It will begin with a presentation by Dr. Alfred Vincent on the songs of the Spanish-speaking communities of Thessaloniki and other centres and their links with Greek musical traditions.
It will be followed by a selection performed by Marina Thiveos and Paul Hofstetter. The second presentation will feature Vic Alhadeff, CEO of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, whose family comes from the island of Rhodes.
He will speak on the Holocaust in Greece – from where 50,000 Jews were murdered - and the remarkable courage of Greek leaders who saved Jews from the Nazis.
You can listen to the interview in Greek with Dr Vincent by pressing play on the above podcast and read below the synopsis of his talk:
By “Sephardic songs” we refer to the songs in Judeo-Spanish (Djudezmo or Ladino) of the Sephardic diaspora, the communities deriving from the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497. Many thousands of these refugees were welcomed into the then Ottoman Empire. Sephardic communities were established in the Ottoman capital Istanbul (Constantinople), in Smyrna, Thessaloniki (Salonica), Sarajevo, and many other major cities, as well as in smaller places, such as the Greek islands of Chios and Rhodes. In Greece, the largest Sephardic community was that of Thessaloniki, numbering over 50,000 before the Holocaust.
Recordings of Sephardic songs by Thessaloniki musicians were being made as early as the first decade of the twentieth century, and continued up to the Second World War. In the last thirty years there has been a revival of interest in Sephardic music internationally.
We will compare the different approaches represented by the recordings of Sephardic songs in Greece by Savina Yannatou and David Saltiel in the 1990s, and by international artists who have included Sephardic songs from Greece in their repertoire; these include the Sydney-based Renaissance Players, led by Winsome Evans, and Hespèrion XXI, directed by the Catalan musician Jordi Savall. How do these recordings relate to the older musical traditions of the Sephardic communities? How do they reflect assumptions about the nature of this music?
Finally, we will raise some general questions relating to the Sephardic songs. For example: How can the recordings made in Greece be related to trends in Greek music? What might be the place of Sephardic music in a study of the culture(s) of modern Greece?
The talk will be illustrated by brief extracts from some relevant CDs, and by Powerpoint slides.
Date: Sunday 14 April
Time: 4.00 pm
Venue: Prince Henry Centre, 2 Coast Hospital Rd, Little Bay
Tickets: Free
Language: English
