Re: klezmer and Sephardic

[Joshua Horowitz <horowitz...>]

> As for Balkanizing ("Koutevizing"?) sephardic song, I did "Siete Ijos Tiene
> Hana" that way on my "Taste of Chanukah" CD.  It just seemed like a natural
> alternative treatment, although I'd never pass it off as authentic anything.
>  --Hankus

Now that you mention it, Hankus:
Koutev is not the only arranger of the Voix Bulgares stuff. Prof. Dr. 
Nikolai Kaufman, president of the Bulgarian Composers' Union,
has supposedly collected about 30.000 folk tunes for the Bulgarian
Academy of Sciences during his field work. He's Ashkenazi and has
arranged of thousands of tunes including Yiddish + Ladino tunes, amung
them the choir Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares etc. etc. He lives in Sofia,
speaks English, Yiddish, Ladino, Russian, Hebrew. 

> Is it really the case that Sephardim never hired
> instrumentalists to entertain at parties?

Misunderstanding. Judith and I were saying that Judeo-Spanish speaking
people in the Balkans typically employed Calgiya ensembles to play
instrumental dances at their parties and weddings. The Sephardic
(secular) repertoire consists mostly of songs sung by women (ballades,
life cycle songs, couplets, etc, etc) Many of the dances you encounter
are so called contra-facta, local (Turkish, Greek, etc) folk tunes to
which Judeo-Spanish words are later put. Josh


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