After their expulsion from Spain in 1492, Sephardic Jews retained their ancient Hispanic culture in the places they went to.<\/p>\n
Sephardic Jews (a community today made up of two million people) emigrated to the rest of Europe<\/strong>, reaching as far away as Poland, and in many cases they went to North Africa<\/strong>, to the Ottoman Empire<\/strong> (settling in present-day Turkey), many of them living today in Israel, the United States, Argentina, Canada and France. With them they preserved a precious asset, their language<\/strong>, known as Sephardic, Ladino or Judeo-Spanish, which is spoken today by some 150,000 people in the State of Israel. And along with that language, they also preserved some oral traditions<\/strong>, which were transformed in the countries where they settled.<\/p>\n The poem \"Los caminos de Serdekji\" (The Ways of Serdekji) exemplifies these traditions.<\/strong> Emilio Villalba<\/a>, an artist specializing in medieval music, notes the following<\/a> about this poem:<\/p>\n Also known as \"Los caminos de arena\" [The Sand Roads], this Sephardic song is a medieval Spanish romance preserved in the oral tradition of Turkey, from which it was located in the Istanbul neighborhood called Sirkedji or Sirkici. Over time, this song would be transformed by Turkish musical expressions<\/strong>, adopting the Sureyya rhythmic scheme in 5\/8 time and the Kurdi scale or makam. The neighborhood where the story takes place was characterized by its sandy streets during the first half of the 20th century.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Last September, Emilio Villalba and the group Sephardica<\/strong>, created by him and Sara Marina along with singers Irene Ar\u00e9valo and Patry Cruz, performed this traditional Sephardic song at the Beth Israel Synagogue in Brasov<\/strong>, as part of the Early Music Festival held in that Romanian city. Villalba published the video for this song at that festival a few days ago:<\/p>\n
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