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May 10, 2004
The Well-Tempered Clavier, Prelude No.2 in C Minor
Performed by Mieko Miyazaki on koto. You know you want it.
Ok, you may not know yet, but give it a try. Couldn't hurt, might help.
Nothing from her, or from East Current, up at Calabash Music, more's the pity. They do, however, have songs from Suzy:
Suzy was born and raised in Turkey but is now living in Israel. Suzy sings in Ladino, an old Judeo-Spanish language still spoken today by the Turkish, Greek and Bulgarian Jews whose ancestors used to live in Spain during the 14th Century.
Therefore, we, with the counsel and advice of prelates, great noblemen of our kingdoms, and other persons of learning and wisdom of our Council, having taken deliberation about this matter, resolve to order the said Jews and Jewesses of our kingdoms to depart and never to return or come back to them or to any of them. And concerning this we command this our charter to be given, by which we order all Jews and Jewesses of whatever age they may be, who live, reside, and exist in our said kingdoms and lordships, as much those who are natives as those who are not, who by whatever manner or whatever cause have come to live and reside therein, that by the end of the month of July next of the present year, they depart from all of these our said realms and lordships, along with their sons and daughters, menservants and maidservants, Jewish familiars, those who are great as well as the lesser folk, of whatever age they may be, and they shall not dare to return to those places, nor to reside in them, nor to live in any part of them, neither temporarily on the way to somewhere else nor in any other manner, under pain that if they do not perform and comply with this command and should be found in our said kingdom and lordships and should in any manner live in them, they incur the penalty of death and the confiscation of all their possessions by our Chamber of Finance, incurring these penalties by the act itself, without further trial, sentence, or declaration.
"We" way up in the sentence was King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, some time in early 1492; the quoted document is The Edict of Expulsion of the Jews:
The Edict went public during the week of April 29, 1492. The charter declared that no Jews were permitted to remain within the Spanish kingdom[.]
In case you were wondering why Suzy's ancestors used to live in Spain.
Meanwhile. . .
Sultan Bayazid II's offer of refuge gave new hope to the persecuted Sephardim. In 1492, the Sultan ordered the governors of the provinces of the Ottoman Empire "not to refuse the Jews entry or cause them difficulties, but to receive them cordially";.[. . .] Immanual Aboab attributes to Bayazid II the famous remark that "the Catholic monarch Ferdinand was wrongly considered as wise, since he impoverished Spain by the expulsion of the Jews, and enriched Turkey". (7)
[. . .] Over the centuries an increasing number of European Jews, escaping persecution in their native countries, settled in the Ottoman Empire. In 1537 the Jews expelled from Apulia (Italy) after the city fell under Papal control, in 1542 those expelled from Bohemia by King Ferdinand found a safe haven in the Ottoman Empire.(8) In March of 1556, Sultan Suleyman "the Magnificent" wrote a letter to Pope Paul IV asking for the immediate release of the Ancona Marranos, which he declared to be Ottoman citizens. The Pope had no other alternative than to release them, the Ottoman Empire being the "Super Power" of those days.
I'm not doing any of this any justice whatsoever, mind. Getting back to the language, Ladino:
Ladino is a Romance language, derived mainly from Old Castillian and Hebrew (Spanish). Speakers are exclusively Sephardic Jews. The language is also called Judaeo-Spanish, Sefardi, Dzhudezmo, Judezmo, and Spanyol; Haquetiya, Hakitiya, or Haketia (from the Arabic haka, "tell") refers to the dialect of North Africa, especially Morocco, while the dialect of the Oran area of Algeria was called Tetuani or Tetauni.
Ok, like every other entry I've posted today, this is turning into a monster.
Trying to wrap things up quickly, "In Israel today there are an estimated 50,000 to 80,000 people with varying degrees of passive Ladino knowledge," or were in 1998, anyway. Worldwide, the language is "spoken today by approximately 160,000 people," but "is considered a 'seriously endangered' language."
I'm a firm believer in maintaining linguistic diversity myself, as long as nobody expects me to learn the damn things.
Attention Conservation Notice, buried way the fuck at the end: Go listen to Suzy, and see if you can find the Mieko Miyazaki cd for me someplace.
Posted by Aaron at May 10, 2004 10:53 PM
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