A pleasure to natter lockdown style on Zoom with Jude, Ana Silvera and myself last week putting together this feast of chat and music relating to our new Ladino project Yja:



​Sat 9 May - Ana Silvera & Francesca Ter-berg - Yja - LADINO Ana Silvera and Francesca Ter-berg introduce their project Yja – reimagining the Ladino songs of Ana's ancestors. The debut single, La Serena is one of many songs sung from a female perspective in Judeo-Spanish and which continued to be performed in domestic environments the Sephardic diaspora, particularly in eastern Europe. Archives, oral history, folk tales and the classically influenced early music revival are all part of the picture we have of Ladino music and help us speculate about music in the past. Songs about love, first crushes, revenge, snapshots of the time. Silvera and Ter-berg talk about their approach to the music as professional music-makers and composers.



​
Check out Judes blog here.
Listen back to the show here.

In the sea, there is a tower
In the tower, there is a window
In the window, there is a girl
Whom all the fisherman adore

Give me your hand, my dove
So I can come up to your nest
Unlucky that you sleep alone
I am coming to sleep with you

If the sea was made of milk,
I'd become a fisherman,
I'd fish for my pain,
With little words of love.

If the sea was made of milk,
In the little cinnamon boats,
I'd drench myself entirely,
To save my flag.

Hi gang
​I made a Klezmer video! This is a Skotshne, a dance tune I learned from the Moshe Beregovski collection.
(2nd Edition revised by Kurt Bjorling in 2015 from the original 2001 edition by Michael Alpert. Source: notated by A.E. Makonovetski, violinist)

Join the Beregovski Online Forum to learn more about this resource: https://www.facebook.com/groups/68266...

I picked this piece as I don't know many Skotshne's and had certainly not heard this one before. It took me a while to get round the modality and I originally tried it out in a totally different mode. Anyway, here's where i've gotten to with it.

All parts performed, arranged and produced by Francesca Ter-Berg. ​