Verdi and friends

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

Hi, almost certainly the Sephardim borrowed the tune from Verdi and not
vice versa. 
But let me do the short comment first:
Yes, it probably is that Yehoram Gaon recording. I've actually heard
Sephardim say his accent isn't that great! When I interviewed him
several years ago, he told me that when he was growing up in Jerusalem,
his family insisted that only Hebrew be spoken in the house, absolutely
no Judeo-Spanish - this was quite common at the time, and explains his
accent.
Now the longer comment: 
Borrowing and adapting tunes and making them one's own is something Jews
(not only Sephardim) have been doing forever, more often than not with
great musical expertise, intelligence and creativity. And as Joel says,
and many of us have been trying to explain for a long time, many
melodies used for even the older Judeo-Spanish/"Ladino" song texts are
not, relatively speaking, that old. Doesn't make them more or less great
melodies.
The canon issue isn't all that simple. There is, and there isn't.
Of course, there isn't. But for years scholars, most of whom were from a
Hispanic Studies background, basically ignored anything that wasn't a
romance (NOT a romance/romanza in the popular Turkish/Greek area sense,
but a well-defined poetic structure of a narrative ballad) , or a life
or calendar cycle song of respectable (for them) antiquity, largely
because they were mostly concerned with Hispanic linguistic survivals,
and, with exceptions of course, they didn't care that much about the
music which had allowed these texts to live on. Rather like similar
problems with Anglo-Scottish-Anglo-North American balladry.So for a long
time, till this generation of scholars (me, Edwin Seroussi, Shoshana
Weich-SHahak and others) there sort of was a canon - and this canon kind
of ignored the existence of the very body of love songs, recreational,
social commentary, operetta & tango translations, etc which form the
basis of the (non-Moroccan) repertoire most people have heard on
recordings. In other words, there was a scholarly canon, and then there
was a live reality! 
Then that sort of became a canon as well, but, with a gap of a few
decades, new songs are now being composed again, mostly by a handful of
people. Some, especially Flory Jagoda's, have caught on and become part
of the canon, much as have songs of the great Yiddish songwriters.
Personally, the ones which have come out recently, such as
Ladinonostaljia (words by Matilda Koen-Serrano, music by Haim Tsur), I
find of little musical interest, but that's just me and my general
dislike of most popular western music. That is, as an ethnomusicologist
I have to simply accord them the same place in the repertoire and the
same intrinsic interest as any other Judeo-SPanish song. As an academic
I have to keep my indefensible, intransigent and 
ethnomusicologically-incorrect notions to myself (and well may you ask:
so why post them on this list!!!! Mostly because it feels like sitting
around with a bunch of friends...). But while I'm here, I've never liked
the tune, Verdi-inspired or whatever, of "Adio querida" much........
Incorrigibly yours, Judith
 

Cheers, Judith

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