{"id":48221,"date":"2022-08-07T05:48:20","date_gmt":"2022-08-07T03:48:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/?p=48221"},"modified":"2025-08-07T01:46:13","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T23:46:13","slug":"ana-alcaide-luna-sefardita-a-beautiful-song-about-a-sephardic-girl-from-toledo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2022\/08\/07\/ana-alcaide-luna-sefardita-a-beautiful-song-about-a-sephardic-girl-from-toledo\/","title":{"rendered":"Ana Alcaide, 'Luna sefardita': a beautiful song about a Sephardic girl from Toledo"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I have been a fan of traditional music for many years, and from time to time I still discover artists who manage to fascinate me with their music.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p><rel><a href=\"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2021\/05\/10\/zog-nit-kein-mol-a-beautiful-song-full-of-hope-arising-from-the-horror-of-the-holocaust\/\">'Zog nit kein mol': a beautiful song full of hope arising from the horror of the Holocaust<\/a><\/rel><br \/>\n<rel><a href=\"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2022\/07\/21\/the-wayfaring-stranger-the-story-of-the-beautiful-christian-song-from-the-movie-1917\/\">'The Wayfaring Stranger', the story of the beautiful Christian song from the movie '1917'<\/a><\/rel><\/p>\n<p><strong>Tonight I discovered the work of a Spanish singer and songwriter with a truly magical voice. Her name is Ana Alcaide<\/strong>, and I especially liked this theme of hers entitled \"Luna sefardita\" (Sephardic Moon), whose meaning <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=7LqwTsiBhPk\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">explains<\/a> like this: <em>\"<strong>is the song about Alina, a girl who personifies the history of the Sephardim<\/strong> and leaves Toledo undertaking a long journey of exile, and in which she will follow the traces of the moon in her own search and reunion.\"<\/em><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Ana Alcaide: LUNA SEFARDITA  en Samarkanda\" width=\"665\" height=\"374\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/KSM8K0yC_Lw?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Sephardic Jews were expelled from the Spanish kingdoms of Castile and Aragon in 1492<\/strong>, after Jews had been expelled from other kingdoms in Europe. Some went to Portugal and Navarra, from where they were also expelled shortly after. Others migrated elsewhere in Europe (including Poland), to North Africa, and to Asia Minor. <strong>Today there are about 2 million Jews descending from those Sephardic Jews.<\/strong> Many retain a variant of the Spanish that was spoken at the time of their expulsion, <strong>the Judeo-Spanish language<\/strong>, which Sephardic communities in Israel and other countries still speak it. <strong>They are a Hispanic people<\/strong> whose diaspora is present on four continents.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The song mentions the aljamas<\/strong>, the Jewish communities of Spain in the Middle Ages, and also <strong>refers to the keys to the houses that the Sephardim left behind when they were expelled from Spain<\/strong>, keys that some Sephardic families have kept for generations, as a symbol of hope to return to the land of their ancestors.<\/p>\n<p><strong>I leave here the original lyrics of the song in Spanish:<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>Se ha callado la soledad<br \/>\nen esta alborada nueva.<br \/>\nA orillita de la ciudad<br \/>\nduerme la primavera.<\/p>\n<p>Con sus ojos de abril<br \/>\nlas colinas florecen su trigo hacia el sol,<br \/>\nse recuestan en oro<br \/>\ngalas de despedida.<\/p>\n<p>Dime, Alina, \u00bfqu\u00e9 mala estampa<br \/>\nhierve en tu sangre hebrea?<br \/>\nDe la aljama sales cantando<br \/>\ncon un pu\u00f1o de arena.<\/p>\n<p>Andas sin mirar atr\u00e1s<br \/>\nNo habr\u00e1 nadie que prenda la lumbre en tu hogar,<br \/>\nsigue el signo de azar<br \/>\nde la Luna Sefardita.<\/p>\n<p>\u00bfD\u00f3nde est\u00e1n las llaves de Espa\u00f1a?<br \/>\n\u00bfQui\u00e9n abrir\u00e1 sus puertas?<br \/>\n\u00bfD\u00f3nde guarda un pueblo sin alma<br \/>\ntodas sus horas muertas?<\/p>\n<p>Vienen de dos en dos<br \/>\nlas carretas llorando su herida de amor,<br \/>\na perderse en los ojos de la Luna Sefardita.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>And here you can read the English translation:<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>loneliness has been silenced<br \/>\nIn this new dawn.<br \/>\nOn the edge of the city<br \/>\nSpring sleeps.<\/p>\n<p>With their April eyes<br \/>\nThe hills bloom their wheat towards the sun,<br \/>\nLean back in gold<br \/>\nFinery of farewell.<\/p>\n<p>Tell me, Alina, what a bad stamp<br \/>\nBoils in your Hebrew blood?<br \/>\nYou come out of the aljama singing<br \/>\nWith a fistful of sand.<\/p>\n<p>You walk without looking back.<br \/>\nThere will be no one to light the fire in your home,<br \/>\nFollow the sign of chance<br \/>\nOf the Sephardic Moon.<\/p>\n<p>Where are the keys to Spain?<br \/>\nWho will open its doors?<br \/>\nWhere do you keep a people without a soul<br \/>\nAll their idle hours?<\/p>\n<p>They come two by two<br \/>\nthe carts crying their love wound,<br \/>\nto get lost in the eyes of the Sephardic Moon.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have been a fan of traditional music for many years, and from time to time I still discover artists who manage to fascinate me with their music.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[19536,11348],"tags":[17142,12605,24415,11462,892],"class_list":["post-48221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-we-said-yesterday","category-music","tag-ana-alcaide","tag-judaism","tag-sephardic-jews","tag-spain","tag-toledo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48221"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48221\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}