EVENT: Song & Word Performance. May 14, Thursday, 6:00 pm

Santa Fe Art Institute. Thursday, May 14 at 6:00 pm in Tipton Hall, College of Santa Fe


Memory Preserved: Sepharad Hidden and Revealed

The Santa Fe Art Institute and Gaon Books present an event remembering the Sephardic and crypto-Jewish traditions of New Mexico through song and literature as a part of its series: “Memory: Shadow & Light – Art as Individual/Collective Memory”. Memory Preserved features music by Vanessa Paloma with Judeo-Spanish songs from the colonial period, word memories of Sepharad by authors Isabelle Medina-Sandoval and Mario X. Martinez and visual images by artist Gloria Abella Ballen. This event will launch a new novel by each of these writers.

Ms. Paloma specializes in the traditional performance of Judeo-Spanish songs from the Sephardic Diaspora. This music, tinged with fate and sadness, passion and joy, came to the Americas with Spanish settlers. Ms. Paloma is a Research Scholar of Brandeis University currently living and working in Casablanca and has performed widely across the United States, Latin America, Europe, North Africa, Israel, and East Asia. She is the lead singer of Flor de Serena, a Los Angeles based ensemble doing Judeo-Spanish music.

In Guardians of Hidden Traditions Isabelle Medina-Sandoval tells the saga of her family starting in Spain and migrating to Mexico and eventually New Mexico. Told with historical depth and accuracy, these stories of love and determination introduce us into the lives of women along with their marriages and children, thoughts and dreams, and their preservation of the memory of Jewishness. It is a powerful novel about hidden identity and culture being secretly safeguarded from generation to generation with a mixture of passion and fear. Dr. Medina-Sandoval is a published poet and leader in bilingual education. (See the description below in this blog.)

In Converso Mario X. Martinez has created a compelling historical novel about nineteenth century town life, drawing from events during the period of Archbishop Lamy. There are powerful Dons, dashing young men, beautiful women, crypto-Jews, conflicts, and the suspicious death of an overly inquisitive priest, all wrapped within memory and family tales in historical New Mexico. After graduate work at Harvard University Martinez returned to his native state where he writes and teaches. (See the description below in this blog.)

These two historical novels are part of a series by Gaon Books on Western Sephardic Traditions, including the crypto-Jewish experience in the Americas. For further information Ron Duncan-Hart, Senior Editor, e-mail gaonbooks@gmail.com or call 505.920.7771.