An Evening of Cantigas and Romansas

Bookhouse: American Sephardi Federation, Centro Primo Levi, Dan Wyman Books, a cooperative initiative.

Join us for Judith Cohen’s presentation and performance of little-known musical gems handed down through word of mouth, research, and the legacy of Alan Lomax’s work. Introduction by Isabelle Levy (Columbia University).

Dr. Judith Cohen is a Canadian ethnomusicologist, medievalist, singer, and storyteller. She teaches at York University in Toronto and is the editor and consultant for Alan Lomax’s 1952 Spain collection. Known internationally for her work on Sephardic music and music among Crypto-Jews of Portugal, her work on the Sephardic diaspora includes medieval music and traditions of regional Spain and Portugal, the Balkans, French Canada, Yiddish, and European balladry, exploring connections among the songs and their singers.

More recently, Judith has extended her research to Jewish communities in Brazil, working with Moroccan Sephardim in the Amazon and Crypto-Jews of the Northeast.

For this session, Judith will sing songs from her fieldwork among Sephardim of both Morocco and the Eastern Mediterranean, including Rhodes, and regional songs from Spain and Portugal, including some she learned in the same villages, sometimes from the same people, of Lomax’s 1952 recordings.

Andalusian lute, from the 1283 AD book, The Book of Chess, Dice and Board Games, St. Lorenze del Escorial, Madrid. The book was made for or commissioned by Alfonso X, King of Castile and León.