep their spirits up also. They can’t see their families, go places, go to dinners. I planned carefully so they arrived in separate groups 10 minutes apart so there was no queue. They came in through one entrance and the musicians came in another. I desinfected all handles, put chairs 1,5 metres apart. And if I didn’t know somebody, I interviewed them on their lifestyle. If they had been at a social event recently they couldn’t come.

We have to work, musicians have to play. People who come here are really good at keeping a social distance. We just have to learn to adjust. And continue.

No musician has been indefinitely cancelled, we have just postponed ther concert. There is a life after corona.”

Thank you very much, Kajsa!!! 
This is the Kulturverket place, from Google Maps Street View:

 

CURRENT AND FUTURE CHALLENGES FOR FESTIVALS 

In this occasion, we have two interviews: about Kamičak Etno Festival, from Croatia (that continues the series of festivals included in project MOST) and about Hillside Festival, from Canada. I really hope they can retake their usual shape soon. To attend a concert or festival, gathering together with people you don’t know, but that are willing to share a emotional experience, is inimitable. It is a ritual, from the moment you chose the clothes you will wear. Or even from before. I am thanksful to Kajsa, Anđela and Samir and so many people that are keeping the flame alive in this time of added dificulties.


MINI INTERVIEW WITH ANĐELA GALIĆ FROM THE KAMIČAK ETHNO FESTIVAL (SINJ, CROATIA) 

 

The third edition was planned to be held on days day 21 and 22 of August at the 18th century fortress of Sinj, in Croatia. This edition included concerts by Croatian, Argentine, Serbian, Macedonian, Bosnian and Irish artists, traditional crafts made by local producers and gastronomic local specialties.

The edition of this year had to be cancelled and although some things will have to be rethought, the festival is included in MOST Project and planned to come back in 2021. Anđela Galić, organizer of the festival, shares their insights and vision.

Mapamundi Música – What do you search for in an artist when you program?

Anđela Galić –  We are looking for creative, talented, individuals or groups whose music grows out of a certain musical tradition but at the same moment brings contemporary approach to its interpretation. Kind of music that brings interesting fusion of styles and stays in your ears for a long time.

MM – Which are the global objectives of your festival?
AG – We want to profile our Festival as one of the best world music festivals in Croatia, but also in the wider Balkan region. Our goal is to make Sinj (Croatia) and Kamičak Ethno Festival a recognizable festival gem where you can hear great performers from all around the world.

MM – What are the most complicated or difficult issues to deal with in your festival?
AG – The most complicated and difficult part is to provide enough funds, which implies constant engagement on the application of the festival to various funding tenders. Also the hard part is the fact that if you want to orginaze good festival you need a lot of planning and organization, which means involvement of many people, in our case volunteers, without whom the realization of the Festival would not be possible.

MM – Which are currently the main challenges for this kind of cultural proposals like yours?
AG – Due to the epidemiological situation it is difficult and uncertain to plan ahead. Anything that involves complex organization and engagement of international artists is considerably aggravated at the moment. The whole situation is extremely unpredictable for all involved in music industry and requires quick adaptation to new circumstances.

MM – In one sentence, summarize the reason/s to go to your festival.
AG – Excellent music in beautiful ambience of historic fortress at the top of the city with a view of the entire Cetina region, are just some of the reasons to visit Kamičak Ethno Festival. Plus, great fun is guaranteed.

MM – What has happened with the edition of 2020 in the current situation of the pandemic?
AG – Sure, except from canceling the last edition, we have to think about alternatives for next edition, so we are considering limiting the number of visitors or organizing festival only with local performers.

Credits:

  • The portrait of Anđela is provided by herself.
  • The logo is from their facebook site
  • The aereal picture is from the website of the festival
  • The picture of the concert is from the facebook site (concert by Patrick Walker Trio at the edition of 2019)

MINI INTERVIEW WITH SAMIR BAIJAL FROM THE HILLSIDE FESTIVAL (GUELPH, CANADA)  

 

I am sure you will agree with me in the idea that it sounds like magic: to spend three days of Summer in an island in a lake in Canada, full of music, with a program in which diversity of culture, of musical heritage and style, of age, geography and influence is a guiding line. This is what the Hillside Festival state about itself on the website. It helds two editions, the Summer one and also another, in February.

This year the Winter edition was normal but the Summer one had to take an alternative shape: Homeside 2020. Samir Baijal, the artistic director, explains more about the festival in general and about this special edition too.

Mapamundi Música – What do you search for in an artist when you program?
Samir Baijal –  Once I appreciate that they are a skilled and strong live artist, it is always about trying to picture them on one of our stages. We program all kinds of music and our audience is very open to new artists and form all around the world so I think of how they will respond. I look for performers who can have a strong connection to the audience and in most case willing to collaborate with other artists at the festival.

MM – What are the most complicated or difficult issues to deal with in your festival?
SB – Typically, it would be the weather gets harsh as we on an island outdoors.

MM – Which are currently the main challenges for this kind of cultural proposals like yours?
SB – Maintaining a festival that is non-commercial that has strong values and environmental/sustainable practices – hence also maintaining a unique identity in a very competitive market. But right now it is enduring the period of the pandemic when we are not able our regular event(s) and revenue is not possible.

MM – In one sentence, summarize the reason/s to go to your festival.
SB – A family friendly festival in a beautiful setting, that challenges the audience to check their tastes at the gate and with more than just music.

MM – What has happened with Hillside Festival 2020? I think you were able to make the February edition normally, but for the Summer edition, you reshaped it for an online format. How was it? 
SB – We called it Hillside Homeside 2020. It went better than we expected, the event was completely free to view and what we noticed the most is how much the audience appreciated us offering this presentation. It felt very personal and I think that it was a sense of connection between our patrons and our festival during a very challenging and unprecedented time.

MM – How did you shape the experience of the attendants?
SB – This was to be our 37th year, so we had a series called 37 songs where 37 artists offered a personalized recording of a song and monologue/message to the Hillside viewer. There were virtual workshops on everything from yoga to cooking and also links to our craft and food vendors – we had some archival footage with current day interviews (called Now and Then). We used the same different stage template as if it were on site.

MM – How did you get their engagement? 
SB – We had our mailing list, newsletter and media gave a lot of coverage that it was happening.

MM – Any positive insight of this reshaped edition, that you could even keep for future editions when the pandemic ended?
SB – I think we would put more attention on more specific archiving and look at showing these during the year.

Credits:

  • The portrait of Samir is from his profile at Womex
  • The logo is from their facebook site
  • The aereal picture and the picture of the workshop are from the website of the festival
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NEWS FROM THE CHARTS AND SISTER PROJECTS

  • In the previous edition I announced that Transglobal World Music Chart turned 5 years old. I am happy to announce now that the compilation album The Best of Transglobal World Music Chart 2020, will be released by ARC Music in January. Follow our Facebook and visit our website of News to be updated and learn more. And during the last weeks we have incorporated new panelists, from Brazil, UK, Cuba and India.
  • About Mundofonías, our monthly favourites are the last albums by Niqolah Seeva, Kaito Winse and The Rheingans Sisters. For some weeks now the radio show is been broadcasted in Ràdio Túria, in L’Eliana, Valencia, Spain. 

WHAT’S NEXT?

In spite of everything, we are still in the season of professional dates. 
  • Mundial Montreal. The professional’s platform will be working from tomorrow to day 28th. Yesterday I decided to sign up and the true is that I am quite excited! 
  • Before Babel Music XP. As announced above, it will take place on November 26-27.  I a proudly included in the program. Remember that there is an interview with Olivier Rey from Babel Music XP, here.

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 50 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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This newsletter is open to sponsorship. Feel free to ask for details.

 

MBS with the crystallisation of a song and the Diwan of Yemenite Jews

November 13th, 2020. Shabbat is almost here 

And we’ll listen again the poem Im Nin’Alu, this time by Shalom Keisar and the Kiryat Ono voice ensemble, recorded in 1977. How does this evolved from just a poem, sang with a big part of improvisation, to a recognizable hit in the world of pop music? 

Hello, how are you? I hope well.

Today this email reaches you a bit later. Until this morning I hadn’t decide which would be the focus of this email. I woke up later than I should, because I was dreaming about this song, Im Nin’Alu. I was dreaming and I didn’t want to wake up…

I dreamt a dream that is impossible to make real in the current circumstances: I was part of the cast for a theatre play based on this song. I would have to sing it in the play. All the actors were together around a table, with food and with the scripts, to organice the rehearsals.

Anyway, these guys from the video at the bottom sing better than me. I had this piece in mind since the edition about Suliman the Great, who sang some of this in his medley of Yemenite songs. If you didn’t read that one, click in the link. That recording is enchanting and their story is very interesting.

– And, as usual, find the music piece at the bottom –
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The Diwan of the Jews From Central Yemen

What does diwan mean? In Arabic and in Persian cultures, a diwan (dīwān) is a collection of poems.

According to a text by Gregor Schoeler, the Dīwāns  redactors made the colletions “arranged by them according to theme exhibit categories which correspond to a large extent to the Western concept of genres. Suchlike Dīwāns do not arise until the emergence of Abbasid poetry with its relative wealth of genres.” The Abbasid Caliphate was an Islamic empire that existed from 750 to 1258 C.E. as it was centered in Baghdad and included much of the Middle East. You can learn more about this topic, here.

The piece at the bottom is part of an album with a compilation of recordings made by Naomi Bahat-Ratzon and her husband Avner Bahat, in the 1970s. This one is dated in January 1977.

The whole album is a wonder and you can listen to it complete here. And to learn more, you have many comments about the album and the songs, here. It was released in 2006 by the Jewish Music Research Centre, in 2 CDs and a long booklet. It is not available in Amazon but it seems to be in the website of the Centre.

The enchanting performance by Shalom Keisar and ensemble from Kiryat Ono

The piece I have chosen is sang by Shalom Keisar (voice and drum) with the male vocal ensemble Kiryat Ono.

Kiryat Ono is a city in the district of Tel Aviv, that arised with that name in 1954 (and would be considered a city in 1992). Before that, there was a ma’abara there, a temporary settlement. You may know that the Operation Magic Carpet had been done in 1949 and 1950 and it transported 49 thousand Yemenite Jews to Israel. The amount of people that arrived to Israel in short time was huge. I have tried to see if Kiryat Ono was one of the first locations for Yemenite emigrants but I haven’t found any data to prove it, apart from the existance nowadays of The return to Zion Association of Yemenite immigrants.

And the crystallisation of a song

About this recording, the website of the Jewish Music Research Centre explains some facts. I will add comments here. In italics, their original texts: 

“Im nin’alu daltei nedivim is a shira by Shalem Shabazi, signed Alshabazi. This poem is one of the most popular and widely known among the Yemenite Jews. It is sung on many different occasions, at weddings and other celebrations, to many melodies.”  

Im nin’alu daltei n’divim daltei marom lo nin’alu means Even if the gates of the rich are closed, the gates of heaven will never be closed. If you understand Hebrew, check this page of the National Library of Israel. If you don’t understand Hebrew, anyway you can listen to many other recordings of this poem.

Shalem Shabazi (you can find it written as Shalom too) was a Yemenite Jewish poet from 17th century, of whom there are around 550 poems. He was a weaver as his main profession and he is though to be quite poor. He wrote in Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic. He has a reputation of a heroe and his tomb in Ta’izz, in the Southwest of Yemen, attracted pilgrims all year long and specially aroubd Shavout. After the Operation Magic Carpet there were no Jews left in the city. The exact place of the tomb has been lost. You can read more about him in this site of Diarna.

This is Ta’izz, in a picture by Rod Waddington for Wikipedia. As it may be still quite complicated to travel to Yemen in a near future, you can also check the wonderful pictures of the city that are available in google maps.

 

“Alternate stanzas are written in Hebrew and Arabic. The poem speaks of angels on high, exile and redemption, exhortation to the soul. The meter is a variant of the so’er (rajaz): -˘˘- -˘˘- – / -˘˘- -˘˘-.” 
To understand this part I had to find more about rajaz. In the book A Cultural History of the Arabic Language, by Sharron Gu, 2013, she explains that: “Most historians agree that there were distinct forms of music in the pre-Islamic Arabian Peninsula that played an important part in the formation of Arabic poetry. Arabic poetry, unlike the literary poetry of many European languages that is written by literary writers, the Arabic poetry was invented originally by Arab soothsayers (kahins). They used incantations of a rhythmic form of rhymed prose known as saj’ and a poetic meter called rajaz. Arab soothsayers were also enchanters and prophets. It was believed that the jinn (supernatural creatures) prompted the verses of the poet and the melodies of the musician and connected music, poetry, and magic.
[…]
Pre-Islamic music derived from the rhythm of the spoken language and it was little more than unpretentious psalming, varied and embroidered by the singer, male or female, according to the taste, emotion, or effect desired. The oldest form of poetical speech was rhyme without meter, saj’, which was defined later as rhymed prose. Out of saj’ evolved the most ancient of the Arabian meters, known as rajaz meter, a measure which is believed to come from the rhythm of everyday desert life in particular, the beat of the steps of a walking camel. The rajaz meter was an irregular iambic cadence usually consisting of four or six beats.”
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“This song, as performed by Bracha Zefira, who sang a setting of one of the melodies by Paul Ben Haim, has been widely known to the Israeli public since the thirties.” 
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Do you want to listen to this mentioned version by Bracha Zefira? Click here: https://soundcloud.com/nationallibrary-of-israel/yfdolmpbdmvm And this lady on the right is Bracha in the 1940s. She will be our protagonist in a future edition.
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 “Joseph Tal and Oedoen Partos also arranged it for choir.”
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Do you want to listen to a choral version? Click here:
https://israel-music-institute.bandcamp.com/track/oedoen-partos-im-ninalu

If i didn’t tell you they are the same song, would you have noticed? I wouldn’t. This violinist is Oedoen, or Ödön, Pártos..

The album includes several versions of the poem, by different artists, and they comment:

“Each performer chooses which stanzas of the complete song suit him or his tradition, and the occasion on which it is performed. He also chooses which melodies to sing, for the sake of variety.”

I want to highlight this part, because it is something similar to what happens in many traditions, including mine, the popular music from Spain, in many of its shapes: there is the concept of styles, that means that the performer has a frame of work, composed by a corpus of melodies (that are just the base and he or she can change, can include other melismata, adapts to the tonality, adapt to the lyrics to say the words in a meaningful way…) and a corpus of stanzas (in the tradition of Spain there are many anonymous stanzas or couplets, that can be chosen according to the will of the performer (who can also create new ones).

With this piece, Im’nin alu, we see how, from the versions from the people, very different between them (you will note this specifically if you listen to the several versions in the album, don’t miss it) performed just for fun or to celebrate, in which the personal will and the circumstances of the moment made each performance different (also the different performances by the same artist), in which the song didn’t have a closed number of stanzas, in which the role of improvisation was high, goes on crystallising in the form of a song. This example is specially interesting because it has produced so many versions and with the time all are much more recognizable as the same song as in the recordings of the album we are talking about. Check more versions:

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Listen to Im Nin’Alu by Shalom Keisar and ensemble from Kiryat Ono 

The notes of the song in the website explain some interesting facts. I explain the words in bold, under the notes:

“Shalom Keisar (NSA studio, 27.1.77; YC 1181), accompanying himself on a drum, with the Kiryat Ono male voice ensemble, sing the first and last stanzas accompanied by hand clapping. The singer opens with the song’s most widely known melody, which was popularized by Bracha Zefira among the Jewish community of Palestine. It is sung in a responsorial manner: the soloist sings the opening hemistich and the choir the closing hemistich. The tawshihִ is sung to another, faster melody. It is usually sung in a responsorial manner, as follows: the soloist sings the first verse, and the choir the second, the soloist sings the second verse and the choir the third. At the end of the song the singers sing a third, slower melody, and a coda-like passage, and then repeat the last two verses at a faster tempo, followed by the blessing Vekulkhem berukhim (You all are blessed).”

The hemistich is a half-line of verse. This term applies to poetic meter with long verses. Between the hemistichs there is a caesura. Remember the schema we have also above: -˘˘- -˘˘- – / -˘˘- -˘˘- There you see the caesura between the hemistichs.

And the tawshih is a type of vocal suite, religious, in Yemeni tradition, related to the qawma (according to the The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music: The Middle East). And what is qawma? This looks like a gymkhana… According to Mahmud Guettat, the qawma from Yemen would be the fasil in Turkey, the wasla in Egypt, the maqam in Irak, el sawt from the countries of the Gulf. So, these are a system of melodic modes. I found Guettat’s explanation mentioned in a work by Sergi Sancho Fibla (Arrels mediterrànies de la música canareva: Reconstrucció de possibles vestigis ancestrals en les cançons populars d’Alcanar).

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Click the picture to listen to the recording:

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Araceli Tzigane | Mapamundi Música 

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MBS with Victoria Hazan, the Sephardic Anatolian voice of fire ?

November 6th, 2020. Shabbat is almost here

And our star today is Victoria Hazan, an extraordinary Anatolian singer who moved to the USA in 1920 and recorded an album, Todas mis esperansas (all my hopes), that is a wonderful legacy. 

Hello! How are you? I hope well. A few days ago there was an earthquake that has been specially destructive in Smyrna. Just by chance I had been listening to Victoria Hazan around that time. She was born very near Smyrna, in Salihli, and settled in Smyrna before moving to the USA. Somehow I found her mentioned while wandering at the Internet.

So, let’s learn more and enjoy the outstanding performance by Victoria Hazan. She has several songs about that kind of passion that drives you crazy and in this one she uses the metaphor of the passion as a fire: I have chosen Me kemi y me enflami and you’ll find the lyrics at the bottom, under the video.

– And, as usual, find the music piece at the bottom –
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Victoria Hazan, the voice of fire

The main facts of the life of Victoria Hazan are quite well know. She was alive until 1995, until she was 99 years old, and there are many pictures of her in different moments of her life, thanks to Maurice Ninio, who I think that was her brother, but I am not sure. In the website SephardicMusic.org there are many pictures, like this one on the left and there is even one of her grave. I have chosen this one, a portrait with a direct and defiant look, by this elegant lady of the sweet and melismatic voice.

She was a singer and a composer and she also played oud. She was born as Victoria Ninio in April 15, 1896, in Salihli, in the province of Manisa, in Anatolia. It is one hour to the East of Smyrna.

In Salihli there is the Sardes Synagogue. According to eSefarad it is “the third oldest Jewish temple known after the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem and the mudbrick in Babylon.” Learn more in this article about five synagogues in Turkey.

This is the recent status of the synagogue of Sardes. I hope it hasn’t suffered much after the latest earthquake. The picture is by Carole Raddato in Wikipedia:

Victoria’s family’s tradition was to be cantors. She married to a hazan, Israel Hazan, from a family of cantors too, and she adopted her husband’s surname and kept is even during her second marriage. In 1915 she moved from Salihli to Smyrna and in 1920, to New York. The marriage with Israel was already there, in 1925. After he died, Victoria married again, with Joe Rosa in 1936.

She became president of the United Sisterhood Benevolent Society in Bronx. She gave concerts in the synagogue, singing and playing lute, singing her songs, with compositions of her own, in Turkish, Ladino, French, Hebrew, Greek and Armenian. We have her recordings thanks to the insistence of the community: for many years after her arrival to the New World, she rejected to record, arguing that she had no money. But she finally accepted and recorded several pieces, that would be released by Kaliphon Records and Metropolitan Records (below you’ll find more information about the record labels).

The selected song, Me Kemi y me Enflami, is dated on 1942. The specific dates of the different recordings are available here. In 2001, Global Village released Todas mis esperansas, with 24 pieces.

I have chosen Me kemi i me enflami, but all the pieces are amazing. You can listen to many others in the blog by Panos Savvopoulos, where these pictures above are from.
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A relevant source for Victoria’s bio has been also: https://www.wikiwand.com/tr/Victoria_Hazan

About the Jewish community of Manisa province

Being the synagogue of Sardes so old, I wondered what was the history of the Jews in that land, in the province of Manisa. According to Mathilde Tagger in this article for SephardicStudies.org: 

Manisa, formerly known as Magnasia or Magnésie, is situated in the North East of Izmir (38°36N 27°26E). A Jewish ‘romaniote’ community existed there from the Byzantine period, praying in the Etz Ha-Hayim Synagogue. After 1492, Jews expelled from Spain settled there, joining a hundred or so romaniote families. These newcomers founded two synagogues: Lorca and Toledo.

Lorca and Toledo are two cities of my country, Spain. Lorca is in the SouthEast, in Murcia region, and Toledo is the city where my company, Mapamundi Cultural SL, is settled. So these stories are very moving for me. It seems there are not Jews nowadays in the province.

About the record labels Metropolitan and Kaliphon

Me-Re record company was created in the early 1940s by Aydin (or Ajdin) Asllan (a poly-lingual Albanian) and the violinist, Nick Doneff. Soon they splittled the company. Aydin made Balkan and Doneff made Kaliphon.
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An aside: If you like old recordings, don’t miss to check the Bandcamp of Canary Records
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Canary Records are nowadays releasing much material from that time and they explain here that Doneff was a Bulgarian violinist. They explain that Ajdin Asllan was born in Leskovik near the present-day southern border of Albania on 1895. He arrived in New York in 1926 and made made a record label called Mi-Re in 1937. After 5 releases he stopped, until 1942, when he joined the Bulgarian violinist born in 1981 Nicola, or Nick, Doneff (he is the violinist in the recording of Victoria Hazan’s song and the picture on the left is he) and relaunched it as Me Re. They stayed together very shortly and, as mentioned, Asllan would make Balkan and Doneff would make Kaliphon, that would be provider of recordings for Balkan. Canary mention that a third label appeared, Metropolitan, but it is not clear who was in charge. If you want to learn more about this, don’t miss this article. The picture is from Discog.

Doneff played with other artists, like, for instance, the singer and oudist Armenian born in Smyrna Marko Melkon Alemserian, who you will enjoy too if you like rebetiko. Here you have an example of their work together. They both played in Victoria Hazan’s album.

Listen to Victoria Hazan in Me Kemi y Me Enflami 

This piece was recorded in 1942. The singer is Victoria Hazan and the musicians are the already mentioned Nick Doneff on violin, Melko Melkon on oud and Garbis Bakirgian on the kanun. Find the lyrics in Ladino and in English below.

 
Click the picture to listen to the recording:

 

Me kemi y me enflami
cuando te vide yo a ti.
En sentirte a ti cantar
me pareses un bilbil.

Ven a mi lado, ven ke te rogo,
ven mas presto tu, biju,
ke vo salir loco.

Ven a mi lado, ven ke te rogo,
ven mas presto tu, ????,
ke vo salir loco.

Tus ojos ke me miran,
el corason me keman.
Con estas miradas tuyas
cuantas almas kemaran?

Ven a mi lado, ven ke te rogo,
ven mas presto tu ????,
ke vo salir loco.

Ven a mi lado, ven ke te rogo,
ven mas presto tu, biju,
ke vo salir loco.

 I burned and became inflamed
when I saw you.
In feeling you sing
you look like a nightingale to me.

Come to my side, come I beg you,
come more quickly, you, jewel,
that I will go crazy.

Come to my side, come on, I’m begging you
come more quickly, you, ????,
that I will go crazy.

Your eyes look at me,
they burn my heart.
With these looks of yours
how many souls will they burn?

Come to my side, come I beg you,
come more quickly, you, ????,
that I will go crazy.

Come to my side, come I beg you,
come more quickly you, jewel,
that I will go crazy.

 

 

The translation into English is mine.

There is a word that I don’t catch and in the original booklet it is not written. It is just written “biju”, from the French “bijou”, but I listen a variation in her singing, that’s why I put the question marks.

 

 

 

 

 

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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.
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From the shtetl to the films: MBS with Yossele Rosenblatt, “The Jazz Singer” and A Yiddishe Momme

October 30th, 2020. Shabbat is almost here

And our star today is Yossele Rosenblatt, cantor born in Ukraine in 1882 and settled in the USA from 1912, where he achieved great success and even participated in the film that would begin the definitive decline of silent films.  

Hello! How are you? I hope well! I have many things to share today. This edition follows the thread of the one about the Great Synagogue at Tłomackie Street (the one of 4th of September, find it here). Over there I mentioned that the singer in the animation video was Yossele Rosenblatt and that I would feature him in a future. That future is today. Learn about him and his fascinating life, here below.

And yesterday I learn about the radio show Polin, done by the renowed Polish translator settled in Madrid Elżbieta Bortkiewicz Morawska (in the picture) for Radio Sefarad, a project by the Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain. It is in Spanish. I think it can be interesting even for the not Spanish speakers because you can check the topics and translate automatically the introductions in text for each of the chapters. She dedicated one of her editions to the Great Synagogue at Tłomackie Street too!

The song we’ll listen today is “A Yiddishe Mame”. Elżbieta is not Yiddishe, but she is a mother as well as an enthusiast of Jewish culture. So I think she will feel specially moved by this recording. I hope you too.

– And, as usual, find the music piece at the bottom –
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Yossele Rosenblatt, a story of success and commitment to one’s beliefs and values

How much money would $100,000 from 1927 be now? That is the amount of money that Rosenblatt was offered by Warner Brothers to co-star with Al Jolson in ‘The Jazz Singer’.

They wanted him to have a relevant role as and to sing in the film Kol Nidrei. It is the prayer that is sang on the eve of Yom Kippur. He felt that it was much too sacred to be used as entertainment and refused the offer.

Nevertheless, he participated in the film, with the payment for a star, even when he only appeared to sing one song. And it was in a not religious frame. The protagonist is in the dilemma of continuing his father’s steps as a chazzan or pursuing stardom in jazz. He attends Rosenblatt’s concert in Chicago. He sings a Yiddish song, not religious, Yahrtzeit Licht, acredited to himself in Jyrics.com. Rosenblatt represents the roots.

Curious about that scene of the film?

Watch it here. If you like it, check also this other recording of the same piece.

In the film, the protagonist, who is the son of a cantor, pursues a career as a jazz singer. Rosenblatt encarnates the roots, the traditions. The attendance to that concert produces many emotions in the protagonist. Could he be making a big mistake by abandoning his roots and following the path of modernity? Rosenblatt might had said yes to that question.

Was Rosenblatt’s Kol Nidrei worth of it? 

For sure it was. He was very popular at the time and Warner Brothers were wise business people. And fortunately we can now hear him singing that prayer, here. Decide yourself!

In Jews, Cinema and Public Life in Interwar Britain, Gil Toffell explains that “Yet whatever actual Jewish audiences made of the representation of the conflict of assimilation that formed the core of the film, the complexity of the drama was not foregrounded in the discourse or events promoting the title to British Jews. In the advertisements for the screening of the film at the Piccadilly Theatre the performance by Rosenblatt was advanced as a key attraction for Jewish audiences. No mention was made to the challenge to tradition by modernity, rather the promotion was positioned to appeal to identifiably conservative Jewish cultural tastes.” How was that…? Money makes the world go round? Even if not for Rosenblatt!

The multiple layers of The Jazz Singer  

The more I read about this film, the more meaningful it seems to be. Irv Saposnik made an amazing work in Jolson, The Jazz Singer, and the Jewish Mother: or How my Yiddishe Momme Became my Mammy, that I have to recommend with all my heart. Why? Because it uses the film to explain broader issues related to the creation of cultural identities. This analysis is useful for Jews and for anybody.

Saposnik explains the role of music, including the piece sang by Rosenblatt, in the film, with their symbolic use related to the roots and the modernity. He explains very nicely about the song we are listening to today. Below you’ll find more about this.

Briefly about his biography

As the star he was, it is easy to find the biography of Yossele Rosenblatt. For a long one, check this or this. For a shorter one, this. But this part will let us enjoy some wonderful pictures and to travel from our chair!

He was born in 1882 in Biela Tserkov. At that time, it seems there was a shtetl there. Nowadays is a little city, less than 90 kms to the South from Kiev. The presence of Jews is still noticeable. There is the great synagogue, used nowadays as a school, and there seem to be more buildings that have had use as synagogues. They are findable in google maps.

The great synagogue in Biela Tserkov looked like this. This picture is dated from some moment between 1895 and 1910. It is in wikipedia and is of public domain. See below its current look:

And this is nowadays, from the street view of google maps. It took me some time to accept that it is the same building. It is. You can learn more about the building, at The Bezalel Narkiss Index of Jewish Art.

 

Very brieftly: Yossele came for a long line of chazzanim. His father was a cantor in Kiev and Yossele became part of his choir. He worked as a cantor in Munkacs (part of Hungary until 1920, currently Ukraine), Pressburg (currently, Bratislava) and Hamburg, from where he tried to escape to the USA without completing his contract of 5 years. He was caught. He would arrive to the USA only in 1912. He was hired inmediately as a cantor in New York and started to record for several record companies. This increased his popularity much. He was offered to be a opera singer but he rejected in order not to abandon the Jewish way of life. He composed many pieces too.

He died in 1933 in Palestine. He was there recording for a film. There, he and his wife had decided to settled definitively over there. One Shabbat, after was recording by the Dead Sea, he had a heart-attack and died at his 51 years old. His funeral was attended by more than 5.000 people (other sources say 20.000). He was buried at the Mount of Olives and his remains continue there.

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Listen to Rossenblat’s rendition of the much popular Yiddish song A Yiddishe Mame

I will quote some paragraphs of the outstanding work by Irv Saposnik mentioned above (read it complete, here), as I wouldn’t ever transmit this deepness about the piece. The other piece mentioned, A Brivele der Mamen, “a little letter for mom”, is this. Find the lyrics of “My Yiddishe Mamma” under the video.

“A Brivele der Mamen” (1907) is only one of many Yiddish songs in which the Jewish mother was used as a reminder of the separation that emigration enforced. Its three stanzas, sung to a plaintive tune, foreshadow what was later to become commingled with nostalgia for the old home. The sadness of separation, the son’s lack of responsibility, the mother’s complaint that in eight years he hadn’t written her one letter, much of which later became comic shtick, was in 1907 no matter for laughter. The experience was too fresh, the pain too acute. Absence may make the heart grow fonder, but the head forgets too soon. […]

“My Yiddishe Mamma” is as expressive of twenties’ sentiment as “A Brivele der Mamen” had been of turn-of-the-century attitudes. Written by Jack Yellen and Lew Pollack in 1925, it became particularly identified with Sophie Tucker, especially after she recorded it in both English and Yiddish versions on two sides of a single record. Two languages for a mixed generation. Side by side, Yiddish and English establish a balance between old and new, between parents and children, between past and future. Parents and children are in transit, and the Yiddishe Momme, while no longer abandoned, is put in her place.

Or perhaps, more accurately places, for the Yiddish and English versions offer different mothers for different audiences. The English Yiddishe Momme is placed in “a humble East Side tenement,” and the singer reaches across “the trails of Time” to recollect the “three flights up in the rear … where my childhood days were spent.” Separation has set in; the singer has grown up, and grown away. The past is remembered with affection, but it remains irretrievable. The Jewish mother, like the old shtetl, lies buried in time.

“My Yiddishe Momme” in Yiddish seems to be a different song. Past and present are intermingled. While the Jewish mother has grown old along with her surroundings, she is still an active presence, still capable of nurturing the world around her. She belongs in her world, and in ours.”

 

Click the picture to listen to the recording: 

 

Ikh vil bay aykh a kashe fregen, zogt mir ver es ken
Mit velkhe tayere farmegen bentcht got alemen?
Men koyft dos nisht fir kayne gelt, dos git men nor umzist
Oon dokh az men ferlirt dos, oy vi treren men fargist
A Tzvayten git men kaynem nit, es helft nisht kayn gevayn
Oy, ver es hot farloyrn, der vays shoyn vos ikh mayn.
A Yiddishe Mame,
Es gibt nisht besser oif der velt
Oy vey vi bitter ven zi felt
Vi shayn in likhtig iz in hoiz ven di mame iz do
Vi troyerig finster vert ven Got nemt ir oif Olam Haboh
In vasser in fayer volt zi gelofn far ihr kind
nisht halten ihr tayer, dos iz gevis di gresten zind
Oy, vi gliklekh un raykh iz der mentsh vos hot
Aza shayne matuneh geshenkt foon G-t,
Nor ayn altichke Yiddishe Mame,
Oy, Mame Mayn!		 I’d like to ask a question—tell me if you know.
God blesses everyone with what cherished possession?
It’s free! You can’t buy it!
And when you lose it, you’ll shed many a tear!
You’ll never get a second one—no matter how hard you cry!
If you’ve already lost it, you already know what I mean!
A Yiddish Mamma
There’s nothing better in this world!
A Yiddish Mamma
Oh! The bitterness when she’s gone!
How nice, how, bright it is at home, when Mother is there!
How sad, how dark it is, when God takes her away!
She would run through water and through fire for her child!
Not to hold and cherish her is a sin!!
How lucky, how rich is he
To have such a beautiful gift given him by God!
Like a dear old Yiddish Mamma
O Mamma mine!

 

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.

Araceli Tzigane | Mapamundi Música 

To know more about our artists, click here.

 

Music Before Shabbat with the Romanian Gypsy “Paganini” who kept Jewish tunes alive

October 23th, 2020. Shabbat is almost here

And a virtuoso Gypsy musician brings us the Jewish tunes of another time from Maramureș: Ion Covaci 

Hello! How are you? At this moment I should be in Budapest. As a manager and booker of world music artists that I am (this is my company), I should be attending WOMEX fair now. It is itinerant and this year it is taking place, but online, in Budapest.

October is the month with more professional events for world music. I want to recover our lifes… In the meantime, there are still some online events that can be inspiring.

I come back to Maramureș region, in the North of Romania, following two previous editions: the one about the zemirot with melody from Sighet and the one about the recovery of Jewish music from Hungary.

The lady in the picture is Peninah Zilberman. I met her thanks to the edition dedicated to the zemirot Asader L’Seudasa with a melody from Sighet, in the North of Romania. Peninah is part of the team of Tarbut Foundation Sighet (FTS) and she answered my email thanking them for their website with the wonderfiul pictures. And we have been in touch since them. I decided to dedicate this edition to the Jewish music of Maramureș when she told me she is will offer an online conference next Sunday. Learn more below.

And, as usual, find the music piece at the bottom. 
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Little by little this bunch of friends is growing. If you like this, share it with your friends, they are more than welcome. Thank you in advance.
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Our keeper of the beauty, Ion Covaci, or Ionu lu’ Grigore, aka “Paganini”

Ionu lu’ Grigore was born in Săliștea de Sus in 1939. He knew the Romanian, Jewish and Ukranian repertoires for weddings, as he used to sing at them since we was a child. He became known as Paganani because of his skills with the violin: like the Genoese violinist of the first half of XIX century, Ionu played a complete concert despite the break of two of the four strings. Depending on where you read the anecdote, they say Paganini’s violin got two or three strings during that concert. Who cares?

What we know for certain is that Ionu has been one of the pillars in which the recovery of Jewish music from Maramureș has been built. Ion Covavi played in some occasions with the folkloric band Grupul Iza, lead by Ioan Pop, with whon he travelled to play in abroad (here they are in France).

Despite all this, he is not on the list of local personalities in Wikipedia. This is the world we are building… I have just added his name in the Romanian version and it has been removed after a few minutes.

This picture is from the blog by Bob Cohen. Thanks to him and to his partners there are unpayable videos like this. And here you can read more about Ion Covaci.

I wondered why is that in Romania the Jewish tunes are kept by the Gypsies, while in Poland they are the Poles not Gypsy the ones who have been the source for the recovery of that legacy? You will understand this question much better if you check this edition about the Jewish music in Poland on the work Kolberg po żydowsku by Andrzej Bieńkowski and his Foundation Muzyka Odnaleziona, and also this edition about the recovery of Hungarian Jewish music by Bob Cohen. Bob and his partners learnt much about the old style of Jewish music from the Romanian Gypsies. In fact, our protagonist of today is mentioned there in that edition.

So, why this difference between Poland and Hungary and Romania, in terms of who has kept the memory of the Jewish tunes? Because of the different role of the local governments in relationship with the nazis. In Poland, that was directly administrated by them, the Gypsies were sistematically murdered and after the II WW there were almost none. In Romania and Hungary, the destruction of Gypsies was in the plan of the nazis but it was not developed in such a sistematic way as with the Jews and the Roma population remained almost the same.

Ion Covaci died in September 2009. There is a very moving obituary in this newspaper, where it is described his funeral.

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Fancy a trip to Săliștea de Sus? Click the picture, there are some streets you can walk in Google Maps street view:
If you are interested on this kind of music, apart from its relationship with Jewish culture, check these channels in Youtube: Fiddle Music of Transylvania, Altmaer, Dumneazu.

About Peninah Zilberman and the event of next Sunday

According to her bio in the website of Tarbut Foundation Sighet, Peninah is Founder & CEO, BA Jewish History, Judaic Teacher (United synagogue of America), Principal of Hebrew After School (Conservative), Director of Holocaust Museum in Toronto, Organizer of National Professional conferences across Canada; Served as Sisterhood President-Adath Israel Synagogue, IGS past Chair Modiin Chapter, Israel.

Peninah is the daughter of Romanian Holocaust survivors. Her mother Sary Walter Z”L was originally from Sighet and her late father from Bucharest.

She was born in Israel and she travels to Sighet often. Her work is motivated by the memory of the Walter family, who lived in Sighet for nearly 200 years before they, along with the vast majority of the Jews of Maramures, were deported to and then murdered in the Auschwitz extermination camp.

Peninah will offer the online conference “Jewish Romania: A century of upheaval and resurgence” next Sunday. Check the details, get your ticket and learn more about her bio, here.

This is the synagogue of Sighet:
Share this with a friend, right from here Share this with a friend, right from here

Enjoy the Gypsy Romanian “Paganini”, unexpected heir of the Jewish musical legacy of Maramureș, Mr. Ion Covaci

Click the picture to listen to the recording:

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.

Araceli Tzigane | Mapamundi Música 

To know more about our artists, click here.

How was Conciertajo.com, the event specially designed for the online context

I illustrate this post with a moment of the Conciertajo, the online live interactive event we made last Saturday with Vigüela for International Labour Organization. Click the picture to see the event. It has been a thrilling success that deserves to be explained in more detail ✌️. I reveal it all for you more below.

Conciertajo.com has been part of LaborArte festival, by the Spanish office of the International Labour Organization (ILO). 

It took place the last Saturday and I think it was a success in various aspects. The main one is that we got to transfer the emotion of the direct contact with the public, to an online environment. How did we get that? There are several features that allowed us to get that:

  • For one month we developed the engagement of the public. We provided them several ways for the participation in the creation of the lyrics. We have been publishing special videos done with lyrics that were sent by the followers or that have been created about the topics that are relevant for them (confinement, health workers, masks, the situation of the cultural workers, the shocking news about our crown…). Check the videos here.
  • We made a contest of stories. The one that won is a portrait of Andrés José, a Colombian immigrant in Valencia, who ends up working as a delivery man on a bicycle to support his family (parents and two younger sisters). The first day he works on that, his little sister is very happy because he comes back home very early: his bicycle has been stolen. Juan Antonio Torres made it in shape of a romance with the zambomba. Check it here.
  • Some more videos were made for media friends, like WorldMusicCentral and Mundofonías.
  • During the event I was presenting, explaining the band the requests and comments from the chat and chatting with the public.
  • Of the repertoire for an event of two hours it was prefixed only the 4 first pieces and the very last one. Between that, that band sang about the topics that the public was asking, using the traditional styles (jota, several variants of fandango, seguidilla, son). For this, we prepared more than 100 new couplets organiced in the main topics of our nowadays and of the field of world of ILO. And the band decided the specific style to apply to those lyrics in that very moment.
  • All this was accompained by a campaign of advertisements in Youtube, Facebook, TikTok and Spotify.
  • The technical part was very professional, the responsible of video was Jaime Massieu and the sound engineer was Toni Quintana. The location is so nice that it looks like a ethnography museum but it is not: it was Juan Antonio Torres’ house in El Carpio de Tajo.

Magazine #28 October’20 – Mera Festival, World Music Lab Italy, a success story and +

Summary ? 

  • Mini interviews with festival manager: András Bethlendi from Mera World Music Festival (continuing the series of interviews about challenges for festivals and about MOST Music participants)
  • In deep with World Music Lab Italy, by Eric E. van Monckhoven
  • Transferring the emotion of the contact with the public to an online environment: our experience of Conciertajo, by Vigüela + Mapamundi. – Don’t miss to read this, because I reveal bellow all we did and I am available for any questions – 
  • News from the charts and sister projects
  • What’s next?

How are you? Until not so many weeks ago I was planining to be in Budapest right now. You too? Instead, I am in my confined city, Alcorcón. This is the week of Womex, a special moment in the year, after Fira Mediterrània. Very sad in these circumstances ?

However, life goes on and, before paying attention to other colleagues’ iniatives, in this edition I illustrate this editorial not with a portrait of me, but with a moment of the Conciertajo, the online live interactive event we made last Saturday with Vigüela for International Labour Organization. Click the picture to see the event. It has been a thrilling success that deserves to be explained in more detail ✌️. I reveal it all for you more below.

Do you want to share any useful experience you have had during this difficult time or another content relevant for our community of the global music?

Contact me. And if you find this interesting, 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.

CURRENT AND FUTURE CHALLENGES FOR FESTIVALS 

This festival that is our focus today is also included in the project MOST, about which I talked in a previous issue. Other interviews with festivals involved in this project are:
And from before, they were also interviews these directors of festivals also included in MOST:

MINI INTERVIEW WITH ANDRÁS BETHLENDI FROM THE MERA WORLD MUSIC FESTIVAL (MERA, ROMANIA) 

You’ll see below an aerial image of the location of Mera World Music Festival, in the Romanian location of Mera, very near to the airport of Cluj-Napoja. I think that picture includes around 1/4 of the village. It is a very little village that you can visit right now in Google Maps street view ?. I am writting this words from a confined city, at least until next Friday. I have never been there in the flesh and I think it is really appealing, a festival that has a global focus and that, at the same time, enhances the value of the local culture, which music is distinctive and captivating.

As the world overcomes this situation, let’s talk to András about their festival, how it has been affected, and let’s wish they will be able to make a full edition in 2021.

Mapamundi Música – What do you search for in an artist when you program?

András Bethlendi –  Méra World Music Festival is an international world music festival with an acknowledged focus on local music. Therefore, on one hand, we are looking for local artists who can play the traditional music from Transylvania or Romania, on the other hand, we are looking for artists from abroad who can play authentic folk music or music inspired from their local musical traditions.

MM – Which are the global objectives of your festival?
AB – We have multiple universal objectives. On the international level, we try to show the rich folk culture of Méra and the region of Kalotaszeg/Țara Călatei to the world. Therefore on this level, we are the global promoters of this region. On a local level, we believe that through our project we can empower the local culture, and we can form the taste of the youngest generation to the benefit of the local community and culture.

MM – What are the most complicated or difficult issues to deal with in your festival?
AB – We are a small festival with a tiny budget, so it is challenging to find those international artists, who are so much attracted by the magic of our barn stage, that decide to participate in our festival despite the modest fee what we can offer.

MM – Which are currently the main challenges for this kind of cultural proposals like yours?
AB – COVID-19 has changed the rules by which cultural management works nowadays. The biggest challenge is to recalibrate our project in a way which makes possible to organise the next edition.

MM – In one sentence, summarize the reason/s to go to your festival.
AB – In Méra World Music while you can get engaged to the local culture of Transylvania in its most pure form, you will also have the opportunity to dance to Latin-American or African beats.

MM – What has happened with Mera 2020 in the current situation of the pandemic?
AB – Because of the global pandemic, the Festival couldn’t be organised in August as we wished originally. Though, in September we organised a lite edition of it, called Méra World Music LITE, with 100 participants per day.

Credits:

  • The portrait of András is one of his facebook profiles, credited to Bethlendi Tamás
  • The logo is from their facebook site
  • The other pictures are from the website of the festival

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

ABOUT WORLD MUSIC LAB ITALY, IN DEEP WITH ERIC E. VAN MONCKHOVEN (MUSIC4YOU)

Eric is a Belgian settled in Sicily, founder of the agency Music4you. He is one of the regulars at Womex and other events, so you might have met him.

The last time we met was in Brussels at the meeting of the European Folk Network, last November. He is the kind of profile with whom I can feel more or less identified: an independent agent working from a country of the South of Europe facing many difficulties and surpassing them with courage.

He contacted me in July with the idea of translating some of the content from Mapamundi Música’s monthly newsletter into the Italian in his new initative: World Music Lab Italy. I welcomed the idea with open arms and the first one has been the interview with Olivier Rey from Babel Music XP, that you can read here in English and now also here in Italian.

I am very happy that Eric wanted to share this content to make it easier for the Italian community of world music. And I though his World Music Lab Italy deserves more attention too. So find here below a little interview about it.

Mapamundi Música – What is WorldMusicLab?
Eric Van Monckhoven – World Music Lab is a combination of two concepts: World Music & Business Lab. Many artists, including those involved with world music (world, folk, roots, trad, ethnic, etc.), do not see their activity as a business. They don’t easily understand that accepting to become an entrepreneur or making a living with their music shall not automatically transform them into greedy capitalists. Very few artists make a living being only “creators”.
If you’re not sponsored by someone or some institution, you need to access the market, distribute your products and services and sell them to be able to pay your bill at the end of the months. This is an integral part of today’s musician job. You can always dream that a label or an agent shall make the work for you, but this will not happen easily, unless you already have some reputation. And when it happens, if you don’t know anything about contracts, sales, production, etc. you might go the wrong way.
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“Many artists, including those involved with world music, do not see their activity as a business.”

The main idea behind World Music Lab is to help artists become their own bosses, get acquainted with the business side of their activity and be able to create a blueprint that works for them. For us this means “education and training”.World Music Lab is still a very small baby. We have to assess the artists’ needs, and also test and validate the idea and concept. It all starts with Italy because I’m based in Sicily.

Mapamundi Música –  Why did it start?
EVM – It started during the covid-19 crisis. In March, I was in lockdown and I saw that I could not go anywhere with my activity as a booking agent. I had to look into a new direction that was not too far from what I’m doing as an agent. By experience, I know that artists do not get proper training in “musician business”. Most of the time, they have good artistic proposals (not always), but they don’t know how to market and sell them. In the end, much of my job has to do with coaching the artists with whom I’m collaborating, give them a blueprint to develop their career, and help them get to the next level.

In Italy, very little is done in such a direction. Of course, I might be wrong because I’m not involved that much with the music sector in Italy. But it looks to me that music schools do not train artists in the music business. There are some master courses at the university level, etc. but the approach is very academic and it’s not for everyone. I’ve always been interested in capacity building and action-learning. Action-learning tackles problems through a process of first asking questions to clarify the exact nature of the problem, reflecting and identifying possible solutions, and only then taking action.

“Much of my job has to do with coaching the artists with whom I’m collaborating, give them a blueprint to develop their career, and help them get to the next level.”

Italy is a big country and there is no true effort to support music creators at large. Some music genres are supported, but when it comes to world music, much is left to the artists themselves and the private initiative. Nothing to compare with what happens in France or Scandinavia, to say something.The year 2017 saw the birth of Italian World Beat (IWB), a new brand and platform to promote the Italian world music sector, in particular at regional and international events like Babel Med Music, Womex, Visa for Music, etc. The idea came from two music professionals who put their own money, contacts, and experience in the project to bring under one roof artists, festivals, venues, labels, etc. representative of the sector. The result was amazing and highly welcome by the international world music community.

However, much work still needs to be done in Italy to strengthen the sector, especially at the “grassroots” level with the artists. World Music Lab-Italy can be seen as a startup project of IWB, even if we have not formalized it yet because of the situation of emergency imposed by the novel coronavirus. But we shall meet soon and see what steps can be taken together to put the project forward.

Mapamundi Música –  What are the services that you offer?
EVM – At this pre-startup stage, we are offering a basic information service through our blog/website (beta version) and facebook page. We also have a monthly newsletter and we have published two mini-guides: the first one deals with the use of VirtualWomex and the second one is introducing the artists to the European showcase festivals, which are good places to market themselves, grow their list of contacts, etc. All the information is available in Italian because the use of English is a real barrier for many Italians.

Mapamundi Música –  What are the future plans?
EVM – We hope to become a training provider for world music artists (both online and offline), with a specific focus on business and digital education, and internationalization (music export). This of course does not mean that we’ll need to create all the courses and learning paths ourselves. We’ll have to build working partnerships with various stakeholders. There are already a lot of valid contents available on the internet produced by artists and professionals on how musicians can run their own business and benefit from various income streams. Here again, the main issue is the language. Most of what is available is in English.

“We’ll have to build working partnerships with various stakeholders.”

But without looking so far, our future plan is to run some workshops in various Italian cities to discuss the project with the potential beneficiaries, scout their needs, collect their ideas, and check their interest. We had planned to run such workshops earlier this year but the covid crisis has forced us to slow down our enthusiasm. And while many things can be done online, I believe strongly in face-to-face meetings.

We are also working on a short introductory course that shall explore some important issues: how the music industry is changing in the digital age? What does that mean for independent artists? How to build a personal brand? How to find a niche and grow a fanbase? Based on the participation in the introductory course, artists could choose to enter a kind of startup acceleration program or more conventional blended education programs on specific topic (music marketing & promotion, production, etc.).

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Mapamundi Música –  Who are you and what else do you do (related to music)?
EVM – I’m originally from Belgium but I feel to be a citizen of the world. For almost 40 years I have helped local communities, social enterprises, non-profit organizations all over the world as an eco-social consultant and grant writer.

Besides that, I have always had a strong passion for music. But I’m not a musician. In every country I visited – in Africa, the Mediterranean, Finland, Canada, Brazil, Indonesia – I’ve been impressed by the diversity and richness of local cultural and musical traditions. I decided to bring my own contribution and started Music4You to promote some artists with whom I have a special feeling and affinity and find them gig opportunities. My motto is “Live Music with Roots”. Of course, this was before Covid-19.

Credits:

  • Portrait of Eric, provided by him
  • World Music Lab Italy logo, from the site at Facebook
  • Banner from the Facebook cover of Musci4you
Forward to a friend right from here Forward to a friend right from here

TRANSFERRING THE EMOTION OF THE CONTACT WITH THE PUBLIC TO AN ONLINE ENVIRONMENT: OUR EXPERIENCE OF CONCIERTAJO, BY VIGÜELA + MAPAMUNDI

In the previous edition I talked about our plan for this online event, Conciertajo.com. It has been part of LaborArte festival, by the Spanish office of the International Labour Organization (ILO). 

It took place the last Saturday and I think it was a success in various aspects. The main one is that we got to transfer the emotion of the direct contact with the public, to an online environment. How did we get that? There are several features that allowed us to get that:

  • For one month we developed the engagement of the public. We provided them several ways for the participation in the creation of the lyrics. We have been publishing special videos done with lyrics that were sent by the followers or that have been created about the topics that are relevant for them (confinement, health workers, masks, the situation of the cultural workers, the shocking news about our crown…). Check the videos here.
  • We made a contest of stories. The one that won is a portrait of Andrés José, a Colombian immigrant in Valencia, who ends up working as a delivery man on a bicycle to support his family (parents and two younger sisters). The first day he works on that, his little sister is very happy because he comes back home very early: his bicycle has been stolen. Juan Antonio Torres made it in shape of a romance with the zambomba. Check it here.
  • Some more videos were made for media friends, like WorldMusicCentral and Mundofonías.
  • During the event I was presenting, explaining the band the requests and comments from the chat and chatting with the public.
  • Of the repertoire for an event of two hours it was prefixed only the 4 first pieces and the very last one. Between that, that band sang about the topics that the public was asking, using the traditional styles (jota, several variants of fandango, seguidilla, son). For this, we prepared more than 100 new couplets organiced in the main topics of our nowadays and of the field of world of ILO. And the band decided the specific style to apply to those lyrics in that very moment.
  • All this was accompained by a campaign of advertisements in Youtube, Facebook, TikTok and Spotify.
  • The technical part was very professional, the responsible of video was Jaime Massieu and the sound engineer was Toni Quintana. The location is so nice that it looks like a ethnography museum but it is not: it was Juan Antonio Torres’ house in El Carpio de Tajo.

NEWS FROM THE CHARTS AND SISTER PROJECTS

Some brief news from some of the world music charts:

  • Transglobal World Music Chart turns 5 years old! Happy birthday to my partners, founders and administrators, Juan Antonio Vázquez and Ángel Romero! And thanks and congratulations to all the panelists! We are 59 people, quite diverse, I think. Nevertheless we have the objective of increasing that diversity, specially from the regions that are still underrepresented.
  • A big change is announced from World Music Charts Europe. After so many years of work, Johannes Theurer passes the baton to Milan Tesař, music director in Radio Proglas, from Brno, in Czech Republic. Congratulations, Milan! 
  • Balkan World Music Chart is now in Facebook. Visit the site here.
About Mundofonías, our monthly favourites are the last albums by Sandeep Das & The Hum Ensemble, Dembo Konte & Kausu Kuyateh and Yukihiro Atsumi. For some weeks now the radio show is been broadcasted in Radio Universidade de Coimbra, in Portugal. It is a big joy to reach more friends in my beloved Portugal. 

WHAT’S NEXT?

Yes, this is the week of Womex so you are more than aware. More dates to write down:

  • On 5th November I will participate in Noam Vazana‘s proyect of interviews in the frame of her Why DIY initiative. I am proud for being considered interesting enough to be in this list of interviewed that includes, between many others, Davide Mancini (check also my interview with him about the festival Musicastrada, here), Minna Huuskonen, Martyna Markowska or Balázs Weyer.
  • Mundial Montreal will host a special edition, online too, on November 23-24. It will be the 10th edition of this meeting / festival.  
  • Before Babel Music XP. The previous online event, wishing that the Babel Music XP in flesh will be possible in March 2021, will take place on November 26-27. Remember that there is an interview with Olivier Rey from Babel Music XP, here.
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Music Before Shabbat with Suliman the Great, but the one of XX century!

October 16th, 2020. Shabbat is almost here

And the Yemenite music, the enchanting sound that is the mix of so many scents, with Suliman the Great and his family, will accompany us in the path to Shabbat. 

How are you? Today there is not a festivity (or… not yet!). I hope all this special time has been fruitful, inspiring, full of reflection and growth for you.

Today I bring you the result of my wanderings in Youtube. Our protagonist is an artist that is not characterized by humility. Well, it is not true: he was not the one who proclaimed himself as “the great”. But it wouldn’t have mattered: how would it matter when you are an amazing artist and the patriarch of a saga of artists, one of which would be the first winner of your country of the Eurovision Song Contest?

I wouldn’t have been able to make this edition without the support of Igal Gulaza Mizrahi ?, the leader of the band  Gulaza . I got this picture from his Facebook. It was done by Leat Sabbah. There is no info about this Suliman in English at the Internet and Igal gave me some relevant tips that allowed me to start the search in Hebrew websites.

Learn more below and, as usual, find the music piece at the bottom.

One last thing before we get into the flour: if you like this, share it.
That’s all I ask you. Thank you in advance.
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Who was Suliman the Great?

? This wonderful picture is from the page of the magazine GivatayimPlus, where you can find some more. Givatayim was the city where the family settled.
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To make this portrait I have used several sources:
– the mentioned page of GivatayimPlus,
– his profile in Geni.com
– the newspaper Mako
– the newspaper XNet
– the brief explanation that helped me to start the search, by Igal Gulaza Mizrahi, who told me:
.

“Suliman the Great was the son of parents who immigrated from Yemen. He was popular in our country in the past because he sang songs of the Land of Israel, songs of shepherds, and songs of Bedouin (which the immigrants from Russia loved so much). So they called these songs : “songs around the fire.” He also sings Yemeni. All his children were singers. The most famous is Yizhar Cohen (the first Israeli to win the Eurovision Song Contest in first place, in 1978).” 

The song that won Eurovision was A-Ba-Ni-Bi. I don’t know if you know it, but in Spain it was suuuuuuper famous and everybody still knows it and there are many artists that have sang it with Spanish lyrics. This was the original performance at the contest.

Igal sent me the link to the Wikipedia in Hebrew too, where I learnt the real name of Soliman was Shlomo (that, by the way, are the same name) and the surname was Cohen.

So, Shlomo Cohen, or Suliman the Great, was born in 1921 in Tel Aviv, Israel. He married Sara Cohen. She was born in Yemen, near Sanaa, and her parents moved to Israel when she was 6 months old. The way would take months. It was done part by foot, and part in a British postal boat. After the arrival, the family faced many difficulties too. Note they entered the land when Israel as a state was not existing yet. There was a period of much uncertainty and violence. The father died when Sara was 10 years old. Her mother had to work from sunrise to night. She explains her life quite deeply in this interview. Sara and Shlomo met at very young age and they got married when she was 16 years old.

How did they become artists?

It was not premeditated. During his attendance at the army (note this was still during the Mandatory Palestina, with the land administrated by the British) the men used to gather around a fire, telling tales and singing songs. Shlomo soon stood out as a singer. He was given the nickname of Suliman the Great by one of this colleagues. The guys proposed him to request money for the performances. So it started with little expectations. And they were requested soon for many and many more places to perform.

Sara was a singer with Suliman, and a great one too! And they had four kids, who became singers and they all entered the band: the boys, Hofni, Pinchas and Izhar Cohen, and the girl, Vardina Cohen. They settled in Givatayim. Not everything was easy in their lifes. Sometimes they didn’t have enough to buy the essential furniture, but an accordion, a guitar and the personal music lessons from the father were never missing.

They recorded two albums: “30 years singing around the fire with Suliman the Great”, with 25 pieces, in 1978, and Singer of the Land with Suliman the Great” in 1994. Don’t miss to see Shlomo and Sara in this live performance at the TV. The picture above is from that performance.

Shlomo died in 2009 because of a kidney disease. It is said that he was singing even in the way to the hospital. About Sara, she was alive at least until August 2019, when the interview at XNet was done. I haven’t found any information about after. All the information about them is in Hebrew. I would thank any data. Blessed machine translators, by the way…

Who was the previous Suliman the Great?

According to Thoughtco, Suleiman the Great, or Suleiman the First:

“(November 6, 1494–September 6, 1566) became the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire in 1520, heralding the “Golden Age” of the Empire’s long history before his death. Perhaps best known for his overhaul of the Ottoman government during his reign, Suleiman was known by many names, including “The LawGiver.”

His rich character and even richer contribution to the region and the Empire helped make it a source of great wealth in prosperity for years to come, ultimately leading to the foundation of several nations in Europe and the Middle East we know today.”

You can learn much more about his life and achievements, here. It is very interesting. Note there is a direct relation between Suliman’s reign and Yemen: in 1538 took Aden from the Portuguese and set a base to continue the attacks against the Portuguese, who were trying to control parts of India. This was the beginning of a period of conflicts between the Ottoman and the Portuguese.

Medley of Yemenite songs, by Suliman the Great and family 

Igal Gulaza explained me which are the songs in this wonderful medley and recommended me to check this website of the National Library of Israel to learn more about the pieces. So I will make a little summary about each of the pieces.
  • The singer opens with “Dror Yikra” (with Yemenite melody). This is one of the best known and most common Shabbat songs in all Israeli communities over the generations. This is probably the first song written especially as a song for Shabbat, and not as a piyyut intended to be included in prayer or in the synagogue. The song itself is about today’s Sabbath as freedom and spiritual redemption for humans and the world. The author of the piyyut is Dunash ibn Labrat, a 10th century poet and linguist from Spain (note Spain was not a estate or country yet), a student of R. Saadia Gaon who moved to Spain where he worked.
  • After that, they move on to Moroccan piyyut “Shalom Leben Dodi“. This is a piyyut written by Shlomo Ibn Gabirol, one of the greatest poets of Spain in XI century. There is a dialogue between the people of Israel and God, represented as, on many occasions in the piyyutim, by two lovers.
  • In third place, they sing a Yemenite piyyut, “Im Nin’Alu” (Yemeni melody). A central song for celebrations in the tradition of Yemeni Jews. It is composed by seven stanzas, alternating Hebrew and Arabic. It was written by seventeenth-century Rabbi Shalomon Shabazi. It is very popular specially thanks to the versions by Ofra Haza. I have found some other renditions of this song and I will come back with it in a near future.
  • And returns to finish again with “Shalom Leben Dodi“.
Click the picture to listen to the recording:

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Araceli Tzigane | Mapamundi Música 

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