This article is about the music of the Sephardic Jews. For the main article on secular Jewish music, see Secular Jewish music

Secular Jewish music

-Israeli music:Modern Israeli music is heavily influenced by its constituents, which include Jewish immigrants from more than 120 countries around the world, which have brought their own musical traditions, making Israel a global melting pot. The Israeli music is very versatile and combines...

.

There are three types of Sephardic songs—topical and entertainment songs, romance songs and spiritual or ceremonial songs. Lyrics can be in several languages, including Hebrew

Hebrew language

Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...

 for religious songs, and Ladino.

As with other Middle-Eastern urban music genres, Sephardic music was based on a system of makam

Makam

Makam In Turkish classical music, a system of melody types called makam provides a complex set of rules for composing and performance...

 (Turkish plural: makamlar), which is sometimes translated as "mode," but actually embraces a broader series of musical elements.

Songs which are song by women are traditionally sung while performing household tasks, without accompaniment or harmony. Tambourine

Tambourine

The tambourine or marine is a musical instrument of the percussion family consisting of a frame, often of wood or plastic, with pairs of small metal jingles, called "zils". Classically the term tambourine denotes an instrument with a drumhead, though some variants may not have a head at all....

s and other percussion instrument

Percussion instrument

A percussion instrument is any object which produces a sound when hit with an implement or when it is shaken, rubbed, scraped, or otherwise acted upon in a way that sets the object into vibration...

s are sometimes used, especially in wedding

Wedding

A wedding is the ceremony in which two people are united in marriage or a similar institution. Wedding traditions and customs vary greatly between cultures, ethnic groups, religions, countries, and social classes...

 songs. Oud

Oud

The oud is a pear-shaped stringed instrument commonly used in North African and Middle Eastern music. The modern oud and the European lute both descend from a common ancestor via diverging paths...

 and qanún

Kanun (Instrument)

The Qanun is a string instrument found in the 10th century in Farab in Turkestan...

 are also used in some instrumentations of Sephardic music, and more modern performers incorporate countless other imported instruments.

History

Sephardic music has its roots in the musical traditions of the Jewish communities in medieval Spain. Since then, it has picked up influences from Morocco

Morocco

Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...

, Argentina

Argentina

Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

, Turkey

Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...

, Greece

Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....

, and the other places that Spanish Jews settled after their expulsion from Spain in 1492. Lyrics were preserved by communities formed by the Jews expelled from the Iberian Peninsula

Iberian Peninsula

The Iberian Peninsula , sometimes called Iberia, is located in the extreme southwest of Europe and includes the modern-day sovereign states of Spain, Portugal and Andorra, as well as the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar...

. These Sephardic communities share many of the same lyrics and poems, but the music itself varies considerably.

Because so many centuries have passed since the exodus

The Exodus

The Exodus is the story of the departure of the Israelites from ancient Egypt described in the Hebrew Bible.Narrowly defined, the term refers only to the departure from Egypt described in the Book of Exodus; more widely, it takes in the subsequent law-givings and wanderings in the wilderness...

, a lot of the original music has been lost. Instead, Sephardic music has adopted the melodies

Melody

A melody , also tune, voice, or line, is a linear succession of musical tones which is perceived as a single entity...

 and rhythm

Rhythm

Rhythm may be generally defined as a "movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions." This general meaning of regular recurrence or pattern in time may be applied to a wide variety of cyclical natural phenomena having a periodicity or...

s of the various countries where the Sephardim settled in. The Greek and Turkish traditions are fairly close. The Moroccan or “western” Sephardic traditions are not that close to the eastern/Greek/Turkish traditions.

These song traditions spread from Spain to Morocco (the Western Tradition) and several parts of the Ottoman Empire

Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...

 (the Eastern Tradition) including Greece, Jerusalem, the Balkans

Balkans

The Balkans is a geopolitical and cultural region of southeastern Europe...

 and Egypt

Egypt

Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

. Sephardic music adapted to each of these locales, assimilating North African high-pitched, extended ululations; Balkan rhythms, for instance in 9/8 time; and the Turkish maqam

Arabic maqam

Arabic maqām is the system of melodic modes used in traditional Arabic music, which is mainly melodic. The word maqam in Arabic means place, location or rank. The Arabic maqam is a melody type...

  mode

Musical mode

In the theory of Western music since the ninth century, mode generally refers to a type of scale. This usage, still the most common in recent years, reflects a tradition dating to the middle ages, itself inspired by the theory of ancient Greek music.The word encompasses several additional...

.

The song traditions were studied and transcribed in the early twentienth century by a number of musical ethnologists and scholars of medieval Hispanic literature. From around 1957 until quite recently, Samuel Armistead (UC Davis) with colleagues Joseph Silverman and Israel Katz collected the Judeo-Spanish song tradition from informants in North America, Turkey, the Balkans, Greece, North Africa, and Israel. The digitized recordings, with transcriptions and information about song type, is available on the website Folk Literature of the Sephardic Jews, now permanently hosted by the University of Illinois Library.

The early 20th century saw some popular commercial recordings of Sephardic music come out of Greece and Turkey, followed by Jerusalem and other parts of the Eastern Tradition. The first performers were mostly men, including the "Turks" Jack Mayesh, Haim Efendi and Yitzhak Algazi. Later, a new generation of singers arose, many of whom were not themselves Sephardic. Gloria Levy, Pasharos Sefardíes, Flory Jagoda

Flory Jagoda

Flory Jagoda is a Jewish American and Bosnian guitarist, composer and singer. She is known for her interpretation of Ladino songs.-Biography:...

 and Janet & Jak Esim Ensemble are popular Eastern Tradition performers of this period. Gerard Edery, Savina Yannatou

Savina Yannatou

Savina Yannatou is a renowned Greek singer.After taking classical guitar lessons and participating in the children's choir of Yannis Nousias for some years, she studied singing with Gogo Georgilopoulou and Spiros Sakkas in Athens, and later attended postgraduate studies at the Guildhall School of...

, Stefani Valadez, Françoise Atlan

Françoise Atlan

Françoise Atlan is a French singer, born in a Sephardic Jewish family in Narbonne 27 July 1964. Her father was a counselor native of Béjaïa in Kabylia and her mother was a pianist and a lyrical singer.-Musical learning:...

 and Yasmin Levy

Yasmin Levy

Yasmin Levy , born on December 23, 1975 in Jerusalem, is an Israeli singer-songwriter of Judaeo-Spanish music.-Career:Her late father, Isaac Levy, was a composer and cantor, pioneer researcher into the long and rich history of the Ladino music and culture of Spanish Jewry and its diaspora, being...

  are among the new generation of singers bringing a new interpretation to the Ladino/Judeo-Spanish heritage and, in the case of Levy and Edery, mixing it with Andalusia

Andalusia

Andalusia is the most populous and the second largest in area of the autonomous communities of Spain. The Andalusian autonomous community is officially recognised as a nationality of Spain. The territory is divided into eight provinces: Huelva, Seville, Cádiz, Córdoba, Málaga, Jaén, Granada and...

n Flamenco

Flamenco

Flamenco is a genre of music and dance which has its foundation in Andalusian music and dance and in whose evolution Andalusian Gypsies played an important part....

.

Instrumentation

Sephardic music, including pan-Sephardic music which may not necessarily be Judeo-Spanish, is primarily vocal. Instruments, when they are used, are played to accompany songs. Instrumental practice among Sephardim has generally reflected that of the host culture: Greek, Turkish, Moroccan, etc. The instruments most common are plucked lutes (fretless: 'nd, the Middle Eastern lute; and in Turkey fretted saz or sometimes mandoline or the chumbush), kanun or santur (plucked or hammered Middle Eastern zither), violin and hand drums (frame and goblet).

For weddings and other celebrations, musicians might also be hired from the Muslim community. On the other hand, skilled Jewish musicians would be hired by the Muslim community. Generally, Sephardic men played both local percussion and melody instruments, while women usually sang unaccompanied in domestic contexts, and at weddings accompanied their singing with tambourines and sometimes other percussion instruments. Molho describes Salonica Sephardic women using kitchen utensils as improvised percussion, in a manner reminiscent of Spanish and Portuguese village practice today. (Molho 2021) In the eastern Mediterranean, women musicians specializing in singing and drumming for weddings were known as tanyederas, and they played a central role in the wedding events. Some early 20th-century Ottoman-area Jewish schools taught 'udand mandoline to girls, and some women learned to play the piano. In any case, whether or not instruments are used, the main and always appropriate instrument in Sephardic music is the voice.

Medieval instruments as such are not used, except in cases such as the 'ud where the instrument has survived with minimal changes in traditional practice. Sephardim, like other traditional musicians, often adapt traditional instruments to current norms: at a Sephardic wedding one will definitely not find any medieval instruments, but will likely notice an electronic keyboard.

Composers

From the sephardic music roots has grown a large corpus of original new classical music. Notable among modern composers are:

• Yitzhak Yedid
  Yitzhak Yedid
  Yitzhak Yedid is an Israeli Australian composer of classical music and jazz pianist.-Biography:Yitzhak Yedid was born on September 29, 1971 in Jerusalem, Israel. His family immigrated from Syria. He studied at the Rubin Academy of Music and the New England Conservatory in Boston with Ran Blake...
  
  , who has composed mostly for chamber groups, strives to combine classical genres with improvisation of Sephardic roots and arabic music. Yedid's composition 'Oud Bass Piano Trio' is a good example of this.
• Betty Olivero
  Betty Olivero
  -Biography:Olivero was born in Tel Aviv, Israel to parents Dora Kapon and Eli Olivero. She graduated with a Bachelor in Music from the Rubin Academy of Music at Tel Aviv University in 1978, where she studied with Ilona Vincze-Kraus for piano and Yizhak Sadai and Leon Schidlowsky for composition...
  
  , who has taken traditional Jewish melodies – both Ashkenazic (pertaining to Ashkenazic music
  Ashkenazic music
  This article is about the music of the Ashkenazi Jews.The music that originated in Eastern Europe and moved westward and northward throughout Europe and later into North America, belongs to the Ashkenazi tradition. It includes Klezmer music. 'Klezmer' means 'instruments of song', from the Hebrew...
  
  ) and Sephardic – and sets them in complex, profoundly dissonant contexts. Her work Serafim for soprano, clarinet, violin, cello and piano is a good example of this.
• Tsippi Fleischer
  Tsippi Fleischer
  -Life:Tsippi Fleischer was born in Haifa, Israel, of Polish-born parents, and grew up in a mixed Jewish-Arab environment. She studied piano and theory at the Rubin Conservatory of Music and graduated from the Haifa Reali School, later pursuing degrees in music, Hebrew language, Middle Eastern...
  
  , who has composed vocal works that merge contemporary Western compositional techniques with the modal, quartertone scales of Arabic music.

Artists

• Ana Alcaide (Spain)
• Gloria Levy (USA)
• Judi Frankel (USA)
• Mor Karbasi (Great Britain)
• Yehoram Gaon (Israel)
• George Dalaras (Greece)
• Janet & Jak Esim (Turkey)
• BraAgas (Czech Republic)
• Avraam Perera (Israel)
• Fortuna (Brazil)
• Daddo Dganit (Israel)
• Rosa Negra - Fado Ladino (Portugal)
• Glykeria (Greece)
• Javier Ruibal (Spain)
• Los Desterrados (Great Britain)
• Françoise Atlan (France)
• Soledad Bravo (Venezuela)
• Joaquín Díaz González (Spain)
• Yosi Azulay (Israel)
• Sefarad (Turkey)
• David d'Or (Israel)
• Esther Ofarim (Israel)
• Stefanie Valadez (USA)
• María Salgado (Spain)
• Montserrat Franco (USA)
• Avishai Cohen (Israel)
• Koby Israelite (Great Britain)
• Lampa Ladino (Russia)
• Sarah Aroeste (USA)
• DeLeon (USA)
• La Mar Enfortuna
  La Mar Enfortuna (band)
  La Mar Enfortuna is the Sephardic side project from the alt rock group Elysian Fields, Oren Bloedow and Jennifer Charles. La Mar Enfortuna is a modern interpretation of lost or forgotten music, mostly of the Sephardim, from the 11th to the 16th century, with songs sung in Ladino, Arabic, Aramaic,...
  
   (USA)
• Sophie Solomon (Great Britain)
• Adik Chezron (Germany)
• Israeli Andaluzian Orchestra (Israel)
• Al Andaluz Project (Spain)
• Voice of the Turtle
  Voice of the Turtle
  Voice of the Turtle is a musical group specializing in Sephardic music. VotT is unique in its emphasis on doing original historical research before making recordings. The band members travel the world looking for documents of Sephardic songs, and also interview community members who may remember...
  
  

Discography

• Songs of the Sephardim: Traditional Music of the Spanish Jews by La Rondinella with Tina Chancey (Dorian Discovery, 1993).
• Spring in Salonica: Sephardic Popular Songs by Savina Yannatou and Primavera En Salonico (Lyra Records, 1996).

External links

• Website dedicated to Sephardic Music
• DesiretoShare Music - Beautiful Sephardic/Mizrachi Jewish Music - Listen Online
• Zemerl, the Jewish music database
• Middle Eastern Sephardic Pizmonim (songs)
• Sefarad Records, Sephardic Singer/Guitarist, Gerard Edery
• Janet & Jak Esim Ensemble at Oz Productions
• Hiiba's Sephardic Music Anthology of vintage Sephardic recordings
• Folk Literature of the Sephardic Jews, a digital library at the University of Illinois containing 40 years of field research among Sephardic communities in North America, the Balkans, Greece, Turkey, North Africa, and Israel by Professors Samuel Armistead, Joseph Silverman, and Israel Katz.