Hadass Pal-Yarden releases collection of Ottoman Ladino music
Judy Caplan Ginsburgh writes to the Jewish-music mailing list about this new recording:
"It is
called Yahudice (the name for the Ladino language of the Jewish people in
Ottoman times). The CD presents Ladino repertoire that deals with urban
music from Istanbul, Izmir, Thessalonika, and Jerusalem. The songs have
been extensively researched by Hadass Pal-Yarden who is a singer and a
doctoral student of Ethnomusicology. She has painstakingly researched these
songs and preserved 14 of them on this CD in as authentic form as possible
using mostly Ottoman instruments and the typical clear, ornamental vocal
style of this music. Not only is the music on the CD lovely and an
historical record, but it comes with a book which contains 160 pages of
educational material about each song, its style, background, audio archival
sources, bibliography and discography)."
The recording is available now, although for outrageous postage to the US, from www.kalan.com. Simon, of Hatikvah Music, in Los Angeles, has announced that he hopes to be providing this to American customers in the near future.