Gaon Books Author
Susana Weich-Shahak
Has won the European Prize for Folklore
Agapito Marazuela
Named after the Spanish folkorist, this prize was given to Dr. Weich-Shahak for her work over the last four decades recording and documenting the Sephardic romancero (Judeo-Spanish ballads). In the interview below, which she gave after winning the award, she mentions the role of songs and oral tradition as primary factors in holding together Sephardic identity and heritage even after 500 years of exile in non-Spanish speaking lands from Morocco to Turkey and Israel around the Mediterranean and in the Americas from Argentina to the United States.Dr. Weich-Shahak's book Moroccan Sephardic Romancero, was published by Gaon Books (2013) and summarizes her work of four decades of collecting, documenting and analyzing Judeo-Spanish ballads, which are traditionally sung by women.
What others have said about her work and this book.
For all of us who work on the traditional Romancero—and for all Hispanists whatever their speciality—we need to thank and congratulate Shoshana Weich...for having created and published a splendid book that is invaluable and full of pleasant surprises for the study of one of the most important branches of Spanish poetry: the traditional Romancero. -- Samuel G. Armistead, University of California, Davis
Susana Weich-Shahak’s anthology of the Moroccan Sephardic Romancero vividly brings to life the Judeo-Spanish ballads transmitted by Moroccan women over the course of time and in scattered locales. Through its careful presentation of more than two hundred songs and details of their transmission
processes, this volume serves both to document a remarkable repertory in great detail and to memorialize the women who sustained these songs. This is a collection that speaks eloquently to the importance of music in Jewish life. -- Kay Kaufman Shelemay, Harvard University
No comments:
Post a Comment