#Aman Aman #world music #folk music #Sephardic music #Mediterranian music #Greek folk #Turkish folk #traditional #neo-medieval #Ladino
Aman Aman are a group of skilled world musicians and ethnomusicologists who came together to explore the traditional music of the Sephardi, the Jewish people of Spain. This mixture of Jewish heritage with Spanish language, customs, and music created a fascinating culture that is seldom recognized. With a wealth of knowledge between them (many of the band members teach music at the university level), the ensemble reproduces music from many Mediterranean countries, including Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria, and Spain. From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/aman-aman-mn0001533419/biography
We are used to hearing the Sephardic repertoire interpreted from the perspective of the world of classical musicians, with all its tics: fake voices, musicians playing with sheet music and no room for improvisation. Aman Aman prefers to approach it from the perspective of the traditional music of those countries that welcomed the Sephardim, which is, after all, the source from which they drank when they arrived from their diaspora. In some cases, we have even dared to mix the music of the Sephardim with Turkish or Greek pieces, with which they are very similar.
The sound of Aman Aman is based, as can be heard in various field recordings, on the sound of strings, winds and percussion from the Middle East, with the more "current" contribution of the cello, although played as in the modern orchestras of the Maghreb, Turkey or Egypt.
The ensemble is made up of Aziz Samsaoui (qanun), Diego López (bendir, darbuka, zarb, doira and riq), Efrén López (ud, bağlama, lavta, cümbüs and tanbur), Eleni Kallimopoulou (politiki lyra), Hristos Barbas (ney and kaval), Mara Aranda (voice and bendir) and Matthieu Saglio (cello).
In the year 1492 the Christian kings Fernando de Aragón and Isabel de Castilla decreed the expulsion or conversion of all Spanish Jews who had inhabited the peninsula since the first century AD. In a few months, more than 160,000 Jews left for the Ottoman Empire, Provence, North Africa, the Balkan states, and also Italy and the Netherlands. Diaspora Jews passed on their medieval Spanish past to their children: customs, music and language, and thus, from generation to generation, these elements were preserved to this day.
The traditional songs of the Sephardic Jews were, and continue to be, the romances in the Judeo-Spanish language (judezmo or haketía), which is currently incorrectly called “ladino”. There are no written examples of this popular music, but a large part of this wealth has come to us by oral transmission. In the interpretation of traditional Sephardic music, the female voice predominates. Men who knew Hebrew participated in the synagogal liturgy. The women generally did not know Hebrew writing and they sang in Jewish-Spanish, which is the daily language, the songs that refer to the cycle of life: birth, growth, marriage and death. The Sephardic lifestyle was merging with that of those places where they lived. And thus they integrated new melodies, rhythms, instruments, cadential formulas and ornaments to their repertoire. Also words from these new languages and any element that served the purpose of the song.
At the beginning of the 18th century, the Sephardic colonies of the western and eastern Mediterranean constituted two clearly distinct and independent cultures: that of the eastern Mediterranean (Turkey, Greece, the former Yugoslavia and Bulgaria) and that of the western Mediterranean (clearly influenced by Moroccan elements, and Spanish). Currently the Jewish community of the Spanish State is about 15,000 members. In addition, there are thousands of descendants of converted Jews who do not know their ancestry. Knowing and spreading these songs is knowing a part of the history of the place where we live and enriching our own human and cultural identity.
From: https://www.womex.com/virtual/aman_aman
