11th December 2020 – Shabbat of Hanukkah is almost here
It is almost one year since this initiative of Music Before Shabbat started. It was in the Shabbat of Hanukkah of 5780. Let me celebrate this event with a new website, www.musicbeforeshabbat.com, and the singer that has been the most successful in the 47 editions: Bienvenida Aguado.
Hello! How are you? This edition of Music Before Shabbat is a bit special. When I started this, just before the previous Hanukkah, I wouldn’t imagine what a source of knowledge, friendship and pleasure it was going to be. I hope you are enjoying it too!
During this time, I have had to learn much about History and culture. Each week, finding thrilling discoveries: tragic disasters but also moments of light and connections throughout time. I got to create new friends and to strengthen the friendship with some old ones, despite the pandemic, despite the distance, always with the Jewish music and culture as the background.
So, I thought this deserved its own website and here you are! I have copied all the content from the previous place inside www.mapamundimusica.com to provide its own home for Music Before Shabbat. You are more than welcome and if you find any malfunctioning, let me know. So far it is very simple. It will go on growing with the weekly editions.And what about the music for today? ?
| All I want as a birthday present is to welcome more people here. Share this with your friends and with anybody who can enjoy it. Thank you in advance. |
Bienvenida Aguado through the eyes of Judith Cohen… and the snow in Jerusalem
I like this picture because I know she was happy in this moment, performing accompanied by her daughter (the currently active artist with her own career Tamar Ilana) and by Wafir Shaikheldin, an artist from Sudan, settled in Madrid for some decades, who is also Judith’s collaborator when she comes to perform to Spain. I have had the chance to work with Wafir on several occasions so in this picture I see many good things. 
Last July, when I made the edition about the romance of the Duke of Gandía sung by Bienvenida Aguado, Judith Cohen shared with me these pictures of Bienvenida Aguado and friends. Judith also explained to me how, at the end of 1991, she had the trip paid for with her band Gerineldo for some concerts in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. She stopped, with Tamar, in Greece, to record some people in Salonika’s Sephardic Home for the Aged. She explained:
“I remember very well that our most important concert, in the Diaspora Museum (Tel Aviv), was the night of a historic storm – the water was up to my knees by the time we left! Tamar had stayed at Susana Weich-Shahak’s house, thank goodness, and I had to return with the vielle and the tambourines in my hands over my head!
In Jerusalem it was snowing! A couple of days later, we went to dinner at Edwin Seroussi’s house, and his youngest son was Tamar’s age. I had bought him a book about the Inuit and how to build an Igloo – and the children went out to do it – in Jerusalem…
The session with Berta/Bienvenida was part of the weekly meeting of the “Las Amigas” club in Bat Yam, just south of Tel Aviv. I had been invited, and Susana asked whether she could go with me – of course! She didn’t have to ask!”
We have reasons to envy Judith: Bienvenida, also called Berta, as Judith mentions in this letter, was one of the most outstanding singers of Sephardic songs from the Turkish tradition that got to be recorded. She was born in Çanakkale, Turkey, in 1929, settled in Israel from 1979 and passed away in 2016.
Check these two previous editions about Bienvenida:
Listen to El festin de Hanukáh by Bienvenida Aguado
Click the picture to listen to the recording:
Lyrics:
| Dak il tas, toma’l tas Dak il tas, toma’l tas Las muchachas meten bas En Shabbat de Hanuká Ocho dias de Hanuká Lehadlik ner shel HanukáLa gallina de la cucina La gallina de la cucina Dalde a gostar a la vicina Que le seia milicina Ocho dias de Hanuká Lehadlik ner shel HanukáMete la carne al tandur Mete la carne al tandur Tañeremos un buen santur En Shabbat de Hanuká Ocho dias de Hanuká Lehadlik ner shel Hanuká |
Beat the plate, take the plate Beat the plate, take the plate The little girls play On the Shabbat of Hanukkah Eight days of Hanukkah Light a Hanukkah candleThe hen in the kitchen The hen in the kitchen Give it to taste to the neighbour May it be for her a medicine Eight days of Hanukkah Light a Hanukkah candlePut the meat in the oven Put the meat in the oven We will play a good santur On the Shabbat of Hanukkah Eight days of Hanukkah Light a Hanukkah candle |
I hope you’ll like it and, if so, feel free to share it and invite your friends to join us.
It is as symple as sending … this link to sign up
Shabbat Shalom.
Araceli Tzigane | Mapamundi Música