Songs in Judeo-Spanish, the vernacular language of the descendants of Jews chased from the Iberian Peninsula in 1492 and 1497
Following their expulsion, the Sefardi Jews (the word Sefarad means Spain in Hebrew) established new communities around the Mediterranean Sea, particularly in regions attached the Ottoman empire: Turkey, Greece, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Syria and Palestine.
Since the end of the 1960’s, the repertoire of popular Judeo-Spanish songs is in fashion in Europe, North and South America, and in Israel. But the major part, if not the whole of it, of the discs put on the market are recordings done by professional musicians from musical transcriptions picked up from anthologies and rearranged. There are very few recordings of these songs in a purely traditional version.
The playlist we propose here is representative of the variety of interpretation.
- Visiter le site de Joël Bresler : Sephardic Music: A century of recordings
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Listen to the radio show: The renewal of Judeo-Spanish music, hosted by Hervé Roten (in French)
