klezmer and Sephardic

[Judith R. Cohen <judithc...>]

Hi, perhaps not coincidentally, I just received a note from someone
about Sephardic songs to include in their Balkan music repertoire. While
there were several tunes borrowed back and forth, as Josh, Joel and
others have been demonstrating, Josh is right: the Judeo-Spanish aspect
of Sephardic music was primarily vocal, with no separate instrumental
tradition, and indeed, little instrumental accompaniment except for
women using frame drums and occasionally derbukka for wedding songs; and
a small men's calgiya type ensemble, also for  weddings. Just a note
about the vocal style, too: at least one early music group has started
including Sephardic songs sung in Bulgarian village women's style. In my
fieldwork experience, Sephardic women didn't use that style. Not only
that, many of the ones I interviewed dissociated themselves from it as
being "village" "peasant" style. The few Bulgarian songs I've heard them
sing were more in the line of popular urban songs of the time they were
growing up. Cheers, Judith

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