sephardi folk
Posté le 24.03.2008 par achermizrahi
http://www.sephardifolklit.org/flsj/sjjs/lecture/lecture8.html
Oral Literature of the Hispanic World
Samuel G. Armistead
Faculty Research Lecture, 1998
University of California, Davis
Creative Cultural Fusions: "Orientalizing" the Ballad Melody
And as our work went forward, we were to discover something
that had never been noticed before. Various ballads sung
in the Eastern Sephardic communities--ballads that, in every way,
look like authentic medieval survivals--turned out, in fact,
to be quite close translations from Modern Greek.
In the Eastern communities, the Spanish Jews had, as their close,
immediate neighbors, Greeks, Turks, South Slavs, Albanians,
and other Balkan peoples. In Morocco, their neighbors spoke Arabic.
The influence of these peoples has been crucially important
to the development of Sephardic traditional poetry.
And this has turned out to be very much the case,
not only with texts, but also, as my friend Professor Katz has shown,
with the music to which Sephardic ballads are sung.
Here is one example of the "Orientalization" of ballad music.
This is a Judeo-Spanish version of the ballad of The Husband's Return.
It can be traced back to medieval Spanish antecedents
and ultimately to a lost Old French archetype.
But if we were to disregard the Spanish words and concentrate
our attention on the music alone, we could easily be convinced
that this is a Near Eastern, a Turkish, or an Arabic song.
The singer is playing a stringed instrument, the Turkish ud,
as an accompaniment.
(This is the Arabic word and the Arabic instrument
that entered Western European communities as the lute)
La vuelta del marido
Le retour du mari
Arvoleras, arvoleras
Arbres, nobles arbres
arvoleras tan gentil!
Quel bel arbre !
La raís tienéx de oro
Tes racines sont en or
la simiente de marfil
Ton tronc d'ivoire
Por ayí pasó un cavayero
Un chevalier est passé par là
cavayero d'Amadí
Un chevalier du nom d'Amadi
Qué buxcáx, la mi señora?
Que cherchez vous Madame?
Qué buxcáx vos por aquí?
Que cherchez vous ici?
Buxco yo al mi querido
Je cherche mon amant
mi querido Amadí.
Mon cher Amadí.
Vos daré las tres mis hijas
Je vous donnerai mes trois filles
tres mis hijas d'Amadí
Les trois filles d'Amadí
La una para la meza
Une pour dresser la table
la sigunda para servir
La deuxième pour servir
la tresera, la más chiquitica d'eyas
La troisième, la plus jeune d'entre elles
para holgar y para dormir
Pour dormir avec vous
Él ya abaxó di el cavayo
Il descendit de son cheval
s'asercó y a donde mí
Et s'approcha de moi
Miramos cara con cara
Nous nous regardames les yeux dans les yeux
Ah,! Tú sos el mi querido
Oh, vous êtes mon chéri
que yo tanto te asufrí
J'ai tant souffert
Bendicho el Patrón del Mundo
Béni soit le maître du monde
que vos traxo para mí!
Qui vous a ramené à moi!
(Asher Mizrahi,
Istanbul, Turkey;
collected by Dr. Kenneth Brown, Tunis, c. 1960)
In the light of such texts as this one,
the Sephardic tradition emerges,
not only as a marvelous treasure trove
of multi-secular medieval survivals,
but rather as a rich, pluralistic, living,
and constantly evolving creative tradition,
a synthesis of Hispanic and Near Eastern elements,
a tradition which faithfully mirrors all the diverse
cultural contacts, the many adventures, experienced by the Sephardic people,
during half a millennium, since they
were forced to depart from their Spanish homeland.
--
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