Sephardic Music

[Joshua Horowitz <horowitz...>]

Concerning Sephardic music, I just wanted to say that we have just sent
in the manuscript of *The Judeo-Spanish Songbook* by Aron Saltiel and
Joshua Horowitz which should be on the shelves in late Fall by the
classical publishing house, *Peters Edition*. The Songbook contains 54
carefully annotated transcriptions of field recordings of native Ladino
speakers (mostly old) singing songs from Thessaloniki, Istanbul,
Sarayevo and Sofia. This collection contains some very unusual songs
which most people will not know, or variants of tunes you might know-
but not the usual line-up of standards. Many of the field recordings are
over 20 years old, and Aron and I went back to retape some of the
informants in 1991 in Thessaloniki to make sure we had all the verses,
variants, etc. We had the basic book done then and wanted to release it
for the 500 year Sephardic commemmoration in 1992, but instead have been
chipping away at it for the past 7 years.

A good collection of the songs is sung by The Ruth Yaakov Ensemble on
Piranha records, which is one of the best ensembles for this music
(especially since I stopped playing in it in 1995), and vastly
under-promoted. There is also a CD that came out recently of David
Saltiel (one of Aron's relatives) which is superb. In New York, great
people to talk to about Sephardic music are Danny Elias and his dad,
Joe, whom I'm sure many of you know already. They live in Brooklyn. 

Renanot published a cassette and book of the life and repertoire of the
great cantor, Algazzi, by Edwin Seroussi which is wonderful. Edwin's
family knew Algazzi in Uruguay where they were born. If you want to hear
that style (Sephardic-Turkish-classical-Ottoman-vocal tradition) today,
the cantor of the Thessaloniki synagogue, Moshe Halaua is the closest I
know (and taped; some of his versions of Sephardic songs appear in the
songbook I mentioned above) He has been documented by other researchers
in Israel (contact maybe Shoshana Weich-Shahak, Edwin Seroussi or Moshe
Shaul (the latter works at Kol Israel) in Jerusalem. 

There is also a recording on the label Inedit which contains fantastic a
capella singing of the first ladies of the Sephardic tradition singing
folk songs, indlucing Berta (Beinvenida) Aguado, who lives in Jerusalem
and Istanbul. 

Hope I haven't mentioned what you all already know. Be well. Josh
Horowitz


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