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.
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.
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 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.
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
Love, love, love… that tearing feeling that drives us so crazy, is again the topic of today’s piece. A song about the quest to find the lady of his dreams, sang by Jako el Muzikante
In this occasion we will enjoy a very recent recording with Jako el Muzikante, that will take us back to Izak Algazi’s time before he moved to France (check the previous MBS, here).
As announced previously in another MBS, the friends from Sephardic Stories, that lead the Gibraltar World Music Festival, during the lockdown started the initiative Sephardic Collection, to support the work of the artists in this difficult time. In this frame, last Thursday it was premiered the video of this issue of MBS, that you can see below. ??
? Special announcement: next Thursday 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 ?
The song about the quest of the perfect lady
In the lyrics of this song, Onde que tope una ke es plazyente? (where would I find a pleasant one), a man wonders where would he find the woman of his dreams, one that he liked, slim, graceful… and that thinks before she speaks! He will wait for her many years.
According to the book-CD “Ven al Luna Park”, by Jako el Muzikante, Jak Mayesh “on the 8th of September of 1942 he recorded his voice for this song for a record of the “The Jack Mayesh Phonograph Record Co. label, accompanied on the oud by K. Bozajain.”
The book-CD also explains that Mayesh recorded the song again in 1948 and that it exists also a version of this song in the oral tradition, sang by Roza Berro. “Ven al Luna Park” includes also some brief biographical infos about Jak Mayesh, who was born in Kushadashi in 1899, a city by the Aegean sea, that now belongs to Turkey. He moved to USA in 1929, served as a singer in the most important Sephardi synagoges and also stablished a business of wholesaling flowers. What happened with this business? You can learn it in the book-CD ?
The recording in which Jako el Muzikante is based for his rendition is in an album from the collection of Jakob Michael and it can be found in the mentioned book-CD, Ven al Luna Park, by Jako el Muzikante, available nowadays in most of the online shops and digital platforms.
And I know this song is specially appreciated by my friend Fernando, who will receive this message in Krakow, that I hope to be again soon, when all this awfulness ended!
?One more announcement: if you understand Spanish, you can listen the interview with Jako, done by Marcelo Benveniste for Radio Sefarad and Radio Jai. Listen here ?
Clic the picture to enjoy Onde que tope, by Jako el Muzikante:
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
Enjoy with Jako el Muzikante and a piece about the everydayness, hoping to recover ours soon: Madam Gaspard and her visit to the market.
I hope you have had a great Pesach, despite the situation. Here we are in confinement for 5 weeks now and, even though we can go to the grocery stores, the feeling of everydayness, with the latex gloves, the masks and the extra spacing, has gone.
The song for this occasion talks about Madam Gaspard who goes to the market and buys many animals. The lyrics are cumulative, as you will feel, and talk about this:
Madam Gaspard went to market.
She bought a dog:
a dog that says “wua wua wua wua”,
a cat that says “nya nya nya nya”,
a parrot that says “pa pa pa pa”,
a cock that says “ku ku ku ku”,
a chicken “ki ki ki ki”.
Do you know, my good-wife,
how much did she pay?
This song is included in the album “Ven al Luna Park”, by Jako el Muzikante, alter ego of Xurxo Fernandes. He learnt it from the collection of Victor Besso, researcher born in Salonica in 1905. According to the booklet, Yakov Algava learnt it from the Constantinoplian singer Karakesh Efendi and he recorded it in two different records in 1909.The mentioned animals can be more, as many as the imagination of the singer allowed. In the booklet of the album it is explained one occasion in Izmir in which it lasted one hour. It is a big challenge for any singer and Xurxo makes it wonderfully in this live shot.
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
As announced, this week this musical moment has moved ahead two days, as, today, Pesach begins. Let’s enjoy the voice of David Kadoch, hazan of the Abir Yaakob Congregation in Thornhill, Ontario.
I hope you and all your beloved ones are well and healthy. Here we are still in confinement. My father was two nights at the hospital but now he is at home and recovering and I am happy to share one more musical wonder with you.
I discovered David Kadoch by chance, searching for Sephardic music at the Youtube (the true is that I do this very often: it was a matter of time that I found him). He has a huge collection of wonderful recordings in his channel, specially focused on Moroccan Sephardic repertoire.
But the recording I share with you today is in the channel of Darké Aboutenu, an initiative born in 2017 in Canada, with the aim of disseminating the culture of the Moroccan Jewry. Check their website, where you can also join their mailing list.
The portrait is from David’s Facebook profile. And the recording in the video below is Tikun Hatal, the prayer for dew, recited in the Sephardic tradition on the first day of Pesach. I feel it really moving and I am happy to bring you a hazan that is alive and active nowadays and so generous with all these material available at the Internet. I hope you’ll enjoy it.
Clic the picture to enjoy the recording of David Kadoch:
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
Get relief with Dr. Hans Bloemendal, chief cantor of the Main Synagogue in Amsterdam, born in 1923 in the German city of Fulda, sent by his father to Amsterdam after the rise of Nazi regime and settled there until the end of his life in 2015. Let’s listen to his Kaddish.
I have been discussing with myself between the idea of chosing something joyful to cheer up or something more introspective, for this occasion in this difficult time.
Today I complete 3 weeks of confinement. My father is at the hospital from the last night (I think and wish he will be well and at home before Pesaj) and many people have died. You are also confined and I hope you and all your people are well. The election of a Kaddish, in this amazing rendition, feels like optimal.
Dr. Hans Bloemendal was chazzan at the Main Synagogue in Amsterdam from 1949. During the war he went into hiding. His family was killed in Sobibor.
His contributions to the world were not only his art: he developed an initiative of books for kids and he was also a teacher and a researcher in biochemistry and molecular biology. This info is available in the bio here. I really recommend to read it. And the picture is from here.
The picture that illustrates the video below, with the recording, is of a grandfather with his blind granddaughter in Warsaw in 1938. The author is Roman Vishniac, who travelled across central and Eastern Europe, photographing the Jewish communities, both in the cities as well as in rural areas, before de II World War. If you didn´t know him (I confess I discovered him yesterday, thanks to this picture in the video, and I spent hours looking at his works), his bio is also worth of reading. It is curious that he was also a biologist.
One last thing. Next week this email won’t be sent before Shabbat, but before Pesaj.
Clic the picture to enjoy the recording of Dr. Hans Bloemendal:
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.
Enjoy with İsak Maçoro, Sephardic cantor, born in 1918, in Hasköy, a quarter in Beyoğlu, in the European side of Istambul, where many Portuguese and Spanish Jewish settled from the end of XV century. Let’s listen his rendition of Avinu Malkenu.
I know this is not the time to pray with Avinu Malkenu. We are not in the Yamim Noraim, but I feel the message is perfectly suitable for our current situation. If you read this at some moment of the future, today we are finishing the second week of confinement in Spain because of the crisis of Covid-19. Most of the world is suffering this threat, that is costing many lifes and changed our everydayness overnight.
I got to know Cantor İsak Maçoro at the Youtube some years ago, searching for Sephardic piyyutim. The picture of him and a short bio can be found in the website eSefarad. And in the channel of Youtube of Janet & Jak Esim, of which I talked in the previous Music Before Shabbat, there are many more videos of him. You can even see him singing live.
For this occasion I have chosen this recording from 1960, from the Youtune channel of Ozkan Sagliksunar.
Clic the picture to enjoy the recording of Isak Maçoro:
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.
Enjoy with the emblematic Sephardic singer Bienvenida “Berta” Aguado, born in Çanakkale, Turkey, in 1929, settled in Israel from 1979 and passed away in 2016.
Let’s face this terrible time we are suffering in most of the world with the most sublime beauty. She is one of my favourite singers of any time. She is inimitable and unforgettable and her singing is absolutely unique.
Thanks to the works by Susana Weich-Shahak there are many recordings of Bienvenida, an unbelievable singer, who made enchanting intrincate filigrees with her voice, that you could almost don’t believe, in an old Ottoman style.
For this occasion I have chosen La Mujer de Terah, Terah’s Wife, about the prenancy of Abraham’s mother and about his birth and some events in his life. This video is part of the collection of Jak Essim, who is a singer settled in Istambul and works with his wife Janet. You can also find more info about this song in this link about an album with works by Susana Weich-Shahak.
Clic the picture to enjoy the recording of La Mujer de Terah:
Xurxo, the real name of the artist that incarnates the character of Jako el Muzikante, explained to me that this song was written by a poet from Hadrianopolis (Enderne in Ladino, Edirne in Turkish) about who it was rumored that was dead.
The responsible of that rumour was Hayim, another man, mentioned in the song. The poet answered with this humour and grace to announce that he was alive. I have translated the lyrics into English. Enjoy!
CLIC THE PICTURE TO WATCH THE VIDEO
Esta letra vos eskrivo:
I write this letter to you, to tell you that I am alive and to prove that I am healthy I write to you with my hand.
Thanks to God, my health got strong, ah, it became so good that I make hold in the floor where I step.Hayim, my dear, I always try to give you joy. I would never leave without your permission.
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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.
Madam Gaspard went to market.
I discovered David Kadoch by chance, searching for Sephardic music at the Youtube (the true is that I do this very often: it was a matter of time that I found him). He has a huge collection of wonderful recordings in 
Dr. Hans Bloemendal was chazzan at the Main Synagogue in Amsterdam from 1949. During the war he went into hiding. His family was killed in Sobibor.
I got to know Cantor İsak Maçoro at the Youtube some years ago, searching for Sephardic piyyutim. The picture of him and a short bio can be found in the website 