Samy El Maghribi

[Judith R Cohen <judithc...>]

I'll have to get the cd when I go through Montreal at the end of this
month, but a bit of background - I don't know when Samy recorded this cd
or whether it's new or a re-issue. When he began his career in Morocco
and then in France he recorded several 45 rpm's with his own children
singing and from the description I wonder whether this is a reissue of
those wonderful old recordings or whether it's a new one done perhaps
with kids at one of the Spehardic schools in Montreal. IN between he
spent several years living in Israel but don't think he recorded much
there, I could be wrong.

The Crypto-Jews of Belmonte, POrtugal, now sing their own Portuguese
translation of a bilingual Aramaic-Ladino Moroccan version I learned
from an old Tangier rabbi and his wife in Montreal years ago, and taught
them in '97 or '98 when I was first doing fieldwork with them, - I was
(am) incensed because the rabbi who lived there in '90-'92 had told me
he didn't teach them ANY Pesakh songs because "they're not intelligent
enough to remember a song that's sung only once a year". So many of them
now sing this Portuguese-ified Morocco-Montreal version transmitted to
themn by a Canadian Ashkenazi.... and I'm sure within a few years some
ethnomusicologist will trot along, hear them singing it and announce
that they've found authentic medieval vestiges....

anyone, Samy's voice and oud playing are great, no matter at what stage
of his long and productive career they're recorded, Judith

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