Songs from the Sephardic Judeo-Spanish tradition
and an approach to associated repertoireS #3
March 14 to 18, 2025
CONTEXT
Unlike other musical traditions, Judeo-Spanish songs do not constitute a homogeneous stylistic whole. This diversity, which is due to their history, the many geographical areas in which they have developed and the many influences that run through them, leaves performers with a great deal of freedom, but this freedom must be part of a coherent framework that is faithful to the spirit that inspires them.
OBJECTIVES
To become familiar with the poetic and musical world of Judeo-Spanish songs in all their diversity, integrating the historical, sociological and geographical context in which they are set.
Get to grips with the different branches of the repertoire and their specific features: from romances originating in medieval Spain to the kantigas born in Salonika or Istanbul in the 20th century, from secular love songs to coplas set to the rhythm of religious festivals.
Respect the modal constraints – and freedoms – of the repertoire (except for the songs, often more recent, that belong to the tonal universe): continuity and differences between the musical modes of medieval Spain, Arabo-Andalusian modes, Oriental and/or Ottoman modes.
TEACHING APPROACH
Sandra Bessis will teach various songs during the masterclass. This work will alternate between collective learning and individual interpretation.
Time will be devoted to listening and comparative analysis of the songs and their various possible interpretations according to geographical area and period (from the first decades of the 20th century to the present day…).
As the workshop is essentially oral, no knowledge of music reading is required. However, scores corresponding to the songs studied will be distributed as far as possible.
The masterclass may end with a presentation by the participants of the work done during the week, including the main songs studied.
CONTENTS
- Body preparation: relaxing the body and becoming aware of any blockages, anchoring and fluidity of movement.
- Listening, availability, interiorisation and concentration, presence to oneself and to the audience.
- Warming up and vocal work: flexibility and agility, ornamentation and melismas, according to the songs being sung and respecting the modes.
- Learning and performing a number of Judeo-Spanish songs from the different branches of the repertoire: romances from the Spanish medieval tradition, kantigas. Coplas.
- Songs from the Salonican tradition (and more broadly from the eastern Mediterranean): similarities and differences with songs from the western tradition, mainly from northern Morocco.
- The possibilities of interpretation, accompaniment and the art of ornamentation according to geographical area, period and choice of performer.
- Contemporary interpretations: following trends and the ‘zeitgeist’, and/or opening up to one’s own singularity: finding one’s way/voice while respecting the specificities of the repertoire.
- Thematic constants encountered in the repertoire: for example, ‘border songs’ and la hermana cautiva, or themes with a double meaning (avre la tu ventana, ou la tu puerta cerrada”). Thematic continuity or rupture between the Western and Eastern Mediterranean.
- Possible approach to associated repertoires: liturgical Sephardic chant, Arabo-Andalusian chant, etc.
- Work on the language: prosody, the specific pronunciation(s) of Judeo-Spanish in relation to Castilian, the words you wish to emphasise according to their meaning and the emotion you wish to convey.
- Rhythmic approach to accompaniment with digital percussion: singing to accompaniment.
CONDITIONS OF PARTICIPATION
- Good singing experience and an interest in the diverse repertoire (no theoretical knowledge necessary).
- Even a superficial knowledge of Spanish and/or Judeo-Spanish will facilitate the work and learning of the songs.
- Open to amateurs and professionals, score readers and non-readers alike.
- Instrumentalists are also welcome, if they wish to accompany themselves and/or perform the instrumental interludes of the songs covered.
- If possible, bring a percussion instrument (frame drum such as bendir, daf, tambourine).
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BIOGRAPHY
Sandra bessis
Born Tunisian, Sandra Bessis lived successively in her native country and various countries before settling in France, where she has lived since the age of 18.
Parallel to her literary university studies, she studied singing, first with Suzy Sachs, later with Françoise Semellaz.
For several decades, she has been travelling the territory of Sephardic songs and Mediterranean music, performing on many stages and festivals, both in France and abroad, also working on various creations with other artists, on the theme of the encounter between the musical traditions of the Mediterranean basin.
Her first CD, from distant Spain, was released in 1992. With flutist John Mac Lean, she wanders through the repertoire of Judeo-Spanish songs, giving free rein to creativity and fantasy, playing on timbres and instruments.
Her fourth CD, Entre deux rives, is the result of a “live” recording at the Synagogue of Carpentras, with Rachid Brahim-Djelloul and Anello Capuano. Released in 2005, it acts as a kind of return to the roots, crossing Sephardic songs and other songs of the Mediterranean, Arab-Andalusian in particular.
In 2006, she created in Paris, with Rachid Brahim-Djelloul and Noureddine Aliane, a show mixing fragments of tales, Bouqalat, popular poems of the women of Algiers, fragments of stories, history, punctuating romances, kantigas and mouwachahat.
Wandering playing on the registers spoken, sung, played, traveling again the paths of transmission, from one shore to the other of the Mediterranean.
With the ensemble Naguila, she participates in the voyage de Sefarad, a show created in Montpellier in December 2009.
From 2010 to 2013 she was one of the two singers invited to Bratsch’s latest creation, Orient mon Amour, melodies and poems from the Mediterranean shores. The show, which brings together 17 musicians around the poet Salah el Hamdani, was hosted between 2010 and 2013 by many French national stages.
Inhabited by the taste for words, the unveiling of the intimate word, she co-created in 2013 at the Théâtre de l’Epée de Bois, at the Cartoucherie de Vincennes, with Mireille Diaz-Florian and accordionist Jasko Ramic, the reading in music : Tout chose au monde m’est nouvelle, texts and poems by Aimé Césaire, Mahmoud Darwish, Saint John Perse, Anna Seghers, Sophie Bessis, Nancy Huston and Leïla Sebbar, and signs a little later a solo show between words and music, staging, in voice, a woman letting rise in her traces, shadows and perfumes of the Mare Nostrum, echoes and romances of the exiles, and some figures of women. Since 2015, this show, playing on intimacy with the public, has been hosted more than forty times in France and Italy.
Cordoba 21 – In the footsteps of Sefarad , released in 2014, is his fifth CD dedicated to these repertoires.
She brings around her Rachid Brahim-Djelloul on violin and voice, Noureddine Aliane on ‘oud, mandola, Jasko Ramic on accordion, Yousef Zayed on percussion and bouzouk, Théo Girard on double bass and Araik Bakhtikian on doudouk ; for a new musical journey, free wandering in the Mediterranean Sea, playing with languages and their respective identities.
In December 2022, still at the Cartoucherie, with actress Fatima Soualhia Manet and musician Marius Pibarot, she staged Ce que leur dit les anges, a musical reading she conceived by bringing together the texts of Annemarie Schwartzenbach, writer-traveler who died prematurely in 1944, and singer-poet Patti Smith.
Her concerts are an invitation to travel into the musical universe drawing on the sources of medieval Andalusia, then continuing to walk in the Easts that inherited its decomposition, as it resonates for us, here and now.
“Ample voice, shivering declamation, Sandra Bessis carries, in distant heritage, the Judeo-Spanish song of Muslim Andalusia … Its song actually embraces the whole Mediterranean, because it is nomadic and ornamented.” Liberation