Judith Cohen on Sephardic Music

edited by Aimee Kligman

Following a brief email dialogue, Aimee has asked me whether I'd write a little about Sephardic music.

Specifically, I work with Judeo-Spanish/Ladino song, both as a trained ethnomusicologist and as a performer and workshop leader. There are a number of confusions around the terms "Judeo-Spanish", "Ladino" and also "romance" and "romancero" which I'd like to clear up at the outset.

"Sephardic" refers to the people and culture whose origins go back to the Iberian Peninsula and islands (today's Spain and Portugal), traditionally called "Sefarad" for two millenia (although the Biblical term probably referred to somewhere else). "Sephardi" has come to be used much more widely, but this is the meaning I am using here.

"Ladino" technically refers only to the word-for-word translation from Hebrew, e.g. "la noche la esta" for "ha'laila ha-zeh": there are different terms for the vernacular (dzhudezmo, dzhidio, khaketia, spaniol) and so "Judeo-Spanish" was coined as an umbrella term, but recently, "Ladino" has become widely accepted as the general term. It is not a "medieval" language, and there was no one language called "medieval Spanish": it is largely late medieval/early Renaissance Castilian, with words from Catalan, Galician and Portuguese, though it has changed over the centuries, in different ways in different communities, and also includes considerable vocabulary from Hebrew, and additions from Greek, Turkish, Moroccan Arabic, French, Italian...

Many people confuse "romance" and "romancero." A "romance" (pronounced "ro-MAHN-say") is not just any romantic or love song, as many people think, but a specific form: a narrative ballad, with an indefinite number of assonant lines usually of sixteen syllables each (two eight-syllable segments) but sometimes with other metrical schemes. Romance themes range from historical events, exploits of kings, soldiers, dukes, and so on... encounters between Christians and "Moors", seduction, poisoning, adultery, faithful love, reclaimed identities... often with complex stories and sometimes with parallels in European balladry (as my daughter and I explore in our CD "Sefarad en Diaspora", Pneuma 2006.)

A romance is often found in both Moroccan and former Ottoman area (Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria etc) Sephardic communities, but with totally different melodies, and variants in the story. Other song genres are life cycle songs, especially for weddings; calendar cycle songs (often in a mixture of Ladino and Hebrew), and the most recent genres: lyric and love songs, recreational, topical, satirical etc. songs. There are also a few singer-songwriters, the most acclaimed of whom is the "Nona" (grandmother) of Sephardic song, Flory Jagoda.

There is also confusion between "romance" and "romancero." A romancero is not a romance, it is the CORPUS of romances. It can be an anthology, or a collection, but it cannot refer to a song: to say, for example, "she sings many romanceros" simply does not make sense.

The "medieval" myth: Regardless of claims on album notes, concert programs etc., no Sephardic melody has been found to be "medieval", and only a few have shown close similarities even to Renaissance melodies. Even when the words are very old, which is frequently the case among the romances and some wedding songs, the melodies developed over the centuries, and are generally more recent, some perhaps going back a couple of centuries, although since the tunes were not written down until the end of the 19th century, it's hard to be precise. Often local melodies - Greek, Turkish, Moroccan, southern Spanish (transmitted through Morocco) - supplanted whatever the original melody may have been.

One also has to realize that Jews continued to leave Spain and Portugal after the expulsions, but as Christians, joining up with Jewish communities elsewhere, and presumably bringing the latest "hits" with them. Spanish singers also brought new Spanish songs to places such as Istanbul and Izmir in the late 19th-early 20th centuries. Ironically, relatively recent songs are often presented as "medieval", when they are the most modern Ladino repertoire, often based on late 19th century Spanish songs, local Turkish or Greek songs, French songs, popular early 20th century forms such as tango and charleston, etc.

The "flamenco" myth: There is also a tendency to identify Ladino songs with flamenco, with no evidence whatsoever, and despite the fact that the Jews and Gypsies only coincided for a few decades in the 15th century, there is no documentation of contact between them, and flamenco as we know it (and as it is romantically compared to Sephardic songs) in any case only developed about 200-250 years ago at the most.

Traditionally, Ladino songs are mostly sung unaccompanied, as they have been sung and transmitted primarily by women - who had their hands occupied with all kinds of household and child-rearing tasks, with little time for practicing instruments; and they typically sang while performing these tasks, often together. When instruments are used, usually played by men (except for tambourines and other frame drums, which women played especially at weddings), they tended to be those of the surrounding culture - oud (Middle East/North African lute), kanun, violin etc. While the modern songs (ie the ones often labeled "medieval"!) can lend themselves to chordal accompaniment on the guitar, the older songs (many of the romances and wedding songs for example) are best left unaccompanied or played on oud, violin, etc., to keep their modal or maqam (Middle Eastern scale and interval system) flavor - their musical essence - intact.

This makes it all sound very dry - but Sephardic songs, like any other oral tradition, are anything but! There is a link to my basic bibliography, at the bottom left of my website, although more items have appeared since then; and there are now excellent research sites such as Folk Literature of the Sephardic Jews.

Like any other tradition, Ladino song can be changed, adapted, given new musical "clothes" - after all, it has changed many times over the centuries and continents of the Sephardic diaspora - , but changes are, I feel, best made with an understanding of and respect for the oldest known aspects of the tradition.

Dr Judith Cohen lives in Toronto and is part-time faculty at York University; she is also General Editor of the Spain Series of the Alan Lomax Recordings

Visit her website

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Romanceros and Cantikas: songs of the Sephardic Jews
Songs of the Sephardim and their diasporas
Sephardic Music From New York, Amsterdam and London "
Vidas Largas Para El Ladino
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Sepharad and Moroccan Music of Sephardic Jews
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I am blessed to be born Sephardic
Sephardic Soul Comes Alive in London
Sephardic Music Presented at Tanglewood