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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