Table Of ContentSonic Ruins of Modernity
Sonic Ruins of Modernity shows how social, cultural and cognitive phenom-
ena interact in the making and distribution of folksongs beyond their time.
Through Judeo-Spanish (or Ladino) folksongs, the author illustrates a meth-
odology for the interplay of individual memories, artistic initiatives, political
and media policies, which ultimately shape “tradition” for the past century.
He feshes out in a series of case studies how folksongs can be conceived,
performed and circulated in the post-tradition era – constituting each song
as a “sonic ruin,” as an imagined place. At the same time, the book overall
provides a unique perspective on the history of the Judeo-Spanish folksong.
Edwin Seroussi is the Emanuel Alexandre Professor of Musicology and Di-
rector of the Jewish Music Research Centre of Hebrew University, as well as
visiting scholar at Dartmouth College.
SOAS Studies in Music
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Sonic Ruins of Modernity
Judeo-Spanish Folksongs Today
Edwin Seroussi
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com/music/series/SOASMS
Sonic Ruins of Modernity
Judeo-Spanish Folksongs Today
Edwin Seroussi
Cover image: © Sephardi women from Tangier dressed in the
berberisca (berber) style, Tangier, 1950s
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 Edwin Seroussi
The right of Edwin Seroussi to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
Published in Spanish, translated and edited by Susana Asensio
Llamas, by Consejo Superior de Inverstigaciones Científicas,
Madrid, 2019.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978-1-032-27653-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-27654-0 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-29358-3 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003293583
Typeset in Times New Roman
by codeMantra
See accompanying website www.jewish-music.huji.ac.il
Contents
List of illustrations vii
Preface ix
1 Defning Sonic Ruins of Modernity 1
2 Excavating Sonic Ruins: The Modern Judeo-Spanish
Folksong in Context 14
What Is in a “Song”? 23
Sephardic Folksongs and the Concept of Nation 25
Networks 27
3 From Spain to the Eastern Mediterranean and Back 33
Judeo-Spanish Songs at the Dawn of Franco’s Era 33
A Sephardic Bard in New York, 1958 35
A Sephardi in Paris, ca. 1958 37
Nightingale of the East: Haim Effendi 38
The Rediscovery of Spain by the Sephardim 41
Theme and Variations: Geneva 1920, Paris 1937, Sofa 1972 44
In the Footsteps of Haim Effendi: Memory and Recreation 45
Back to the Future: Brooklyn, New York, ca. 1961 52
1972: A Sephardic Scholar in Jerusalem 54
The Era of Mechanical Reproduction 56
Crossroads, Choices, Coincidences: Making
Sephardic Culture 59
The Ruination of “A la una” 62
4 Indescribable Female Beauty: The Song of Songs and
Sephardic wasfs 68
Studies of Las prendas de la novia: A Critique 72
Romance que hizo un galán alabando a su amiga 75
vi Contents
Las prendas de la novia as a wasf 78
Las prendas de la novia and Latin Poetic Descriptions of
Female Beauty 80
Ethnography and Performance of Las prendas de la novia 82
Who Is Really Singing (in) This Song? 86
More Body Descriptions in the Sephardic Repertoires 87
The wasf in the piyyut Repertoire 88
The Music 91
Indescribable Female Beauty Revisited as a Post-Traditional
Sonic Ruin 96
5 A Forbidden Love: The Sanctity of a Modern Sephardic
Female Proletarian 106
Previous Studies 107
New Readings of El hermano infame 111
El hermano infame in the Sephardic Tradition 114
The Music of El hermano infame in the Hispanic Traditions 121
Final Remarks about El hermano infame 127
6 Abraham’s Vocation, Modern Invocations 135
El nacimiento y la vocación de Abraham: Texts 138
El nacimiento y la vocación de Abraham: Melodies 141
Endowing Meanings to a Sephardic Post-Traditional Folksong 152
7 From Venice to Manhattan: The Modern Odyssey of
Bendigamos 157
A Judeo-Spanish Folksong’s Mediterranean Travails 170
The Legendary Melody of Bendigamos 170
Manhattan Transfer 171
8 A Garden of Sonic Ruins and the
Post-Traditional Condition 179
Abbreviations 193
Bibliography 195
Index 215
Illustrations
Examples
3.1 Joaquín Díaz’s version of Las horas de la vida 35
3.2 Haim Effendi’s version of Las horas de la vida 40
3.3 Comparative chart of printed versions of Las horas de la vida 50
3.4 Facsimile of Levy 1959, No. 80 62
4.1 D ize la nuestra novia, version of Las prendas de la novia
from Tangier, Weich-Shahak 1989a, no. 20 92
5.1 Comparisson of melodies of El hermano infame 122
6.1 A braham avinu for voice and piano, facsimile of opening in
Simoni 1937, p. 11 143
7.1 Bendigamos in Cardozo, 1987 159
7.2 Song of the Sea. Facsimile of Aguilar-De Sola, 1857 172
Figures
2.1 Una matica de ruda, one of the earliest musical notations of
a Sephardic romance, refecting the early interest by Central
European Jewish intellectual circles on Judeo-Spanish
folklore. Der Urquell, vol. I, Leiden, 1897, p. 206 16
2.2 Don Ramón Menéndez Pidal (center) with Isaac Levy (on
his right) and Moshe Attias (on his left) during his historic
visit to Jerusalem, 1964 29
3.1 Cover jacket of the frst edition of Joaquín Díaz recording,
Temas sefardíes, Movieplay 530103/1, 1972 34
3.2 Cover jacket of the long play record Sephardic Songs by
Gloria Levy, Folkways, 1958. Notice the use of a motif
from the Samuel Haleví or Tránsito synagogue in medieval
Toledo that insinuates a relation between the songs in the
album and that place and time 36
3.3 Haim Effendi in the Columbia record catalogue,
1928. Courtesy of Joel Bresler, www.sephardicmusic.org 39
viii Illustrations
3.4 Cover jacket of Refael Elnadav’s long-play record, Ladino
Folksongs: Romances y cantigas de amor de la tradición
sefardí, Collectors Guild, CGL 605, 1961 53
4.1 Sephardi women from Tangier dressed in the berberisca
(berber) style during a staged recreation of the ceremonia
de alheña (henna ceremony) that used to precede the
traditional Jewish wedding in Morocco. Photo taken at
the Cervantes Theater, Tangier, 1950s. From the private
collection of Ana Benarroch de Bensadón (Madrid), used
with permission of the owner 82
4.2 Label of the 78-rpm record of Jacob Algava, “La novia le
dice al [sic] novia,” Odeon Records 46286, 1909. Courtesy
of Joel Bresler, www.sephardicmusic.org 96
4.3 Ensemble of Jewish wedding singers accompanied by a
musician. Postcard from Thessaloniki, early twentieth
century. Courtesy of the Joseph and Margit Hoffman
Judaica Postcard Collection, Folklore Research Center,
Hebrew University of Jerusalem 97
5.1 Label of the 78-rpm record of Elías Béhar, “Ensanti eleni,”
Polydor 50183, ca. 1926/1927. Courtesy of Joel Bresler,
www.sephardicmusic.org 115
5.2 Cover of the CD Diáspora sefardí: Romances & música
instrumental del grupo Hespèrion XXI, 1999 (Alia Vox).
Courtesy of Joel Bresler, www.sephardicmusic.org 131
6.1 Abraham Danon. Courtesy of Michel Danon (Paris) 139
6.2 Wolf Simoni/Louis Saguer 144
6.3 Label of the 78-rpm record by Sarah Gorby, “Abram
avinu,” Melotone, 1936. Copy from the Jacob Michael
Recorded Collection, Department of Music, National
Library of Israel. Reproduced with permission 146
7.1 Cover of the music collection by Abraham Lopes Cardozo,
Sephardic Songs of Praise according to the Spanish-
Portuguese Tradition as Sung in the Synagogue and at Home,
New York, Tara Publications, 1987 158
8.1 Detail of wall decoration and Hebrew inscription from the
Sinagoga del Tránsito in Toledo as reproduced in one of the
frst brochures of the Museo Sefardí established there in the
early 1970s 180
Tables
3.1 Comparison of textual versions of Las horas de la vida 58
Online Resources
Sound fles and visuals are available on www.jewish-music.huji.ac.il (search
for “Sonic Ruins”)
Preface
Songs tagged as “folk” still fascinate contemporary audiences in spite of the
dramatic change in the ways that songs are created, transmitted, concep-
tualized and consumed in the digital era. That additional edge of mystery
surrounding the origins of folksongs, so exploited by the modern interest
in national projects, still retains for modern consumers a dim refection of
Benjamin’s aura. It is this lasting trace of innocence that the present study
seeks to locate and interpret.
Judeo-Spanish (or Ladino) folksongs are the repertoire through which
I exemplify how social, cultural and cognitive mechanisms interact in
the making, distribution and consumption of folksongs in what I call the
post-traditional era. “Post-traditional” has been an adjective deployed
mostly, and uneasily, by sociologists (notably Shmuel Noah Einsenstadt and
Anthony Giddens) as an alternative to “modern” societies. Behind such a
terminological choice was an attempt to circumvent the downsides implicit
in the Enlightenment’s constitution of “the modern” as the West’s exclusive
triumph over the “darkness” of the ossifed tradition. Once it became clear
to sociologists that tradition not only continued into the modern (most no-
tably into its chief social manifestation, the nation-state), but also shaped
much of its institutions, morals and rituals, a conceptual redirection of the
traditional/modern binary was needed.
The term, however, never became widespread, although it circulates to
this day in sociology, anthropology and, more rarely, cultural studies, the
latter being in fact a critique of the binary structures more characteristic of
the, well, “traditional” social sciences. I shall not address “post-traditional
era” in its structural sense as it has been applied to the study of societies in
fux. Rather, and more modestly, “post-traditional era” refers here to the
fexible time span in which folksongs are detached from the folk that main-
tained them in their traditional stage, acquiring a new life among an amor-
phous and global social constellation of archivists, arrangers, producers,
performers, critics and audiences. Volatile technologies of sound produc-
tion and distribution propel such social constellations as well as, in a major-
ity of cases, the generation of monetary profts.
