7th May 2021 – Shabbat is almost here
And today we’ll listen to a quite recent album with a very deep and moving historical content: Ghetto Songs, by Frank London
How are you? I am ok, very busy this week with many things! Between them, with the birth of AGIMA – Association of Global Independent Music Agents, the birth towards the global community of the world musics and our first activity together, a virtual showcase festival. Yes, because, apart from writing about Jewish musics, I run an artist management and booking agency, as I’m sure you know: Mapamundi Música.
Well, back to our topic! As promised, this week we pay attention to a quite recent release. It is the last album by Frank London, the trumpetist, member of Klezmatics and director of wonderful musical experiencies, like Klezmer Brass Allstars, or collaborations like Project Ahaba Raba, with the outstanding cantor Yanky Lemmer and the clarinetist Michael Winograd. So, Frank London has dedicated his latest album to the songs from the ghettos, paying special attention to the first one in the History: the ghetto of Venice.
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About Frank London’s “Ghetto Songs”
The album I am talking about has been released by Felmay, a record label from Italy, that I appreciate very much. Here you can find the info and you can buy the album by London.
.If you are specially fond of klezmer, note that the label Felmay released also three album by the band Melech Mechaya, that you can find here..
Forgive the digression! Back to Frank (by the way, the portrait is from his Facebook page). According to the press release by Mark Gorney:
“His latest album, Ghetto Songs, contains music from and about the world’s ghettos. At its heart, Ghetto Songs is a 21st-century song recital. Ghetto Songs was created to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the opening of the Venice ghetto in 1516 and has been released in April to coincide with the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising on April 19, the day the Nazis stormed the ghetto.”
The repertoire on Ghetto Songs spans the globe, with a strong focus on Venice, home of the world’s first ghetto: the first place to be called a ‘ghetto’ is the square where Jews were forced to live in 16th-century Venice.
The album has been sponsored by Beit Venezia – Casa della Cultura Ebraica and the Museo Nazionale dell’Ebraismo Italiano e della Shoah.
Beit Venezia about the album
This ? picture is from the Facebook page of Beit Venezia. In the booklet of the album, the directors of Beit Venezia, Giuseppe Balzano – Shaul Bassi – Marc Michael Epstein, explain that:
“Beit Venezia has its roots in Venice and a global horizon. We celebrate the Jewish Venetian heritage as living matter and a source of inspiration for the present and the future. In view of the 500th anniversary of the establishment of the Venice Ghetto in 2016, we invited the inimitable Frank London as artist in residence. That year he composed and played the music for the first historic performance of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice in the Ghetto, and in 2019 he returned for a memorable concert where the bitterness of the ghetto was tempered by the bold, and strong and funny and ribald and sweet, and, yes, transcendent music that emerged from the repeated iterations of the ghettos throughout history.
The spirit of dissent, rebellion and revolution, hope and dreaming of a better time born in all ghettos was essential to the vibrant musical culture they fomented. Even as we hope for an end to all ghettos, the dismantling of all walls, it is important that we reap the harvest of the creativity that grew and developed behind those walls. The three Beit Venezia directors who have worked on this project are grateful to Frank London and his musicians for this powerful artistic tribute.”
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About the song
It was very difficult to chose the song. All the album is available in this Youtube list. My very appreciated Yanky Lemmer sings two songs and I had to make an effort for not to chose the piece Retsey, from the repertoire of Gershon Sirota, who was our protagonist in this edition of MBS. Lemmer is such a good cantor! He appeared in a previous edition of MBS, the one about Rozo D’Shabbos by Pierre Pinchik, a piece about which Lemmer has worked wonderfully too.
But I finally chosed an Italian piece, that seems a bit more meaningful in this album, sang by another outstanding singer, Karim Sulayman (he is in the portrait, that I copied from his website). Karim opens the album with a joyful piece called Amore an, that is also great. In this piece there is also a female singer, Sveta Kundish, who performs in several songs too.
The piece we will listen to was composed by Salomone Rossi, about whom the booklet explains that he:
“is the best known Jewish composer of the Italian Renaissance, and a court musician of the Gonzaga rulers of Mantua. Rossi was also active in Venice […] He died around 1630 after the sack of Mantua by the Austrian army, or in the subsequent plague which ravaged the area. His legacy lived on in the Accademia degli Impediti (or Imperiti) in the Venetian Ghetto.”
Click the picture to listen to O dolcezz’amarissime by Frank London, with the voices of Karim Sulayman & Sveta Kundish:
Shabbat Shalom.
Araceli Tzigane | Mapamundi Música