{"id":2549,"date":"2020-11-13T14:57:40","date_gmt":"2020-11-13T13:57:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mapamundimusica.com\/?p=2549"},"modified":"2020-11-13T15:06:36","modified_gmt":"2020-11-13T14:06:36","slug":"mbs-with-the-crystallisation-of-a-song-and-the-diwan-of-yemenite-jews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mapamundimusica.com\/en\/musicbeforeshabbat\/mbs-with-the-crystallisation-of-a-song-and-the-diwan-of-yemenite-jews\/","title":{"rendered":"MBS with the crystallisation of a song and the Diwan of Yemenite Jews"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

November 13th, 2020. Shabbat is almost here\u00a0<\/strong><\/h4>\n

And we’ll listen again the poem\u00a0Im Nin’Alu<\/em>, this time by Shalom Keisar and the Kiryat Ono voice ensemble, recorded in 1977. How does this evolved from just a poem, sang with a big part of improvisation, to a recognizable hit in the world of pop music?\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/h4>\n
\n
\n

Hello, how are you?\u00a0I hope well.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Today this email reaches you a bit later. Until this morning I hadn’t decide which would be the focus of this email. I woke up later than I should, because I was dreaming about this song, Im Nin’Alu. I was dreaming and I didn’t want to wake up…<\/p>\n

I dreamt a\u00a0dream that is impossible to make real in the current circumstances:\u00a0I was part of the cast for a theatre play based on this song. I would have to sing it in the play. All the actors were together around a table, with food and with the scripts, to organice the rehearsals.<\/p>\n

Anyway, these guys from the video at the bottom sing better than me.\u00a0I had this piece in mind since\u00a0the edition about Suliman the Great<\/a>, who sang some of this in his medley of Yemenite songs. If you didn’t read that one, click in the link. That recording is enchanting and their story is very interesting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

– And, as usual, find the music piece at the bottom –<\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Please, if you like this, share it with your friends.<\/span> Thank you in advance.<\/span><\/strong><\/div>\n
:<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"Share<\/a><\/td>\nShare this with a friend, right from here<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

The Diwan of the Jews From Central Yemen<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n

What does diwan mean? In Arabic and in Persian cultures, a diwan (d\u012bw\u0101n) is a collection of poems.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

According to\u00a0a text by Gregor Schoeler<\/a>, the D\u012bw\u0101ns\u00a0 redactors made the colletions\u00a0“arranged by them according to theme exhibit categories which correspond to a large extent to the Western concept of genres. Suchlike D\u012bw\u0101ns do not arise until the emergence of Abbasid poetry with its relative wealth of genres<\/em>.”\u00a0The Abbasid Caliphate was an Islamic empire that existed from 750 to 1258 C.E. as it was centered in Baghdad and included much of the Middle East. You can learn more about this topic,\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The piece at the bottom is part of an album with a compilation of recordings\u00a0made by\u00a0Naomi Bahat-Ratzon<\/a>\u00a0and her husband\u00a0Avner Bahat<\/a>, in the 1970s. This one is dated in January 1977.<\/p>\n

The whole album is a wonder and you can listen to it complete\u00a0here<\/a>. And to learn more, you have many comments about the album and the songs,\u00a0here<\/a>. It was released in 2006 by the\u00a0Jewish Music Research Centre<\/a>, in 2 CDs and a long booklet. It is not available in Amazon but it seems to be in the website of the Centre.<\/p>\n

\n

The enchanting performance by Shalom Keisar and ensemble from Kiryat Ono<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n

The piece I have chosen is sang by\u00a0Shalom Keisar (voice and drum) with the male vocal ensemble Kiryat Ono.<\/p>\n

Kiryat Ono<\/a>\u00a0is a city in the district of Tel Aviv, that arised with that name in 1954 (and would be considered a city in 1992). Before that, there was a\u00a0ma’abara there, a temporary settlement.\u00a0You may know that the Operation Magic Carpet had been done in 1949 and 1950 and it transported 49 thousand Yemenite Jews to Israel. The amount of people that arrived to Israel in short time was huge. I have tried to see if Kiryat Ono was one of the first locations for Yemenite emigrants but I haven’t found any data to prove it, apart from the existance nowadays of\u00a0The return to Zion Association of Yemenite immigrants<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n

And the crystallisation\u00a0of a song<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
\n

About this recording, the website of the Jewish Music Research Centre explains some facts. I will add comments here. In italics, their original texts:\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

“Im nin\u2019alu daltei nedivim is a shira by Shalem Shabazi, signed Alshabazi. This poem is one of the most popular and widely known among the Yemenite Jews. It is sung on many different occasions, at weddings and other celebrations, to many melodies.”\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Im nin’alu daltei n’divim daltei marom lo nin’alu<\/em>\u00a0means Even if the gates of the rich are closed, the gates of heaven will never be closed. If you understand Hebrew, check\u00a0this page<\/a>\u00a0of the National Library of Israel. If you don’t understand Hebrew, anyway you can listen to many other recordings of this poem.<\/p>\n

Shalem Shabazi (you can find it written as Shalom too)\u00a0was a Yemenite Jewish poet from 17th century, of whom there are around 550 poems. He was a weaver as his main profession and he is though to be quite poor. He wrote in Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic. He has a reputation of a heroe and his tomb in Ta’izz, in the Southwest of Yemen, attracted pilgrims all year long and specially aroubd Shavout. After the Operation Magic Carpet there were no Jews left in the city. The exact place of the tomb has been lost. You can read more about him in\u00a0this site of Diarna<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

This is Ta’izz, in a picture by\u00a0Rod Waddington<\/a>\u00a0for Wikipedia. As it may be still quite complicated to travel to Yemen in a near future, you can also check the wonderful pictures of the city that are available in google maps.<\/span><\/strong><\/h6>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

“Alternate stanzas are written in Hebrew and Arabic. The poem speaks of angels on high, exile and redemption, exhortation to the soul. The meter is a variant of the so\u2019er (rajaz): -\u02d8\u02d8- -\u02d8\u02d8- – \/ -\u02d8\u02d8- -\u02d8\u02d8-.”\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
To understand this part I had to find more about\u00a0rajaz<\/em>. In the book\u00a0A Cultural History of the Arabic Language, by Sharron Gu<\/a>, 2013, she explains that: “Most historians agree that there were distinct forms of music in the pre-Islamic Arabian Peninsula that played an important part in the formation of Arabic poetry. Arabic poetry, unlike the literary poetry of many\u00a0European languages that is written by literary writers, the Arabic poetry\u00a0was invented originally by Arab soothsayers (kahins). They used incantations of a rhythmic form of rhymed prose known as saj\u2019 and a poetic meter\u00a0called\u00a0rajaz<\/strong>. Arab soothsayers were also enchanters and prophets. It was\u00a0believed that the\u00a0jinn\u00a0<\/em>(supernatural creatures) prompted the verses of the poet and the melodies of the musician and connected music, poetry, and\u00a0magic.
\n[…]
\nPre-Islamic music derived from the rhythm of the spoken language and it was little more than unpretentious psalming, varied and embroidered by the singer, male or female, according to the taste, emotion, or effect\u00a0desired. The oldest form of poetical speech was rhyme without meter, saj\u2019, which was defined later as rhymed prose. Out of saj\u2019 evolved the most ancient of the Arabian meters, known as\u00a0rajaz\u00a0<\/strong>meter, a measure which is believed to come from the rhythm of everyday desert life in particular, the beat of the steps of a walking camel. The\u00a0rajaz\u00a0<\/strong>meter was an irregular iambic cadence usually consisting of four or six beats.”<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
.<\/span><\/div>\n
“This song, as performed by Bracha Zefira, who sang a setting of one of the melodies by Paul Ben Haim, has been widely known to the Israeli public since the thirties.”\u00a0 <\/em><\/span><\/div>\n
.<\/span><\/div>\n
Do you want to listen to this mentioned version by Bracha Zefira? Click here:\u00a0https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/nationallibrary-of-israel\/yfdolmpbdmvm<\/a>\u00a0And this lady on the right is Bracha in the 1940s. She will be our protagonist in a future edition.<\/span><\/div>\n
.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0“Joseph Tal and Oedoen Partos also arranged it for choir.”<\/em><\/span><\/div>\n
.<\/span><\/div>\n

Do you want to listen to a choral version? Click here:
\nhttps:\/\/israel-music-institute.bandcamp.com\/track\/oedoen-partos-im-ninalu<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

If i didn’t tell you they are the same song, would you have noticed? I wouldn’t. This violinist is Oedoen, or \u00d6d\u00f6n, P\u00e1rtos..<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

The album includes several versions of the poem, by different artists, and they comment:<\/span><\/p>\n

“Each performer chooses which stanzas of the complete song suit him or his tradition, and the occasion on which it is performed. He also chooses which melodies to sing, for the sake of variety.”<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

I want to highlight this part, because it is something similar to what happens in many traditions, including mine, the popular music from Spain, in many of its shapes: there is the concept of styles, that means that the performer has a frame of work, composed by a corpus of melodies (that are just the base and he or she can change, can include other melismata, adapts to the tonality, adapt to the lyrics to say the words in a meaningful way…) and a corpus of stanzas (in the tradition of Spain there are many anonymous stanzas or couplets, that can be chosen according to the will of the performer (who can also create new ones).<\/p>\n

With this piece, Im’nin alu, we see how, from the versions from the people, very different between them (you will note this specifically if you listen to\u00a0the several versions in the album<\/a>, don’t miss it) performed just for fun or to celebrate, in which the personal will and the circumstances of the moment made each performance different (also the different performances by the same artist), in which the song didn’t have a closed number of stanzas, in which the role of improvisation was high, goes on\u00a0crystallising in the form of a song. This example is specially interesting because it has produced so many versions and with the time all are much more recognizable as the same song as in the recordings of the album we are talking about. Check more versions:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n