"Master of the world, if I knew the music, I force you to dwell among us.

"Rabbi
Nachman of Breslov
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various regions of the world where Jews have lived. Our programming "Israeli" wa
s following the course of history in the diaspora: Spain and the Ottoman Empire
for Sephardic song, Ethiopia with the polyphony of the Beta Israel, the Jewish f
allasha improperly called black, with Yemen songs and dances from the region of
Taif, the Eastern European klezmer with short, all the regions of East, Europe a
nd Africa
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JEWISH LITURGY OF ETHIOPIA Sources on the Jews of Ethiopia - who call themselves
Beta Israel - a real historical character solely purchasing only from the fourt
eenth century (...), none is determinative as to the either of the possible orig
ins. (...) The actual identity of the Beta Israel Jewish was discussed: in parti
cular because of their ignorance of Talmudic literature, or oral law - normative
basis of ideology and rabbinical laws. More importantly, a number of their ritu
als and beliefs are lively track with an ideology and practices documented in th
e Second Temple period (...) since abandoned by the Rabbinic Judaism (...). The
liturgical calendar of the Jews of Ethiopia incorporated, albeit with lags of da
tes with respect to the conventional Jewish calendar, the Sabbath, the New Year,
Yom Kippur, Succot and Passover. The festival of Shavuot occurs twice (...). Th
e liturgical music of Ethiopian Jewry differs from both the popular music that g
oes on in this country and church music performed in the Ethiopian Orthodox Chur
ch. Popular music is almost always rigorously measured (...). In Jewish liturgy,
on the contrary, it is the sacred words which have precedence. For this reason
the liturgy of the Ethiopian Jews is often not measured. (...) The Jewish liturg
ical music differs in many respects from that practiced by the Ethiopian Orthodo
x Church. While similarities do not miss (...) but the differences are much more
numerous. The organization of musical liturgy mainly concerns the scales, the f
orm, (...) Finally, some principles of plurivocalité. The scales are mostly pen
tatonic anhemitonic (...). In terms of timing, the music is subject to the litur
gical text that is to marry, according to a principle form: the sentence is conv
eyed by textual grounds, which are all melodic formulas. As it is not prosody, b
ut in prose, the size of the verses is extremely variable: it has a direct impac
t on the configuration of the musical phrase, it takes place on a self-paced or
is arranged in a in metric rigorous. Let the prayers be measured or not, their m
ethods of execution are still based on an immutable alternating solo / chorus, w
hich can be achieved by a Responsorial principle, where one party is complementa
ry to the other, or antiphonal: The chorus repeats as What the statement of the
soloist. Simha Arom and Frank Alvarez-Pereyre Jewish Liturgies Ethiopia CD INEDI
T W 260 013
Golem, musical theater Moni Ovadia, The Rond-Point, 1993
Liturgical chants of the Beta Israel of Ethiopia The reading of the Zohar
BP: The House of World Cultures has repeatedly presented the forms of expression
including inviting Jewish groups in Israel. Should they be considered as repres
entative of Israeli culture or place it in the context of the regions where they
have evolved? FG: It should give particular prominence to the cultures of Israe
l. The country, populated by groups of people from various regions, having some
difficulty defining its cultural identity - once accepted all belong to a religi
on. Young, forward looking, Israel encourages designers who are moving into new
languages based on contemporary techniques. Today's culture remains the stage of
the experiment. Ironically, the Israelis can not renounce to value heritage for
ms, sometimes even bringing them into the field of classical Western culture, fo
r example by collecting old Sephardic songs and using them to interpret the oper
a singers. We have worked extensively with Yosef Ben-Israel, radio producer and
director of an association for cultural exchanges, which has its sensitivity to
the research department of sacred music and folk from
North with the liturgical chants of the hazanout.
BP: Is it possible that the merger could result from the confrontation of these
different forms burst forth a new expression typical Israeli? FG: Culturally, Is
rael will implement on a small area made the ambiguous relationship of tension,
attraction, rejection qu'entretiennent a hegemonic Western culture and tradition
al cultures trying to survive by language: Ladino for the Sephardim, the Arabic
for Yemenis, Ge'ez for Ethiopians, Yiddish for Jews in Central Europe, even Russ
ian, Ukrainian, etc.. One is struck by the number of Israelis who emigrated
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JEWISH MUSIC The diversity of Jewish music is a reflection of the scattered comm
unities of the Diaspora. Wherever they are established, the Jewish communities h
ave invested practices and musical traditions of the regions where they settled.
They participated actively in their development and sometimes even to the prese
rvation of those who saw themselves threatened. The term "traditional Jewish mus
ic" does not make sense in a strict geo-cultural perspective. One of the best ex
amples of this situation is the great diversity of musical hazanout, liturgical
chant. Thus, if the hazanout Yemeni Jews is considered the purest because came f
rom a community that emigrated to Palestine in the first century and knew how to
protect foreign elements, one finds instead in the presence of Bukhara hazanout
obvious Uzbek music system, those in Morocco and Iraq, the respective influence
s of Arab-Andalusian music and ala al-Maqam system in Ashkenazi that of the West
ern tonal system, while the liturgies of the Beta Israel of Ethiopia are rhythmi
c and melodic characteristics typical of Africa, also very similar to those of t
he Ethiopian Orthodox Church. In the secular sphere, many communities have built
from the musical cultures where they lived directories vocal and instrumental o
riginals. These include the Judeo-Spanish songs and Eastern European klezmer. Th
e Klezmer music of Eastern European Jews, offers a remarkable example of inter-c
ultural. Indeed, the musical materials are borrowed from Klezmer music to tradit
ional areas in which Jews lived: Ukraine (Galicia), Bessarabia, Romania and to s
ome extent in the Balkan countries further south. In contrast, the typical Jewis
h melodies are sometimes placed in the directory of the various regions as klezm
orim musicians, like the gypsy musicians and sometimes with them, were often com
mitted by non-Jews to the secular feasts. Thus we find in the klezmer kazachok t
he kolomyjka, krakowiak, polkas, the hora, the Sirba, the czardas, Waltz and Tan
go. Similarly, several Yiddish songs had their counterparts in the music of non-
Jewish populations, such as the Russian-inspired folk music of the last century
and particularly in the Russian gypsy songs. If the klezmer and Yiddish songs ha
ve an undeniable east component, however it always arises the question of whethe
r this is the legacy of ancient Palestine reported or oriental influence exerted
during the Turkish domination The Balkans. Pogroms, Holocaust, klezmer has virt
ually disappeared from areas where it was born. However, he survived in the U.S.
thanks to the significant emigration of Jews from Central and Eastern Europe as
evidenced by the number of records, the oldest dating from between the two worl
d wars and especially the rich period of the Theatre Jewish Broadway with one of
the legendary figures was Aaron Lebedeff.
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of fresh dates, not playing very imperfectly Hebrew despite intensive courses th
at are imposed upon their arrival. These communities often remain relatively clo
sed and have at heart to preserve not only their language but also other aspects
of their culture, whether on gastronomy, clothing or music. To do this, they us
e a large network of associations and even political. Take the example of Jews f
rom Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, the so-called Bukharan because their community wa
s founded in Bukhara in the sixteenth century around a Jewish doctor called to t
reat the barren wife of the khan of Bukhara . The Khan had wanted to keep the do
ctor at his side, but the latter had demanded that his family and loved ones can
come in numbers sufficient to establish a synagogue.€Many of them have immigra
ted to Israel from the thirties, moreover, often on foot, through Iran, Iraq and
Syria. This very homogenous community, especially in Jerusalem where it occupie
s an entire neighborhood, its synagogue and its cultural associations that organ
ize concerts allowing musicians to survive. Another example: I said just now tha
t the Sephardic songs are often performed by opera singers. But a few years ago,
following a program that we had mounted on the voices of women from Russia, Yos
ef Ben-Israel has proposed a similar project on the voices of Jewish women. Pete
r Wood has visited the site and then was presented with - among others - two won
derful singers, Berta Aguado Dora Gerassi, recent immigrant, one of Istanbul, on
e in Plovdiv in Bulgaria. They always practiced singing Judeo-Spanish in a famil
y context and in a traditional style of interpretation. Both singers have record
ed a CD in our collection, edited by Edwin Seroussi Israeli ethnomusicologist, t
hen we have invited to give concerts at the Theatre du Rond-Point. They are prob
ably among the last to testify to a tradition which for four centuries has prese
rved poetic forms were born in Spain (romancero, coplas ...) while immersing him
self in music and vocal styles unique to the Ottoman culture. Now it is obvious
when talking with them, they live in a fairly closed environment, one of them al
so spoke the Ladino and Turkish. If Jewish cultures in the diaspora have been as
serting themselves - while blending in - in environments where communities were
constantly on the alert (Eastern Europe, Arab world ...), however their mandated
integration in Israeli society condemns their specificity to more or less short
term. Given this context, many fusion experiments not to the emergence of a "po
pular tradition" Israeli State, did so far only an imaginary folklore. This patc
hwork of disparate forms and genres, banal and disappointing despite the profess
ionalism of its performers, not abused - in terms of exports abroad - that fans
of folklore for tourists. In this sense, the work of development of cultural div
ersity led by people like Yosef Ben-Israel or Edwin Seroussi seems both more rea
listic and certainly more encouraging for the future of Israeli culture, but it
requires the maintenance a Community.
When she was finally expelled from Spain or forced to convert to Christianity in
1492, the Sephardic community (Hebrew Sefarad, Spain) took the route of the exo
dus. Some moved north but most took the eastern route, stopping for a time in It
aly, finally settling in the heart of the Ottoman empire where they founded comm
unities in Sarajevo, Salonica, Plovdiv, Istanbul Up ... Today, the Sephardim hav
e preserved their language, Ladino, Spanish touch of ancient Hebrew words, Turki
sh, or borrowed from various Balkan languages. They took with them a repertoire
of medieval Spanish ballads they carefully preserved the texts so far today (La
muerte del duque de GandÍa, La romanza of Santa Elena, La esposa gall ...). In
contrast, in the musical, these songs underwent alterations in the Turkish style
: highly ornamented melodies, metric and modal Turkish. In this directory was ad
ded romancero the newer coplas, specifically Jewish songs since they refer to Je
wish celebrations, with episodes from the Bible or the history of Judaism (eg Th
e vocación Abraham [eighteenth century .] Noche de ALHADAS [seventeenth century
], the nostalgia of Jerusalén). The influence of Turkish bards was also felt by
some popular singers like Isaac Jews Pasharel. Still alive, this directory has
continued to grow in the twentieth century, this time opening westward with tang
os and paso dobles.
⠢ Sephardic Songs, AFL, 1980; Yiddish Songs and judéoespagnols, MCM, 1986; haza
nout, Jewish liturgical chants, MCM, 1986 Music and traditional songs of the Jew
s of Kurdistan, Bukhara, Ethiopia, the Hassidim, MCM, 1986; Yemenite Jews, music
and dance, MCM, 1990; Judeo-Spanish Songs, The Rond-Point, 1994; Kasbek, klezme
r in Russian, MCM, 1996.
Preparation of marriage among Yemeni Jews
Dora and Berta Aguado Gerassi, singers Judeo-Spanish
Discography hazanout, Jewish liturgical chants, CD INEDIT W 260 005. Jewish Litu
rgies of Ethiopia, CD INEDIT W 260 013.€Chants Judeo-Spanish, Berta Aguado Dora
Gerassi, CD INEDIT W 260 054. Kasbek, klezmer in Russian CD INEDIT W 260 066.
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