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Authentika Mikrasiatica [Greek Folk Songs from Asia Minor]

Jewish-Greek folklife, transplanting many of their former Spanish folk traditions to their new environment, they also transferred and continued to cultivate their Castillian-Hebrew home language, 'Ladino', as well as their Spanish ballads and romances. Musical examples of these Ladino-songs, dominant in number as well as in melodic exuberance, are found on the record at numbers A, 3 ; 4 ; 7 ; 8 ; 12 ; 13 and B, 1 ; 3 ; 7 ; 8 ; 9 ; 10 ; 11. The Italianspeaking Jews in Greece were originally refugees from the southern Italian Apulia, who resettled mostly in and around Corfu, retaining much of their West-European heritage. Examples of this tradition are heard at A, 2 ; 9 and B, 4. However, the examples on this disc are not arranged according to the above ethnic groupings, but rather (they are) presented with relevance to the liturgical year and to the human life cycle, from birth to death. The liturgical music encompasses some fine examples of Psalmody chanting, while the ceremonial music is represented by some hymns and Jewish home-songs. The one common denominator between the three different congregations and their liturgical and para-liturgical songs is their singing in the style of vocal monophony, that is, pure singing, through the absence of any kind of instrumental accompaniment-not to mention the lack of independant playing of instruments. One result of this lack of musical instruments is the rich and deep application of the human 'gorgia', unhindered by the intervallic limitations usually set forth by the instrument's "mechanisms",such as fingerholes on pipes, or frets on string instruments-which prescribe and fix the ratio of intervals. The absence of such "rectifying" devices directly enhances the intonation habits of the human voice which, when left alone, may freely use any kind of interval, both macro and microtonal degrees, or tone timbres not easily classified. Added to this characteristic of free singing is the performer's inclination not merely to repeat himself but rather to embellish the basic melody line with small variants and melisms. On the disc before us, Dr. Shiloah presents some good examples both of pure singing and of melismatic variations (cf. nos. A, 3 ; 4 and B, 2 ; 3). Considering the wide variety of forms in this Iudaeo-Greek folk music, one may well look forward to the additional edition of recordings of this musical scene. Such recordings might provide, for instance, more Jewish women-songs, especially the almost extinct lamentations for the dead, or epic legends and folk dances. The musical transcriptions of seven of the recorded items are a helpful supplement for structural analysis. The field trip to Greece was sponsored jointly by the Jewish Music Research Center (Jerusalem) and the Central Board of the Greek-Jewish Communities, in Israel.