Meet Mor Karbasi - one of the theme artists at Førdefestivalen
Mother Karbasi
One of this year's featured artists is the Ladino singer Mor Karbasi. She has Moroccan-Sephardic roots, was born in Jerusalem, and now lives in Spain. Simon Brougthon in the magazine Songlines met Karbasi in a very special place, in connection with the festival in Fes, Morocco; and talked with her, among other things, about having three fatherlands. On Friday, July 8, you can experience Mor Karbasi and her ensemble at the Sports Hall in Førdehuset .
The interview is translated by Marianne Lystrup. Photo: Simon Broughton
The circle is complete.
A candle is already burning on the grave, and Mother Karbasi lights her own from it. Among the thousands of whitewashed tombs, which merely resemble geometric cylinder formations in the Jewish cemetery in Fes, there are some that are a little more decorated. Most of these belong to particular rabbis, but this is the tomb of Sol La Tzadika (Sol the Righteous), a young Jewish girl who was executed in 1834.
“ “I’ve been waiting so long to come here and meet her,” Karbasi says. “I don’t feel like I’m coming to meet a saint, it’s like I’m meeting a friend.” ”
She begins singing the song ‘Sol La Tsadika’, the title track of her new album: ‘I, Lord, was born a Hebrew, and as a Hebrew I must die.’ Each phrase in the song forms an arch, like the tomb itself with its decorative, green ornaments at the edges. As Karbasi softly shapes the words in the ancient Spanish language Ladino, I let my eyes glide over the dazzling white tombs, the crackling, honey-colored walls and the rugged landscape surrounding the mellah – the old Jewish quarter. The song felt like home.
" 'When Sol saw his blood dripping,
She said with her last breath:
I don't want to become a Muslim.
Continue with your evil actions, you traitor!' ”
Sol Hachuel (La Tsadika) was born in Tangier and there are several variations of her story. The version engraved in French on her tomb tells that one of the sultan's sons fell in love with her and promised her wealth and honor if she converted to Islam and married him. Sol refused, saying that 'gold, silver and honor cannot take the place of faith'. She was eventually publicly beheaded at the age of 17 - although everyone seemed to want it to end that way. Her kindness, honor and heroism have made her tomb a place of pilgrimage - surprisingly for both Muslims and Jews.
"One of the main reasons is that she had no children," Karbasi explains. "She died when she was very young and that has a power because she didn't get the chance to live her life. People believe that she can help them have children. Many Muslims believe that she converted, which is why she is worshipped on both sides."
Sol Hachuel seems like a sad heroine, but powerful in her refusal to abandon her faith. And even if there’s not much comfortable reconciliation in the song, her participation in the Fez Festival of Sacred Music is a good excuse for Mor Karbasi to come there and explore her Moroccan-Jewish heritage. “I came here to celebrate music with my family and find out where I come from.”
Karbasi was born in Jerusalem and, according to her mother, began singing before she was a year old. She lived in Jerusalem until she was 18, where she studied piyuttim (Hebrew religious songs) and listened to flamenco, before serving as a singer in the Israeli army. Together with guitarist and husband Joe Taylor, she lived in London for five years and has now settled in Seville.
“ “My mother is from a Moroccan Sephardic family that did not preserve the language or tradition, but our family name is from Spain. Now I live in Spain where it all began and I feel like a circle has been completed. When I first came to Morocco, I had the same strange feeling as in Spain – that a part of me is here already, and I have come to meet that part.” ”
The Jews came to Morocco at the same time as the Romans, so there were Jews here long before the Arabs came and long before the Jews were expelled from Spain during the years culminating in the Christian reconquest in 1492. There were about 250,000 Jews in Morocco when the State of Israel was established and there were large waves of emigration in 1948 and after Moroccan independence in 1956. After the Russians, Moroccan Jews are the largest nationality in Israel. In Morocco there are now only about 3,000 Jews, most of them in Casablanca, and only a few families and only one synagogue in operation in Fes.
Karbasi's mother, Shoshana, is quoted in the text booklet of La Tsadika. "Both you and I have three homelands," she says. "The first is here [Israel], where we were born. The second is the country from which we were expelled: Spain. Our third homeland is the places in Africa, from which our ancestors voluntarily left, when they followed their hearts in their longing for Jerusalem."
Of the 12 songs on Karbasi's album, nine are Moroccan-Sephardic – most of them learned from the National Library of Israel's recordings of singer Flora Benamor. "I became interested in Sephardic songs when I was about 16 years old," Karbasi explains. "I had always been interested in old singers and field recordings because I think the level was higher among the old singers than it is today. Some of these haunted me – one of them has the sound of a baby in the background, but they are just melodies and lyrics and it was a long process to decide what to do with them and how to arrange them for my musicians." For 'Sol La Tsadika' she has chosen just a few pieces of a long, narrative song and added a refrain: 'Oh, it hurts me to think about the time when Sol disappeared'.
Perhaps inevitably, some of the songs, such as 'La Gallarda' and 'Yo Me Levantara', have taken on a flamenco flavour with Salvador Guitierrez's guitar and clapping palmas. Both are songs in which the female protagonist murders her lover, but they have a mystical enchantment about them. Others have a more Middle Eastern feel, with kamancheh and they deal with traditional actions such as the ritual of bathing the bride. Women have been central to the transmission of Sephardic culture and it is female singers such as Flory Jagoda in the US, Françoise Atlan in France and Ruth Yaakov and Yasmin Levy in Israel who have been the best known in recent years.
There are also more personal, newly written songs - in Spanish. 'Mi Niña me Trajo la Mar' (My weasel girl brought me the sea) is made by Karbasi herself, about her weasel sister. And 'Ladrona de Granadas' (The Pomegranate Girl) has a text by Karbasi's mother about when Mother, as a wild young girl, went on a snake in the fields in Jerusalem. "I saw the red pomegranates climbing up the tree and an old man calling out to me from his window. My mother liked the story and wrote the text."
Karbasi's concert in Fes is held in a large room in a historic house in the medina. It's very Arab-Andalusian in style, with tiles, oriental arches and a splashing fountain in the middle of the room. They turn off the water before the concert starts, but I would have liked to have the sound of her and the birds at dusk as a background to the music. "I've been waiting so long to come to Morocco and sing these songs for you," she says, "because it's their home." With a quartet of musicians on guitar, cello, double bass and drums, Karbasi doesn't try to perform the songs authentically, but makes them speak to a new audience. She gets a wonderfully warm reception.
"Your other homeland has tracks that your feet follow without you asking them," says Karbasi's mother, and it is one of these tracks that has led her to the 'Sol La Tsadika' song and the cemetery in the middle. "Sol was just a child when she was executed, and they write about her as if she had great wisdom and was a saint. But no one knows what she was like. She is quite rare, because in the Jewish faith we are not so concerned with martyrs. For us, life is sacred. I know they are big in Islam and Christianity. I live in Seville and there are churches for both martyrs everywhere. I can't think of any other Jewish martyr, at least not a woman."
“ “What does this song mean to you?” I ask. “It’s become like I know her and talk to her like a friend. She paid a very high price. She was a victim of a political situation and I think everyone felt her death.” ”
As Mother Karbasi and I leave, two candles are burning on Sol LaTsadika's grave and another woman comes to pay her respects.
Translated by Marianne Lystrup
ml@skriveliv.no