Yasmin Levy and Gal Costa: Some thoughts

Over there at Arts at Michigan's "[art]seen" blog, Krithika Srinivasan posted a preview of Yasmin Levy's concert, in which she made the observation that "Traditional Ladino music is similar to Portuguese fado and Spanish flamenco".

Coming as Yasmin Levy's performance did on the heels of the Gal Costa concert last week, Krithika's comment set me thinking.

Gal Costa had, among other things, sung the beautiful bossa nova song by Tom Jobim, "A Felicidade", which begins: "Tristeza nao tem fim, felicidade sim" ("Sadness has no end, happiness does").

This somewhat melancholy take on the world and on existence is, actually, quite characteristic of bossa nova.

Even when singing of happy things, the bossa nova musician's underlying palette seems always to be constituted of melancholy, autumnal colors.

As Krithika indirectly suggests, the Ladino music that Levy sang did have distinct similarities to the fado genre of Portugal (e.g. check out the songs of the great Amália Rodrigues), which also has this sense of melancholy. The morna genre of Cabo Verde (Cape Vert), a former Portuguese colony where the language is a Portuguese-based creole (e.g. check out the songs of Cesária Évora), also shows this sensibility.

We can think of another classic _bossa nova_ song that Gal Costa also sang (in both Portuguese and English) that evening: "Garota de Ipanema" ("The Girl from Ipanema"), also by Tom Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes. Notice how the underlying sentiment is one of melancholy:

Olha que coisa mais linda,
Mais cheia de graça,
É ela a menina que vem e que passa,
num doce balanço a caminho do mar.
Moça do corpo dourado do sol de Ipanema,
O seu balançado é mais que um poema,
É a coisa mais linda que eu já vi passar.

Ah, por que estou tão sozinho?
Ah, por que tudo é tão triste?
Ah, a beleza que existe,
A beleza que não é só minha,
Que também passa sozinha.

Ah, se ela soubesse
Que, quando ela passa,
O mundo inteirinho se enche de graça
E fica mais lindo por causa do amor,
Por causa do amor, por causa do amor...

Tall and tanned and young and lovely,
the girl from Ipanema goes walking
and when she passes
each man she passes
says "Aaah!"

When she moves it's like a samba
that swings so cool and sways so gently
that when she passes
each man she passes
says "Aaah!"

[ Oh -- but he watches so sadly,
How -- can he tell her he loves her,
He -- would just give his heart gladly,

But each day when she walks to the sea
She looks straight ahead, not at he,

Tall and tanned and young and lovely
the girl from Ipanema goes walking,
and when she passes
he smiles,
but she doesn't see.]


(Here's a YouTube video of "Garota de Ipanema" sung by Joaõ Gilberto and Caetano Veloso, by the way. And here's the English version, sung by Astrud Gilberto.)

It occurred to me during the concert that flamenco and the ladino tradition are also examples of the "melancholy as an underlying state" -- this is especially true of the song "Adio Kerida" [Farewell my Beloved] that Yasmin Levy sang at the concert.

This sense of melancholy seems to be historically there in the entire
Iberian peninsula (both Spain and Portugal), and in many musical genres of the hispanophone and lusophone worlds: in flamenco, in ladino music, in fado, in morna, and even, as we saw, in the bossa nova.

What could have been the reason for this? Exile and the sense of loss (as in the case of the gypsies who were/are such an important part of flamenco, and the diasporic sephardic jews who were associated with ladino music), certainly played a role.

But I think that the strong influence of the Catholic church (with its teaching
that wordly glory is always transient and passing) in Spain and Portugal probably also had something to do with this general cultural ethos.

This also reminds me of the somewhat related phenomenon of the valorization of death in Iberian and Latin American culture. Interesting in that regard is the
following story that I came across some time ago.

Incidentally, Ruth Behar, a professor at UM, made a documentary film some time ago with the title "Adio Kerida", borrowing from the same traditional ladino song with this title that Yasmin Levy sang at the concert. You can read about that film here.

By: Sayan Bhattacharyya
UMSSC Member