Re: Spanish-Jewish Romance Songs

[Robert Cohen <rlcm17...>]

Dear Helen et al.:  There is, indeed, as Joel suggests, an extensive, 
centuries- or millenia-old tradition of "borrowing" melodies from 
secular/folk/popular sources for Jewish prayer--and such 
"contrafacta"--that's the [somewhat ugly?] musicological term for new words 
to an old/existing melody--aren't only (or mainly) transmitted by women!  
This tradition may go as far back as the Psalms, was already condemned in 
the Talmud, and was probably practiced by cantors in every age (usually to 
the consternation of the rabbis); it may have reached its apogee, though, in 
the Shabbat table hymns or zemirot (many of which were _intended_ to be sung 
to contemporaneous folk or popular melodies) and in the music of the 
Hassidim, who made of borrowing (spiritually appealing) melodies for prayer 
a mitzvah--a religious obligation.  (And BTW, such borrowing--the practice, 
after all, is ubiquitous in folk and popular music generally--sometimes goes 
in the opposite direction: Richard Farina used this same "Tzur Michelo" 
melody--if we want to call it that--for "The Swallow Song" [unattributed, of 
course!].) ... There is considerable literature on this practice--Shiloah 
just devotes a few pages, I believe, though it's an astute account as I 
recall; my own modest contribution was an article in the August 1994 Moment 
magazine ("We're Playing Their Song").  A scholarly article speaking to 
exactly Helen's area of interest is "Judeo-Spanish Contrafacts and Musical 
Adaptations:  The Oral Tradition" by Edwin Seroussi and Susana Weich-Shahak, 
which appeared in the journal Orbis Musicae; I inexcusably don't have the 
date but could no doubt find it cross-referenced somewhere else.  Hope this 
is helpful, Helen and y'all.


>From: "Helen Winkler" <winklerh (at) hotmail(dot)com>
>Reply-To: jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org
>To: World music from a Jewish slant <jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org>
>Subject: Spanish-Jewish Romance Songs
>Date: Wed, 14 Jul 1999 10:31:34 PDT
>
>One of my favourite pastimes is surfing the net for information about the
>songs we use in Israeli folk dancing (okay, I don?t get out a lot).  A
>favourite of mine is Tsur Mishelo.  I found a site that describes how the
>melody for Tsur Mishelo was originally a Spanish_Jewish romance song called
>La Rosa Enfloresce (www.joods.nl/jmf/en-exsefard.html) but now it is a
>Hebrew song of thanks used on Shabbat.  I also found a cd by Michael Ian
>Elias,"Keep the Light Shining" (which you can listen to on
>www.jewishmusic.com) which really brings out the Spanish influence (as
>opposed to one of our old folk dance recordings which sounds more or less
>electronic).  That aside, the whole process of melodies switching from
>secular to religious, and apparently handed down by women from one
>generation to the next sounds very interesting.  Can anyone with more
>knowledge in this area comment?
>Helen
>
>
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