Re: Sephardic Jews in music

[Eliott Kahn <Elkahn...>]

Thanks Trudi for the info. George and I were both referring to the same book, 
and I wondered if I might have remembered incorrectly.

Your comments about Sephardim in Ashkenazi countries relates to a point I made 
a few months ago about Smetana's Moldau and Hatikvah. Citing Edwin Seroussi's 
SPANISH PORTUGESE SYNAGOGUE MUSIC .., I thought I offered fairly decent proof 
that if you traced the movement of Sephardic Jews into Eastern Europe--Bohemia 
and Moravia specifically--you might find that Smetana's Moldau may have 
originally been a Sephardi melody, as I believe our Hatikvah is. It's certainly 
a matter that bears much further investigation.

Every Passover we sing the ascending minor-key melody that Seroussi cites as 
coming from the eighteenth-century Portugese community in Amsterdam: 
Ha-a-a-le-lu et A-do-nay kol goy-im.

Eliott Kahn


At 08:01 PM 7/23/01 +0000, you wrote:
>   Yes, he was Sephard. The name was abbreviated when his family came to the 
> US. Check his bio. He's also listed as Sephard in a book about American 
> Jewish musicians...I forget the title...I think it's called, TO LIFE! And 
> nu??? There were lots of Sephard people who made it to Poland in the last 
> couple of centuries...just ask my family...both sides of which are Sephard, 
> but lived in Poland and Eastern Europe for about the last 400 years,or 
> so...it beat living in Spain, Italy and Portugal during the Inquisition.
>    Trudi the G
>
>
>
>>From: George Robinson <GRComm (at) concentric(dot)net>
>>Reply-To: jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org
>>To: World music from a Jewish slant <jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org>
>>Subject: Re: Sephardic Jews in music
>>Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 14:59:40 -0400
>>
>>I have a vague recollection of Torme saying in his autobiography that
>>his family was Polish and changed the spelling of a much longer name. I
>>don't have a copy on hand, so I can't check, but if that's true he
>>probably wasn't Sephardic.
>>
>>And Robert, what did Eydie buy?
>>
>>George Robinson
>>
>>Robert Cohen wrote:
>> >
>> > Eydie Gorme (rhymes with Torme, anyway) was also Sephardic Jewish--and,
>> > surely of primary relevance--was a customer in my father's (o"h) grocery
>> > store on Second Avenue.  As was Steve.
>> >
>> > --Robert Cohen
>> >
>> > >Since this is a Jewish music list, let's not forget the great Mel
>> > >Torme--what a musician, with exquisite intonation whether singing solo or
>> > >harmony. But one might not call his singing emotional.
>> > >He was descended from Sephardic Jews--the family's name was Torma--as I
>> > >believe was the great Jazz drummer Buddy Rich.
>> >
>> > _________________________________________________________________
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>>
>>--
>>"And it does no harm to repeat, as often as you can, 'Without
>>me the literary industry would not exist: the publishers, the
>>agents, the sub-agents, the sub-sub-agents, the accountants,
>>the libel lawyers, the departments of literature, the professors
>>the theses, the books of criticism, the reviewers, the book
>>pages -- all this vast and proliferating edifice is because
>>of this small, patronized, put-down and underpaid person.'"
>>                         --Doris Lessing
>>
>
>
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