Songs and Stories from the Sephardim

Judith Cohen

Judith Cohen is an ethnomusicologist and musician who has travelled all around the Mediterranean collecting songs and stories from the oral tradition. When the Jews were expulsed from Spain in 1492, they brought their songs with them. Over the centuries, some of these sung tales were integrated into pan-European balladry, some only as Spanish and Portuguese ballads, and still others only in Moroccan or Ottoman Sephardic communities, all with their own tunes and their own story quirks and surprises. Judith will sing some of each, guiding us through the stories of the ballads and the stories of the people who have been singing them –and adapting them– and her own stories of seeking them out from Morocco to Turkey and in between.

Eleanor London Côte St-Luc Public Library
Reservation mandatory available as of September 13