Calgiya Ensembles

[Peter Rushefsky <rushefsky_p...>]

What are Calgiya ensembles?

>>> Judith R. Cohen 01/20/00 06:15am >>>
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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