The Role of Judeo-Spanish Song in Canadian Sephardic Communities: Survival, Function and Change (por Judith R. Cohen)

This dissertation examines music in Canadian Sephardic communities, especially Montreal and Toronto, in the context of Jewish Canadian history, on the one hand, and music in the Sephardic diaspora, on the other. It includes a number of individual case histories as part of the social context of music practice. Music transcriptions and analysis, including comparisons of variants of the same song, were also included in the study. In both communities, Judeo-Spanish speakers were a minority among Sephardim, who emigrated to Canada from the mid-twentieth century on, and in both communities the vast majority of Judeo-Spanish speakers were from northern Morocco. Some noteable exceptions were Bouena Sarfatty Garfinkle of Thessaloniki and Nina Vickovic of Sarajevo. Participant observation fieldwork featured the author’s active involvement with the ensemble Gerineldo, of which she was a founding member, together with Judeo-Spanish studies specialists Oro Anahory-Librowicz (founder-director) and Solly Lévy.