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Songs fiery, sad, evoke “pain for home”
2004 Newsday Review

by Marion Lignana Rosenberg

For most New Yorkers, Jewish culture means the Yiddish-inflected world of the Ashkenazim or Eastern European Jews. Still, for most of their history, pre- and post-diaspora, Jews were a people of the Mediterranean. They lived in Rome before Christianity existed and may have dwelled on the Iberian peninsula as early as the 10th century before the common era.

Some historians estimate that in the 1100s, 90 percent of Jews lived in Spain, which they called “Sefarad,” where they had flourished under the relatively tolerant rule of the Moorish kings. So even after being expelled by Ferdinand and Isabella of Castile in 1492, the Sephardim retained a passionate attachment to their former home. Some Sephardic Jews were buried facing Spain, not Jerusalem; and their songs, even those telling of such archetypal themes as love, the passing of time or a young soldier going off to war, burn with nostalgia—a word whose root meaning, appropriately enough, is “pain for home.”

The Gerard Edery Ensemble offered a vibrant program of Sephardic songs Wednesday evening as part of the 34th annual Lincoln Center Out of Doors festival. Baritone and guitarist Edery and his ensemble—consisting of bassist Emmanuel Mann, percussionist Rex Benincasa, flamenco guitarist Christian Puig, and oud (Middle Eastern lute) virtuoso George Mgrdichian—coped good-humoredly with the challenges of playing in the urban wild. They added flourishes when an impertinent helicopter piped up, and experimented with new sonorities when the humidity made a traditional Moroccan drum sound (in their words) “like wet newspapers.”

The program got off to a stirring start with the Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) song “Cuando el rey Nimrod,” celebrating the birth and survival of the patriarch Abraham.

As performed by the Edery Ensemble, this exultant work epitomizes the rich cultural heritage of the Sephardim, combining the gorgeous filigree of the flamenco guitar, the mysterious twang of the oud and a raucous, sometimes ululating vocal line, reminiscent of traditional North African and Middle Eastern music.

Edery’s warm, flexible baritone glides with seductive ease through a variety of languages and styles: the wails and nasal intonations of “Sidi Habibi,” a wedding song from Algeria and Morocco; “El encuentro nocturno,” which segues from Edery’s own setting of a poem by Lord Byron to a centuries-old text of longing and despair; and “Entre las huertas paseando,” a rapturous song of Turkish origin, in which Puig’s brilliant playing alternately stung and caressed, ending in a sigh born of a love too great to bear.

In recent years, Sephardic culture has worked its way into mainstream consciousness, as seen in Frédéric Brenner’s photographs and such novels as David Liss’s The Coffee Trader. The hundreds of stomping fans drawn to Edery’s program on an oppressive summer night demonstrate that the fiery, melancholy genius of the Sephardim speaks to audiences even today, so many miles and centuries away from home.

CHAMBER MUSIC OF THE WORLD. The Gerard Edery Ensemble. Sephardic songs. Attended Wednesday on the Lincoln Center Plaza. The free Lincoln Center Out of Doors festival continues through Aug. 30. Visit www.lincolncenter.org or call 212-875-5766.

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