Sephardic music

Since then, it has picked up influences from Morocco, Greece, Bulgaria, and the other places that Spanish and Portuguese Jews settled after their expulsion from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1496.

Sephardic music adapted to each of these locales, assimilating North African high-pitched, extended ululations; Balkan rhythms, (for instance in 9/8 time); and the Arabic maqam mode.

The song traditions were studied and transcribed in the early twentieth century by a number of ethnomusicologists and scholars of medieval Hispanic literature.

The digitized recordings, with transcriptions and information about song type, are available on the website Folk Literature of the Sephardic Jews, now permanently hosted by the University of Illinois Library.

Gloria Levy, Pasharos Sefardíes, Flory Jagoda the Parvarim, and Janet & Jak Esim Ensemble are popular Eastern Tradition performers of this period.

Opera singer and actor David Serero sings Ladino and Sephardic songs which he often includes in theater classics such as Merchant of Venice and Othello.

The choir was founded in the hope that the musical tradition that their ancestors took with them when they were expelled from the Iberian Peninsula 500 years ago would be preserved and revived.

Molho describes Sephardic women in Salonica using kitchen utensils as improvised percussion, in a manner reminiscent of Spanish and Portuguese village practice today.