Artists
Claire Zalamansky
France
Claire Zalamansky was born in Paris in 1967. By the age of 12, she was passionate about Federico Garcia Lorca, whom she discovered through Antonio Gadès in Blood Wedding. When later she began to sing, it was to sing popular Spanish songs that had been arranged by Lorca! But once she discovered the Judeo-Spanish cancionero, she explored this repertoire and her latest CD is dedicated to a musical journey into the Jewish/Spanish Orient.
Of Ashkenazi descent, Claire Zalamansky has found within the Sephardic cultural community ‘the magic that has claimed her voice: an Orient difficult to assimilate because of the mixture of so many cultures. Its Judeo-Spanish music is a melting-pot of the influences that have accumulated over many generations of Jews: Jews who fled Spain after their expulsion in 1492 and who have since set up home all around the Mediterranean.’
This repertoire of songs mostly represents an oral traditional handed down by Jewish women, and will be presented by Claire Zalamansky in Fes. They are the kantiga of the 19 th century and songs celebrating weddings and other religious events of the Jewish calendar