Songs from the Sephardic Judeo-Spanish tradition and associated repertoires #2
27 February to 2 March 2025
CONTEXT
Although Sephardic songs originated in medieval Spain, they were largely influenced and nourished by the musical and poetic universe of the lands of welcome and exile of the Jewish communities expelled from the Iberian Peninsula at the end of the 15th century. It is for this reason that an approach to the musical traditions neighbouring the Sephardic repertoire stricto sensu is necessary in order to study the repertoire itself.
Given that the two main geographical areas in which the Judeo-Spanish repertoire developed were the southern part of the western Mediterranean (essentially northern Morocco) and the eastern Mediterranean and the Balkans (in particular the cities of the Ottoman Empire such as Salonika, Istanbul, Izmir, Edirne, Sarajevo, etc.), we have set ourselves the task, in this study, of examining the musical traditions of these two regions. ), by regularly inviting musicians and musicologists who are specialists in the repertoires of these two areas, we are keen to enrich the practice of the students on the Cursus and to build bridges between these neighbouring repertoires, by also allowing other people (who may be enrolled on other courses, for example) to join them for a Masterclass.
This Masterclass will therefore enable students to develop their familiarity with the Judeo-Spanish poetic and musical world in all its diversity, and to approach the different vocal (and even instrumental) ornamentation techniques encountered in the Arabo-Andalusian, Ottoman and Balkan spheres, which can be found in certain Judeo-Spanish songs.
TEACHING APPROACH
Rachid Brahim-Djelloul (with whom Sandra has worked for over 20 years) is a violinist, singer and musicologist.
In 2005, he set up the traditional violin class at the Edgar Varese Conservatoire in Gennevilliers (92), followed in 2015 by the Oriental and Mediterranean music department, which he still directs, as well as the Chœur Méditerranée.
He will be present on 1 and 2 March, these two days being more specifically devoted to his specific approach to ornamentation in the repertoire we are interested in.
Through a selection of songs covering the different branches of the repertoire and their specific features, the aim will be to integrate this specific work at the heart of this musical tradition.
This work will be undertaken through the Sephardic songs covered during the first two days, and will also facilitate natural access to modal improvisation.
The four days will alternate between collective learning and individual performance.
As the workshop is essentially oral, no knowledge of music reading is required. However, as far as possible, the scores of the songs studied will be handed out.
Some time may be devoted to listening to and comparing different interpretations of songs using sound extracts.
You can bring your own recording equipment, particularly to help you make the songs your own from one day to the next.
EDUCATIONAL CONTENT
- Body preparation and awareness of any blockages, anchoring and fluidity of movement.
- Vocal warm-up: work on flexibility and agility, ornamentation and melismas, depending on the songs being sung and respecting the modes.
- Rhythmic work: integration of the most frequently encountered rhythms and basic practice of digital percussion to accompany singing.
- Availability, interiorisation, listening and repetition of musical phrases to imbibe the ethos of a mode.
- Specific work on the art of ornamentation, based on a number of Judeo-Spanish songs from different branches of the repertoire: romances from the Spanish medieval tradition, kantigas and coplas.
- Details of the historical and cultural context, theoretical input, work on the language and interpretation: prosody, pronunciation, the words you wish to emphasise according to their meaning and the emotion you wish to convey.
CONDITIONS OF PARTICIPATION
- Good singing practice and interest in the repertoire covered in its diversity (no theoretical knowledge necessary).
- Open to amateurs and professionals, score readers and non-readers alike.
- Even limited familiarity with the Judeo-Spanish language (or Spanish) will save time and make you more at ease.
- Percussion instruments (frame drums such as the daf) can be borrowed from the institute, but you’re welcome to bring your own!
- Instrumentalists are also welcome, if they wish to accompany themselves and/or perform the instrumental interludes of the songs covered.
REGISTER NOW
>> ON-LINE REGISTRATION <<
>> RATES AND REGISTRATION PROCEDURE <<
BIOGRAPHY
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