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Project SePHarad, Vol.2
MU0118 2017

Palavricas d'amor

Noa Noa Ensemble
Filipe Faria
Tiago Matias

01 Durme, durme hermozo hijico 4'51
02 No vo comer ni vo beber 3'17
03 En la mar hay una torre 4'43
04 Lavava y suspirava 4'02
05 Para qué quero yo más bivir 2'31
06 Don Amadí 3'05
07 Secretos quero descuvrir 5'05
08 Esta montaña d'enfrente 3'25
09 Mi suegra la negra 4'50

Project SePHarad, Vol.1
MU0117 2016

De la mar

Noa Noa Ensemble
Filipe Faria
Tiago Matias

01 Una pastora yo amí 4'04
02 Adío querida 5’06
03 La rosa enflorece 4’03
04 Cuatro años de amor 4’07
05 La galana y la mar 5’44
06 Descanso de mi vida 3’58
07 Durme, durme 4’51
08 Hija mía, mi querida 2’53
09 Avrix mi galanica 4’42
10 Yo m’enamorí d’un aire 4’44
11 Morena me llaman 3’40
12 A la una yo nací 4’06
13 Por qué llorax blanca niña 4’17

Project Sepharad

Noa Noa Ensemble’s project “Língua” offers a selection of Sephardic songs. These were remodelled in modern, creative fashion by Noa Noa, who intended to underline in this repertory its connection to Iberian culture. 

Song is a generic term; here, in fact, most songs are love songs; but there are also two wedding songs and a fragment of the narrative ballad La partida del esposo, starting “Por qué llorax blanca niña”. The adjective “Sephardic” refers, in a strict sense, to the Jewish Diaspora of Iberian origin: both the multitudes expelled at the end of the 15th century, and those forcibly converted to Christianity, or their descendents, who later left the Spanish Peninsula and embraced the Jewish religion. In short, these are traditional songs of a geographically dispersed Jewish population, yet with common Iberian roots.

The language of these songs is the “ladino” (or Judeo-Spanish) taken in its wider sense. It is a dialectical variety built upon Castilian as spoken around 1500, but with Aragonese and Portuguese influence and also words and turns of expression taken from the languages that were current where Sephardim established themselves (including the Arabic, the Albanese, the Servo-Croat, the Turkish and the Persian). Occasionally, there are even syntactical borrowings from the Hebrew. The “ladino”, spoken today by a minority of Sephardim, often reminds in its pronunciation the Portuguese rather than the modern Spanish, because Castilian in the Renaissance was in its sonority closer to Portuguese than it is today. 

The texts of the songs survived in multiple versions; since starting lines do not always coincide, scholars baptized with reference titles the more widely circulated texts: thus,  “A la una yo nací” is a version of Las horas de la vida, and “Durme, durme” corresponds to La hermosa durmiente. Some poems have an archaic form, modelled on medieval precedent; most of them, however, follow the conventions of Iberian poetry of the modern era, using quatrains (sometimes expanded with an extra, nonsensical line, as in “Hija mia, mi querida”). It is among the ballads (romances) that most archaic features can be found. The form comprising a distich plus short refrain (as in La galana y la mar) is older, however: in romance poetry it dates at the latest from c. 1200, when the first cantigas d’amigo surface in the historical record. Similarly old is the parallelism found in “Avrix mi galanica”, version of Todos son inconvenientes. 

In what concerns subject matter, wedding songs may use ideas of ancient stock and refer to social practices and expectations that no longer apply. La llamada a la morena (beginning “Morena me llaman”) talks of a bride that, in some versions, will eventually sail off in a nef, and here is upset by the typical girl’s dream of marrying a prince. The hidden background of La galana y la mar is the pre-nuptial bath; the lyrics draw on the Iberian pagan tradition of a social bath, with girl-friends, in a sea inlet; some versions also draw on the Islamic tradition of a long session of beauty care in the public bath, in the company of girl-friends, family and musicians, before the bride is returned by her following to her parents’ place. 

Finally, music is normally the most recent dimension of Sephardic songs gathered from oral tradition in the 20th century. In secular genres, and especially in love or entertainment songs, melodic taste was very permeable to the surrounding musical traditions. No recordings or transcriptions of Sephardic songs were made before 1911; the first significant efforts were carried by Manuel Manrique de Lara in the Eastern Mediterranean and in Morocco, and Alberto Hemsi in the East. Those who believe that in such songs a sound world from before 1500 can be found, may be disappointed. In order to be kept alive, tradition renews itself and music has been the main modernizing factor. One can conclude that from the historical point of view, Noa Noa are in excellent company. (translation: Manuel Pedro Ferreira)

Manuel Pedro Ferreira

SEPHARDIC SONGS PROJECT

“The Jews’ contribution to the history of Portugal cannot be boiled down to listing the country’s chronology. Vast and enormous, striking and glorious, intense and participatory, its abundance and its exalted legacy continue, and rightly so, to influence and inspire everything we create in philosophy, in culture and in science.”  Miriam Assor, Illustrious Jews of Portugal, 2014

The question of when the Jews arrived on Portuguese soil is one that has no answer. We know only that they reached the Iberian Peninsula, or sefarad, in one of the many diaspora recorded since the 2nd and 3rd centuries. Their presence among us has been confirmed by two tombstones found in the Algarve region (Lagos), dating from the 6th century, by written references dating from the 8th - 9th century in Coimbra, and a Latin tombstone with menorah, evoking the burial of a follower of Moses in Mértola, suggesting that the presence of Jews goes back to the 5th century.
During the Muslim period, Sephardi Jews spread throughout the land, in particular to the south of the river Douro, allowing for cultural exchange in the heart of the Iberian Peninsula.
In Portugal in those days, Jews were dependent on the king who, through letters of privilege, could grant permission to live, work, do business, perform a trade, follow their religion, be judged by its law (the Talmud) and be buried according to its rituals.
The activity of artisans and merchants made it necessary for the Jews to move throughout the kingdom, as the charter documents granted to the municipalities confirm. Some formed a courtly elite, such as Ibn Yahya or Negro, the king’s chief tax collector. It was from this family that King Afonso III would choose, at the end of the 13th century, its chief rabbi, a post that would remain in the family for generations until the mid-15th century. Abraham Negro, who was also the king’s physician, was the last holder of the position.
The Jewish communities organised themselves into communes, at the centre of which was the complex formed by the synagogue, house of prayer, council chamber, court and school, under the guidance of rabbis appointed by the king for life. In the mid-14th century, rabbis came to be elected, as were the good men of the commune’s council chamber, forming a Jewish micro-municipality within the Christian municipality.
The commune depended on royal authorisation, and at times that of the bishopric, in order to construct a new synagogue or extend the existing building, being forced to pay a tithe or another kind of tax to the church.
Until the 14th century, the Jewries boasted an urban centrality dictated by their role in the administrative and commercial sectors. Later, the economic growth of the Christian bourgeoisie highlighted rivalries and antagonisms that, aggravated by the plagues, exacerbated hatreds and led to the seclusion of Jewish communities or their transfer to delimited peripheral zones.
At the end of the 15th century, at the time of the edict of the expulsion of the Jews from the kingdom of Portugal (December 1496), most municipalities had a commune or Jewry, despite not all of them having a rabbi and council chamber.
Under pressure from the Catholic Kings, but aware that he could not lose this intellectual and economic dynamism, King Manuel developed a strategy of forced conversion and baptism, prohibiting inquiries into the New Christians for 20 years. A sign of adaptation, they gained mobility, both geographic and social, mixing with the Old Christians and managing to enter the nobility, military orders and the university. But being a New Christian meant living in fear and mistrust, even when the laws, such as the General Pardon of 1605, appeared to broaden horizons.
In terms of the region of Beira Interior, the oldest references to Jewish communes relate to King Dinis. Until the 15th century, there is little information on the Jewish population resident in this area, with the exception of Guarda, where the houses of the Jewry belonged to the king, and Trancoso, because of the economic power within the commune. As for Idanha-a-Nova, there are mentions of payment of taxes by Jews and the rents of the Jewries of Monsanto, Proença-a-Velha and Salvaterra.
After the Edict of Expulsion from Castile, the Jewish population increased considerably in the region, settling close to the border because of the greater ease of commercial, clandestine and family relations.
The proceedings of the Inquisition show us prosperous communities, where Christianity hid a clandestine Judaism. This closed relationship, whether familial or economic, allowed them to live a hybrid existence: externally Christian, baptised, confirmed and attendees of the church and the sacraments, members of brotherhoods, and, at the same time, continuing the Jewish religious tradition within their families and houses.
At the start of the 17th century, a decrease in population is recorded due to a combination of hunger, epidemics, forced recruitment and overseas travel. At the same time, many areas lost residents who fled the Inquisition. Many proceedings were raised against the residents of Fundão, Covilhã, Guarda, Idanha-a-Nova, Penamacor and Castelo Branco. In the municipality of Idanha-a-Nova, in 1631, more than 75 residents of Idanha-a-Nova, Monsanto, Proença-a-Velha, Medelim, Salvaterra and Segura were listed for the payment of interest under the General Pardon. Absolution and pardon, which were theoretically granted to confessors, rapidly turned into long-winded torture for everyone (confessors, denouncers and those denounced).
Tensions and hatreds agitated the heart of the New Christians and denunciations threw entire families into prison and into poverty. Many from Idanha-a-Nova attempted to remake their lives outside the country.
Take, for example, the family of Diogo Nunes Ribeiro, a New Christian, born in Idanha-a-Nova in 1668, a doctor in the Dominican Monastery in Lisbon. Accused of Judaism, which he confessed under torture, he fled to London. He changed his name to Samuel. From there, he emigrated to America and came to be one of the founders of the city of Savannah, in Georgia. Diogo Nunes was the maternal uncle of another great character, Ribeiro Sanches, who followed in his uncle’s footsteps and became a doctor and a great intellectual. Born in Penamacor, he was the son of Simão Nunes, “the Flemish” of Penamacor, and Ana Nunes Ribeiro, of Idanha-a-Nova, wealthy New Christian merchants from Beira Baixa. Denounced to the Inquisition for the practice of Judaism, he managed to escape prison, spending the rest of his life in exile. He was a medic in the Imperial Cadet Corps of St. Petersburg and of Catherine II of Russia, and spent his final days in Paris, devoting himself to science and thought.  He is a figure of great importance in European science and culture of the 18th century.
The research carried out corroborates the historic presence of Jewish communities around the municipality of Idanha-a-Nova, of which countless traces remain, in particular the Rua da Judiaria (Jewry Street) in Medelim, possibly linked to the Jewry of Monsanto. It is a multifaceted historic and cultural legacy, with great potential for the opening of new lines of research, examples of which are still perceptible and merit being safeguarded and valued.
Among these examples, of particular importance is music, where the traces of generations of sharing are unmistakeable. With no thoughts of political or cultural boundaries, we are presented here with a heritage common to Jewish, Christian and Muslim traditions. A legacy that serves to support the proposal of the Noa Noa project, which comes to us in a magisterial echo of the splendour of the three peninsular cultures. [Translation: Kennistranslations]

Patrícia Dias and Paulo Longo Municipality of Idanha-a-Nova | Culture Department (The Municipality of Idanha-a-Nova integrates the Portuguese Network of Jewish Quarters since 2014)

Project LÍNGUA, Vol.2
MU0114 2015

Língua, Vol. 2

Noa Noa Ensemble
Filipe Faria
Tiago Matias

01 Por riba se ceifa o pão 5’05
02 Argizagi ederra 3’05
03 Ayer vite na fonte 5’08
04 la mare de Déu/Els pobres traginers 3’54
05 Ya cantan los gallos 3’38
06 El cant dels ocells 3’03
07 Ró-r´ó 3'53
08 Llenos de lagrimas tristes 3’32
09 La Margarideta 2’59
10 Negra sombra 3’23
11 Iruten ari nuzu 4’54
12 Ya las sombras de la noche 2’50
13 Ganinha, minha ganinha 3’37

Project LÍNGUA, Vol.1
MU0112 2014

Língua, Vol. 1

Noa Noa Ensemble
Filipe Faria
Tiago Matias

01 Tanchão 5'07
02 No piense Menguilla ya 4'37
03 El testament d’Amèlia 4'16
04 Baila nena 3'22
05 Aurtxoa seaskan 4'00
06 Virgem da consolação 4'24
07 Díme, paxarín parleru 3'33
08 Pur beilar el pingacho 3'57
09 Todo me cansa 3'32
10 El mestre 4'31
11 Agora non 3'17
12 Meu amor me deu um lenço I/II 3'34
13 Pues quexar sé 2'16
14 Mira-me, Miguel 2'45
15 El gavinet de los talls & Cançó de pegaire 2'50

Project Língua*

The kind of creative freedom that existed in Europe at the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century(1) has parallels in the history of the western music of the 18th century during which period a musician was educated to sing, play more than one instrument, improvise, compose or conduct his or her own piece of music. The tradition of a free response to the creative appeal is as old as Man himself, and it seems to be felt again in recent modern practices of Early Music, as evidenced by the multifaceted education of the musician, in comparison to the super-specialization in the 20th and 21 st centuries. The
rediscovery of historical instruments themselves and techniques required to play them have highlighted the past but at the same time served as an inspiration for contemporary musicians and composers.

All language changes with time. Languages evolve and adapt themselves to the innovative use of their communities, their habits and idiosyncrasies. Language cannot be understood as a changeless and settled entity, drawn during Time and drawn by it. On the contrary, it is the result of huge dynamics, in the way a community or Humanity itself would do... slowly but relentlessly.
"Língua" is the title of the new project by Noa Noa dedicated to the collective memory defined by the different Iberian cultures and languages, a plaid of sounds "beyond the river Ebro" resulting in the Portuguese, Castilian, Mirandese, Galician, Asturian, Basque or Catalan languages. This project goes from the most common to the most distinctive aspects in the History of the Iberian Culture. It explores the geographic, cultural and conceptual frontiers of tradition and ancestrally, along with contemporary and intercultural concepts.…. This is the second day of the journey.

Filipe Faria Lisboa/Idanha-a-Nova, 2013/2014
Translation: Tiago Cassola Marques/Diana Gonsalves

(1) The project name is inspired by the 1901 book by Paul Gauguin, in which the artist describes the time spent in creative retirement in the French Polynesia, in particular, Tahiti. Both polemic, Gauguin and his Noa Noa are still synonymous with creative freedom.

* Língua = Language/Tongue