Re: "Ladino" primer

[Robert Cohen <rlcm17...>]

I thoroughly admire Judith's conscientiousness about new repertoire, and 
some amount/degree of that should surely inform all our efforts at playing 
and/or presenting music--but I only want to respectfully, humbly suggest, 
that if, say, Pete Seeger had followed Judith's thoroughly admirable "total 
approach," he would probably never have recorded most of the songs from 
other countries and languages that he did!  I think we should be open to 
some more tentative, less total-immersion wadings into the water of new 
repertoire on the part of our musicians; encouraging, of course, as thorough 
a learning of repertoire/language/background as possible; but not requiring 
scholarship on Judith's level--as much as I admire it, andrespond to it as 
an obsessive perfectionist myself--of everyone!  Just a thought.


>From: "Judith Cohen" <judithrc (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: "Ladino" primer
>Date: Sat, 28 Aug 1999 04:48:18 PDT
>
>Hi, your message is a little confusing. DO you want to learn aout the
>language, which is what the subject "Ladino primer" seems to suggest? Learn
>a few songs? Seriously learn something about the tradition? On the
>quick-and-easy level, you have my mini-bibliography/discography which Ari's
>posted, and a longer version in Jewish Folklore & Ethnology Review, to be
>updated soon. That will tell you the documentary recordings which are
>commercially (or semi-commercially) available. Personally, I don't 
>recommend
>just learning a few songs and adding them, but doing as at least I would do
>with any unfamiliar repertoire - spending serious time studying it,
>listening, reading, learning at least something of the language and if
>possible working directly with people from the tradition before even
>thinking about performing any of its songs.
>In any case, "Ladino" itself is a problematic term. Technically, it refers
>only to the literal translation from Hebrew: the time-honoured example is
>"la noche la esta" from "ha-laila ha-zeh", used in the Haggadah, instead of
>the spoken "esta noche" (c.f. "the night the this"). Every community has 
>its
>own designations for the spoken language: in Morocco it's haketia (really
>khaketia, with the initial guttural as in Khanuka - has anyone seen the
>great Khaiku posting by the way?) In the ex-Ottoman areas it was spaniol, 
>or
>spaniol muestro ("our Spanish"), or djidio (literally, "Jewish", like
>Yiddish) or djudezmo (same idea).Only relatively recently has "ladino" come
>to be used for every variety of the language. Judeo-Spanish does cover it
>all.
>Similarly, there is no ONE version of the language, no standard. People who
>teach it, mostly in Israel and France, tend to ignore haketia or pass over
>it very superficially and concentrate on, often, Salonica Judeo-Spanish.
>There is also no one singing style. It depends on the area, the host
>culture, the type of song (ballads - romances - are not sung like wedding
>songs, for example), etc.
>And there is no one acceptable accompaniment. Unfortunately for ensembles,
>it's largely, traditionally, an a capella repertoire, at least the older
>genres - romances especially - and wedding songs traditionally just used
>percussion, often played by women, Middle Eastern/North African style. The
>more modern songs, roughly the past century-and-a-bit , respond better to
>ensemble instrumentation, and that's what most people have heard on
>recordings.
>In the ex-Ottoman areas the older genres, again especially romances, are
>often sung in MAQAM, the Middle Eastern modal system which includes
>microtones which one can learn to play on, say, violin, or to sing, but are
>not on keyboard or fretted instruments.
>But the best thing is to listen, and listen, and listen....
>unless, of course, one just wants to learn a few of the easy songs (in my
>view, not the gems of the repertoire) and say one's added some Ladino stuff
>to the group's repertoire....
>cheers, Judith
>
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