Gerineldo revival in Vancouver

[Judith R Cohen <judithc...>]

Hi, speaking of Vancouver, for the first time since 1994, at least PART
of GERINELDO will be performing together in Vancouver in November as
part of the West Coast Sacred Music Festival (which has a really
appealing line-up). So far, Solly Levy, Tamar and I are going; whether
Oro and Charly can make it  (Kelly isn't singing these days).depends
largely on funding for the festival (still in its, ah, planning stages)
and also people's work schedules. For those of you who didn't know
GERINELDO in its heyday - Tamar and I are the "token Ashkenazim" in this
otherwise all Moroccan Sephardic (i.e. born and raised in Morocco, came
to Canada as fairly settled adults) group, specializing in the old
Moroccan Judeo-Spanish repertoire, often from Oro and Solly's own
families (the night before her wedding,long before I knew her, Oro was
recording ballads from her mother). The name of the group, pronounced in
Judeo-Spanish "Dzhirineldo" (in Spanish, Kherineldo), is taken from a
Carolingian ballad (romance) in which Gerineldo, the king's favourite
page, is invited by the king's daughter to spend the night with her; the
king finds them, and ruminates; finally he decides that although honour
demands they be slain, he doesn't want to lose either a great potential
court councillor or his daughter, so he marries them to each other,
which has led to the expression "el mazal de Gerineldo". It's still sung
(different tunes though) in Spain & Portugal (where it's sung as a
harvest song out in the fields), but the eastern MEditerranean Jews
stopped singing it a couple of generations ago. 
I used to get letters addressed to Mr Jerry Neldo.
cheers, Judith (or J. Neldo....)

---------------------- jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org ---------------------+