From the Shores of the Golden Horn

PRODUKTBESCHREIBUNGEN
Voice of the Turtle Judith Wachs, Artistic Director From the Shores of the Golden Horn Music of the Spanish Jews of Turkey Derek Burrows: flutes, mandolin, guitar, dumbeks, naqqara and voice Lisle Kulbach: rebec, kamanja, violin, shawm, percussion and voice Jay Rosenberg: 'ud, guitar dumbeks, percussion and voice Judith Wachs: baglama, saz, naqqara, percussion and voice In 1492, all the Jews of Spain (Sephardim) who refused to renounce their faith, as required by the Inquisition, were expelled from their homeland of 1500 years. The Ottoman Empire welcomed this educated population, who brought with them technological skills so valuable to the aspirations of the Empire. But despite this hospitality, and because of the Ottoman policy of allowing their minorities almost total autonomy, these exiles continued to identify themselves as Spanish Jews, preserving the old Castilian language, and much of the culture of their Iberian experience. Because music was so central to their daily lives, particularly in the domain of women, they were able to preserve this astonishing musical heritage for five hundred years by oral tradition. In 1992, the western world marked the Quincentenary - the 500th year since the momentous voyage of Christopher Columbus. Voice of the Turtle hopes to expand the modern perception of that history through it's series of CDs called the "Paths of Exile." This special recording project will enhance the significance of the Quincentenary from the little known perspective of the Jews of Spain. This first volume of the series focuses on Turkey. The majority of the songs were collected from a few informants and do not represent the whole of Turkish Sephardic repertoire, nor are these the only versions of these songs sung in Turkey. SEPHARDIM The Sephardim, (from the Hebrew word for Spain, Sepharad, found in Obadiah 1:20) are the Jews whose ancestors came from a rich and remarkable history on the Iberian Peninsula. Expelled from Spain in 1492, and in 1497 from Portugal by the forces of the Inquisition, they found new homes in the Ottoman Empire the Middle East, parts of Europe, and in the New World. JUDEO-SPANISH The medieval Castilian Spanish spoken by the Jews of Spain at the time of the expulsion is called Judeo-Spanish, Judeo-español, Djudezmo, 'Spanyolit, 'Spaniol de mosotros, and Sephardi. The language was spoken and written, first in Hebrew characters and recently, in the Latin alphabet. It was preserved in exile largely by the women, whose insulated life protected the language and maintained it's vitality. It is often called "Ladino," which historically was the language emerging from Latin into which liturgical Hebrew texts were translated. The word cones from the old Spanish "ladinar," which means "to translate from Arabic or Hebrew into Latin or a latinate language." ABOUT THIS COLLECTION It should be stressed that the program of this recording is most special in the fact that it includes a wide scope of genres in the Turkish Sephardi repertoire. Proportionately, the majority of the items are lyric songs, a category that somehow has received less attention among scholars and performers. As such, the Voice of the Turtle rescues from oblivion an important portion of the Judeo-Spanish repertoire which has been wide open to the influence of their neighbors (in this case the Turks). This body of music clearly demonstrates the creativity, adaptability, and the dynamism of the Sephardim. The album also includes romanzas, coplas (strophic festival songs), endechas (dirges), rarely sung in the oral tradition today, as well as songs which reflect the socio-economic and political environment of the Turkish Sephardim. Besides presenting a representative panorama of the repertoire, this record is also special and even outstanding in that almost all of the songs are based on authentic sources, i.e., learned directly from unarranged recordings of informants whose traditions these were. -Dr. Susanna Weich-Shahak.

Number of Discs: 1

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