Tag Archives: Jewish Music

World Music Central interviews Jako el Muzikante

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

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

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

Read the complete interview here.

MBS back to 1497 and a tragic story in the sweetest voice: Bienvenida Aguado

24th July 2020 – Shabbat is almost here

And we come back to the eternal Bienvenida Aguado and this tragic story, kept alive since 1497 in the Sephardic diaspora 

Hello! How are you? In this occasion we come back to the Sephardic legacy, with a lady that was already our protagonist in this edition of MBS. One of my very favourite female singers, Bienvenida Aguado, born in Çanakkale, Turkey, in 1929, settled in Israel from 1979 and passed away in 2016. I hope you’ll enjoy her unbelievable melismata and the sweet timbric of her voice.

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

 

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The greatest female singer of the Sephardi-Turkish style

There is not much information about Bienvenida Aguado, as she was not a chazzan, neither a professional singer.  But we are lucky to have a bunch of recordings in audio and in video, made mainly by Susana Weich-Shahak. This picture is from one of the albums released with those recordings.

Bienvenida was born in Turkey and, despite that she moved to Israel in 1979, she returned to her native land every Summer, according to the booklet of the album Judeo-Spanish songs from the Eastern Mediterranean. Bienvenida Aguado and Loretta Gerassi.

Bienvenida sang both in Judeo-Spanish and in Turkish. Here you have an example of her singing in Turkish.

The song about the tragic story of the Duke of Gandía, murdered in his 19 years old

According to the booklet of the aforementioned album, written by the wonderful Edwin Seroussi, “the medieval Spanish romance continued its existence in the Sephardi oral tradition with significant modifications while retaining themes and the major structural characteristics of the Hispanic genre: lines of sixteen syllables (two hemistiches of eight syllables each), assonant rhymes and melodies of four short phrases covering two lines (four hemistiches) in forms like ABCD (like in this piece) or ABCDCD”.

The event mentioned in this song dates back to 1497 and tells the story of the murder of Juan de Borja y Cattanei, II Duke of Gandía (he is the man in the portrait). He was stabbed and his body was thrown to the river in Rome, when he was only 19 years old. The last time he was seen alive was in a place called the square of the Jews.

He was the firstborn favorite son of the pope Alexander VI and his preferred lover, Vannozza Cattanei, and brother of Cesare Borgia.

There are several hypothesis about the reason: the jealousy one, according to which his younger brother Jofré killed him because Juan was his wife’s lover, and the political one, that blames Cesare, who would take Juan’s place in the heart and the political plans of the Pope, their father. But, so far, this is an unsolved case and many other possibilities, like a punishment by enemies of their family, make also sense.

The song explains how the body of the Duke was found in the river by some poor fishermen. With no doubt, he was a rich and important person, because of the clothes he had. They though he was the son of a king. He had a ring in his finger that would make one hundred poor become rich. And the son of Alexander was been search…

If they returned him alive to his father, he would make them noble, and if they returned him dead, he would give them some presents.

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Click the picture to listen to La muerte del Duque de Gandía by Bienvenida Aguado:

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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Shabbat Shalom.

Araceli Tzigane | Mapamundi Música

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

May you always find the light in your path.

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

The brave blind girl who turned into more than a little queen: Reinette l’Orainese

26th June 2020 – Shabbat is almost here

And on this occasion we will enjoy the outstanding singer, composer and oudist Reinette l’Oranaise, born in 1918 in Tiaret, Algeria.

I discovered this artist while learning more about my much appreciated singer and pianist Maurice El Medioni. He has collaborated with Reinette on many occasions. About Maurice, and also about his uncle, Saoud l’Oranaise, I will come back in future editions of MBS, as they are also benchmarks of the Jewish music from the North of Africa. In this meantime, it is the turn for this superb artist that I think deserves a prominent position in the Olympus of music.

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The brave blind girl who turned into more than a little queen

Reinette’s life could have had the same destination as Saoud’s: she could have ended her days in Sobibor. But no. Her fate was another. Her life continued until she died in Paris in 1998. In this picture, from the blog Ben Zaken Descendance, Maurice El Medioni is with her. He is alive and 91 years old.

· At the bottom you’ll find the video with her voice ·

Reinette, whose real name was Sultana Daoud, was born in 1918 in Tiaret, 220 kms to the East from Oran, in Algeria. She was the daughter of a Morrocan rabbi.

The infection of smallpox made her blind from 3 years old. But it did not prevent her study music with the mentioned Saoud El Medioni. According to Gharamophone, Maurice sais the little Sultana was Saoud’s first pupil.

The young Sultana learnt to play darbouka as well as oud  that, at that time, was an instrument exclusive for male performers. She also learnt also many pieces from the Arab Andalousi legacy, of which she is considered one of the referential keepers, without whom many pieces would just have got lost. This is especially thrilling for me, as the land where I am settled and from where I am writing to you now was that Al Andalus, that land where that music took its first shape, the music she would play and sing five centuries after the Moorish and the Sephardic Jews were expelled from.

This picture is from the same blog as the one above –>

Reinette and Saoud were inseparable. She was his taliba, his pupil, and she used to sing in his cafe in the Derb, Oran’s jewish quarter. In 1938, with the shaykh, the master, she moved to Paris, where he was going to set up a cafe in Montmartre. But he would send her back to Algeria very soon, encouraging her to make her name in her country. He did well. In January 1943 the German army, after the Operation Torch, made a roundup of Jewish in Marseille’s port and deported Saoud and his 13 years old son Joseph to Drancy camp and later to Sobibor, where they would be murdered.

If you want to know more about the Jewish musicians from the North of Africa, check the work Jews, Music-Making, and the Twentieth Century Maghrib, by Christopher Benno Silver.

What happened with Reinette back in Algeria?

Back in Algeria, her popularity started to rise. She would perform regularly in Radio Alger, she joined the female orchestra of Meriem Fekkai and she would collaborate with the most relevant musicians at that time. But in 1962, after the independence of Algeria, as well as more than one hundred thousand Jews, she had to leave the country and moved to France. There, she performed for the Jewish community from the North of Africa.

Only 23 years after her exile in France, she would get some attention from the media. According to the beautiful obituary by Philip Sweeney, some journalist from the newspaper Liberation realized about her. This would rekindle her sweetest moments. She would perform again in great theatres, she would be admired and she would end her days recognized as a cultural ambassador of her country, Algeria. 

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Click the picture to listen to Reinette l’Oranaise:

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

Shabbat Shalom.

Araceli Tzigane | Mapamundi Música

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

May you always find the light in your path.

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

MBS with a super star of the Yiddish films from the 30s

19th June 2020 – Shabbat is almost here

And in this occasion we will enjoy the voice of one of the best singers of the History: Moishe Oysher, spellbinding both in popular music and in liturgical singing.

I hope you are well! I learnt about this artist when I started to search for cantors and I come back to listen him again and again: he is Moishe Oysher. 

While searching for facts about his bio, I realiced that I consider Moishe Oysher as a star but that his niece Marilyn Michaels may be even more famous. The Oyshers came from a family of at least six generations of cantors. Apart of Moishe and his niece Marilyn, his syster Fraydele, Marilyn’s mother, was also a recognized singer. You can listen the ladies here. 

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Poignant cantor, Yiddish cinema star and ‘Kosher heart throb’

Moustache is often a good idea. With this outfit, that defiant gaze and that outstandingly passionated way of singing, I can understand why Moishe became popular.

 

· At the bottom you’ll find the video with his voice ·
This picture is from the film Der Zingendiker Shmid (The Singing Blacksmith), directed by Edgar G. Ulmer, based on the play Yankl der Shmid, by David Pinski. Find here a very interesting documentary about the film.

Moishe was born in Lipcani in 1907, that nowadays is in Moldava. But at the time of his birth, Lipcani was part of Khotin district of Bessarabia guberniya of Russian Empire. With the birth of the state of Moldava, the river Prut that bathes the city would be the natural border with Romania. The border with Ukraine would be also very near, few kilometres to the North.

Today, Google Maps shows in Lipcani the place of the church of the Seventh-day Adventists and also of the Jehova Witnesses. The pressence of Jewish is kept thanks to the thrilling project of repair and documentation of the Jewish cemetery, started in 2013. Before the II World War, many of the inhabitants of the city were Jews. In 1941, they were deported to Brichany and Transnistria. Clic the picture if you are interested in a documentary about Lipcani with testimonies of survivors. In 1952, the Lipcani quarter would be buildt in the city of Ramat Gan, at the East of Tel Aviv.

But the young Moishe wouldn’t have to experience the terror. His destiny was another. From a very young age, he was captivated by the magic of the stage and started acting in theatre as soon as possible. In 1921, a 15 years old Moishe travelled to Canada to join his father, who emigrated to America when he was a kid. He was left in Lipcani, where he would get the spell of the music from both of his grandfathers.

Once in Canada, he joined the Actors’ Union in 1924 and started to work. The following years, he would move to USA, he would marry Florence Weiss, who would be co-starring some films with him (watch them singing together, here), he travelled to Latin America with his own company and, after his return in 1932, all the shows at the theatres had already done the castings. He was finding no job… but the time of the High Holidays was coming: he was luckily hired as chazan for the High Holidays at the First Roumanian-American congregation. His style keeping the prayers of Bessarabia, would enchant the public, as he does nowadays.

And what about the song?

There are many recordings by Moishe Oysher available. I selected this one of a cantorial melody that talks about the reconstruction of the Temple. It was composed by another chazan, Israel Schorr, born in 1886 in the Polish Galitzia, about who I will talk longer in a future MBS issue.

Oysher’s rendition of Sheyibaneh Bet Hamikdash is a 6 minutes joy of dynamic development in which his voice and creativity scale the greatest heights of artistry. Enjoy.

Clic the picture to listen Sheyibone Beit Hamikdash by Moishe Oysher:

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

Shabbat Shalom.

Araceli Tzigane | Mapamundi Música

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

May you always find the light in your path.

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

MBS with a piyyut sang by Yemenites in 1957 in Israel, recorded by a Bengali ethnomusicologist: Deben Battacharya

12 June 2020 – Shabbat is almost here

And in this occasion we will enjoy a mesmerizing old recording of a Yedid Nafshi, dating from 1957, from the recordings made in Israel by the Bengali ethnomusicologist Deben Battacharya.

I hope you are well! I want to ask you something. If you like this, please share it with your friends. It is all I could want with this, to reach more people with these musics that captures the History of our civilization. Under the video you have a button to sign up.

In the last edition we payed attention to a contemporary artist, David Krakauer, and we talked about current events. But I can’t hide my addiction to the old music. That’s why I feel so thankful to people like Deben Battacharya. In 1957, he spent 2 months in Israel, recording the different people that gathered there from so many origins. In Yish’i, between Jerusalem and Ashdod, he meet the Yemenite community.

The recordings by Deben Battacharya in Israel 1957

This portrait of Deben is from the booklet of a collection of 4 albums with those recordings, that was released by Westminster in 1959 under the name of “In Israel Today“. This recording of Yedid Nafshi is also included in a much newer and easier to find compilation, released in 2014 by ARC Music (whose work of re-editing and disseminating Battacharya’s work is also outstanding), under the name of Music of the Oriental Jews from North Africa, Yemen & Bukhara. You can find more info about this compilation, here. It contains more outstanding beauties so I might come back to this album in the future.

In website The World Jukebox, you can also find information about the different albums released with those recordings as well as a brief information about Deben and his trip to Israel. And if you want to know more about Deben Battacharya, there is a large interview made by his friend Kevin Daly, here.

The recording of Yedid Nafshi is accredited to Nissim Matari (even though you’ll hear two different singers) of whom there are no references apart of this recording. But the booklet of the edition of 1959 explains that Yish’i “was founded in 1950 to house some of the Yemenites who had arrived to Israel during one of the largests airlifts in the world, known in Israel as “magic carpet”“. Deben met the settlers at the end of their day’s work. Then they moved to the village hall, where all the inhabitants, of all ages, men and women, gathered. Deben would edit 6 pieces in the collection of 4 albums, with the recordings of that evening. Let’s enjoy the result.

Clic the picture to listen Yedid Nafshi by Nissim Matari:

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

Shabbat Shalom.

Araceli Tzigane | Mapamundi Música

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

May you always find the light in your path.

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

MBS. David Krakauer’s special voice message for you + 3 minutes of musical spell

5 June 2020 – Shabbat is almost here

And in this turbulent times, we are together to reflect and enjoy. Today, Mr. David Krakauer, the wondrous clarinetist from New York, provides us an amazing tune and a heartfelt message, specially for us as recipients of Music Before Shabbat. 

I feel so thankful to David that took a moment in this turbulent moments, specially for USA and for his city, New York, to send us a special message of good wishes and solidarity against racism.

The inspiration that a black musician provided him for creating an amazing composition is even more meaningful in these days. 

Listen David’s message, here

David Krakauer’s Klezmer à la Bechet (feat. Nicky Parott in the bass) 

I love the clarinet in klezmer. How not? A good clarinetist of klezmer makes the instrument talk, laugh and cry in an unpredictable flow that caresses your soul. 

The “à la Bechet” refers to Sidney Bechet, a black composer, clarinetist and saxofonist from New Orleans, born in 1897 with an innate talent for music that would develope from a very young age. He is widely known, but if you want to learn more about his biography, check for instance this. And you can listen him playing clarinet here. David Krakauer calls Bechet his “teacher he never met”, as he explains in this interesting interview.

And David Krakakuer? Well, he is also a master, composer and clarinetist, recognized as one of the best clarinetists on planet Earth, with a strong career both in modern klezmer and in classical music.

David was born in 1956 in New York, where he lives. I mentioned him in this edition, related to Meshuge Klezmer Band and David’s initiative Music from the winery. So, apart of his own career, David provides dissemination of the work of other artists too.

David started in classical music and recovered the music of his ancestors in his early 30s, when he became curious about his ancestors. His grandparents arrived to the USA from Eastern Europe at the end of XIX century and, after the religious prosecution they had suffered, they decided to leave all that behind and to talk only English.

Two generations after, as David explains in this other interesting interview, that tradition was lost at the USA, but the people started to want that music for weddings, that music that the old people of that time had listened when they were kids. That was the beginning of the revitalisation of klezmer. You can check David’s website for more details about his career and projects.

Clic the picture to enjoy the outstanding David Krakauer with this piece from the album A New Hot One:

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

Shabbat Shalom.

Araceli Tzigane | Mapamundi Música

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

May you always find the light in your path.

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

Music Before… Shavuot! ? With nouba Raml Maya

28 May 2020 – Shavuot is almost here

Yes! This week this message reaches you one day before because Shavuot begins tonight. Let’s start to create the atmosphere for this time for study and reflection with a piyyut sang on nouba Raml Maya.

In this occasion I have to thank once more the team of Darké Abotenou as the piece that accompanies us today is from their Youtube channel.

Once again the Sephardic legacy has the lead role in this diggest. Not the Eastern one, but the North African, with a piyyut sang on the nouba or makam?Raml Maya.

What is a makam? Very basically, in the Arabic, Persian, Turkish… music a makam is a scale, like a guide for performance, that defines a mood.
And what is a nouba? A nouba is a collection of chained pieces, like a suit with different parts and those parts are called mîzân.

The concept of nouba (also written as nawba) is deeply related to the Andalusi classical music and to Ziryab, musician in the court of Abd al-Rahman II in Cordoba in the IX century. He came from Persia and he put the seeds for this music to develope during the following centuries. The noubas developed in the North of Africa and nowadays there are kept eleven noubas in Morocco and sixteen in Algeria. In the web site Hazanout.com, dedicated to the hazanout in Morocco, they are mentioned 16 and the terms of makam and nouba are both used without further clarification.

? Special announcement: later today, 28th of May at 17h (Central European Time), Yan Delgado and me will make an interview with Jako el Muzikante, who will talk in Ladino and I will translate into English. Check here in advance ?

Where does my turmoil comes from? Let me explain. 

The Raml Maya is a nouba of which you can find many renditions of its parts (note that a complete nouba with all its parts can last six or seven hours) by artists of Andalusian music, like this or this. This recording that we will listen today is named Makam Raml Maya and you can listen at the beginning of the recording how Shavuot is mentioned and the piece is announced as “makam”. So my inference is that in the last years the terms of makam and nouba are been used indistinctly at least in the context of the sang piyyutim. Any further clarification about this would be really appreciated! In the meantime, let’s continue with what is clear like water: Shavout starts tonight and we have this beautiful piyyut (the lyrics are from the Machzor) to listen to warm up. 

Clic the picture to enjoy the piyyut for Shavuot:

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

Shavuot sameach

Araceli Tzigane | Mapamundi Música

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

May you always find the light in your path.

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

Music Before Shabbat, with Izak Algazi Efendi. A declaration of crippling love ?

15 May 2020 – Shabbat is almost here

Enjoy with Izak Algazi, born in Izmir in 1889. Let’s listen his “Reina de la Grasia”, queen of the grace, a recording from 1929, that is a declaration of a crippling love.

I first learned about Izak Algazi from Jako el Muzikante, who told me about this hazzan after a conversation about Izak Maçoro, who was our star some MBSs ago. 

So, after three editions with klezmer, I return to the Sephardic heritage and to some old music. Izak Algazi was mentioned quite recently in Ladinokomunita, a fascinating email group with participants discussing in Ladino, some natives of the languaje and other people that have learnt it, many of them quite devoted to the continuity of the languaje. They mentioned the presence of a street called Algazi in Izmir, name in his honour.

Izak Algazi was very recognized for his artistry during his life. He was the son of another well-known hazzan from Izmir, Salomon Algazi. Izak had a brilliant career in Turkey, he made many recordings for several record companies and even Mustafa Kemal, before becoming Atatürk, gave him an autographed Quran as a present.

Algazi left Turkey in 1933, as the chances for a Jewish to develope any position in public life started to dissapear in the process of turkification. He settled in Paris for 2 years to complete his rabbinical studies and moved to Montevideo in 1935, because he was invited to join the Sephardic Synagogue. Professor Edwin Seroussi, who knows his biography from at first-hand, has helped me to understand a bit better the situation that caused these events, so I thank him very much.

You can find a list of his recordings on SephardicMusic.org, website, where it is mentioned that he recorded this song in 3 occasions: 1909, 1912 and 1929. Below you can hear the last one. In this same link you can read a brief bio.

And what about the song of crippling love?

By the way, I have to thank Joshua Cheek for helping with the term of “crippling” and  some more tips of the English languaje. And I said it is a song of crippling love, because of the lyrics. And it is curious because Izak Algazi’s wife’s name was Reina!!! And reina means queen. The questions is that the lyrics say:

Reina de la grasia
Madre de la bivez
Onde ke te tope
Por verte otra vez.
Vo murir, vo murir
Si tu mas non te vez
 Queen of the grace
Mother of the life
Where could I found you
to see you once more.

I’m going to die, I’m going to die
if I don’t see you again

I wonder if Reina made him a lot of “love sorrows” before getting married and having their three kids. Anyway, with sorrows or not, let’s enjoy the amazing voice and the almost unbelievable melismata of Izak Algazi:

Clic the picture to enjoy Reina de la Grasia,
by Izak Algazi:

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

Shabbat Shalom.

Araceli Tzigane | Mapamundi Música

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

May you always find the light in your path.

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

 

Music Before Shabbat, with Meshuge Klezmer Band. And I must confess…

8 May 2020 – Shabbat is almost here

I must confess that, around 20 to 16 years ago, klezmer music was my favourite music style of the world. When you grow and learn, you stop doing that kind of categorical assertions…

I discovered this piece when it was released in 2003 and I have to accept that, 17 years after, it still blows my mind. 

Meshuge means crazy in Yiddish. And Meshuge Klezmer Band is a band from Verona, Italy. After many years without news, I got to find the violinist, Maria Vicentini (grazie!), in Facebook, to check if the band is still active. Yes, they are. I am linking her profile in her portrait, in case you wanted to contact them (By the way, there is a Meshouge Klezmer Band too, from Bordeaux, France, also active. They are two different bands).

Portrait of Maria Vicentini, violonist of Meshuge Klezmer Band

Find below the link to listen their Der Alternative Bulgar. It is their outstanding rendition of the very popular Der Alter Bulgar (the bulgar of the old time), of which you can find many other approaches by artists like Itzkhak Perlman, Quartet Klezmer Trio or Hester Street Troupe.

But, what is “bulgar”?

Bulgar is a danceable klezmer music style. It’s background must be traced from the Bessarabian dance style under the name of bulgărească, documented in the first half of XIX Century. The style would develope after the contact of professional klezmorim from hereditary caste with Gypsy professional musicians. From there, it spreaded as the klezmer bulgarish to parts of Eastern Ukraine.From the last decades of XIX Century, many klezmorim emigrated to the USA and the style started to be identified as a danceable klezmer style shared between musicians from different regions. It took its definite shape in New York between 1920 and 1950, with the work of professional musicians (like Naftule Brandwein, that was our star two weeks ago) and the term bulgar finally epitomized the repertoire of dance music at the USA (but not at all in Europe), according to Walter Z. Feldman (after his work of 1994, that is really advisable, Bulgărească/Bulgarish/Bulgar: The Transformation of a Klezmer Dance Genre, and I just made a super reduced summary).

Back to Meshuge Klezmer band, they released three albums: Dreild (2003), Treyf 1929 (2005) and Musiker! (2008). They were chosen by David Krakauer for his compiltaion Music from the Winery. Der Alternative Bulgar is in their first album. Listen by clicking below. And have a great Pesach Sheni Shabbat!

Clic the picture to enjoy the music of Meshuge Klezmer Band

Meshuge Klezmer Band

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

Shabbat Shalom.

Araceli Tzigane | Mapamundi Música

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

May you always find the light in your path.

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

Music Before Shabbat. A story of family love with Ramzailech

1 May 2020 – Shabbat is almost here

And finally tomorrow we can go out and have a little walk in Spain! Dance with me and celebrate with Lidiya Freilech by the fresh klezmer rock band Ramzailech. This is a story of family love.

After 7 weeks of strict confinement in Spain, finally tomorrow we will be able to go out for a walk, in 1 km around our houses. I can made an appointment with my parents in the middle of the way and say hello without hugs and with masks. Our houses are 1,8 kms far, how lucky! I wish the situation of the whole world will improve little by little soon and we can recover our lifes.

In the meantime, join me in the joy. In 2012 my Facebook friend Hava Rabach-Mascarenhas sent me the link to the video of Lidiya Freilech by the Israeli band Ramzailech. Find it below. The piece has a superb evolution, it is a continuous surprise, enjoy its more than 5 minutes of much more than klezmer.

The band is active and I have just asked them what is this piece about. So, Lidiya is the mother of the clarinetist of the band, Gal Klein (in the picture, without glasses, the other man is the co-founder, Amit Peled). He made the piece for her 50th birthday.

Lidiya’s family is from what is today Ukraine and, what at that time, was the URSS. From 1945 to 1970 they were refused by the government to go to Israel. Finally they got to move and she is settled in Israel nowadays. Gal was born there. I am so thankful for all this background about the piece! In another MBS we will listen his other project, Di Gasn Trio.

Before ending, I want to announce the initiative of the restless team of Sephardic Stories: Sephardic Collection, in which they are producing new contents and interviews, that you can find in their Youtube channel. Don’t miss a thing: follow their FB page to be updated. Next Thursday they will have a live interview with the band Al’Fado.

 

Clic the picture to enjoy the music of Ramzailech:

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

Shabbat Shalom.

Araceli Tzigane | Mapamundi Música

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

May you always find the light in your path.

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