Choosing to work with traditional material like Ottoman Jewish music carries responsibilities. For example, I must educate myself about ever-widening historical and cultural contexts. This learning will continue to remain incomplete. Ten years of research inspire confidence that greater depth, more connections and heightened relevance will continue to tantalize. Despite this recognition, I also have to work according to what I have already learned from first, second and third-hand sources. Thankfully, I can skirt some common traps (like representing music from the early 20th century as somehow Medieval) And yet I am vividly aware that I will continue making mistakes that I will recognize only in the future, in retrospect.

Another responsibility is to be honest. I must clearly state where my work falls on the spectrum between Cultural Curation and Artistic Creation (a model I learned from fiddler Andy Reiner). On one end of the continuum, Cultural Curation refers to an “ethnomusicological” effort to capture a snapshot of a song, as it would have been performed at a specific time and place (for example Ay Mansévo, as it would have been sung in private Constantinople homes in 1903, or as it was recorded by Isaac Algazi for Columbia Gramophone Company in Istanbul in 1927). On the spectrum’s other end, Artistic Creation indicates an artist’s own interpretation of a song, based on their personal intents, background and aesthetics.

As a child of “Western” nation-states like the USA, Israel and England, raised on a diet of Western classical, classical Hindustani and various folkloric musics, I cannot both “stay true” to an early 20th century Ottoman performance practice and also have my own artistic way with it. However tempting it may be to think it is possible to do both (and however sexy the marketing language may sound), such a claim would mislead, at best. To some degree, even with meticulous attention to the smallest ethnomusicological and linguistic detail, it is all too easy to inadvertently replace the cultural markers signifying a song’s derivation from a particular time and place with my own cultural and aesthetic background. In the case of Ladino song, such claims are unfortunately common. I believe they contribute to myths and misunderstandings, despite artists’ laudable intentions.

And so one of my responsibilities is, as Petrarch said, to “call a fig a fig.”

The music of The Forgotten Kingdom deliberately situates towards the Artistic Creation end of the spectrum. Until the early 20th century, the songs you hear in this performance would mainly have been sung in homes and community celebrations like weddings, mostly by untrained women and frequently unaccompanied. For these reasons, some of the best singers will, unfortunately, remain unrecognized. The first professional, commercial, Ottoman recording artists, like Haim Effendi, Albert Beressi and Isaac Algazi, grew up with such folksy private renditions. Effendi, Beressi, Algazi and their peers recorded hundreds of songs for the Constantinople-based Odeon and Orfeon Record Companies and, later, for companies like Columbia Gramophone Company in Istanbul. These early 78-rpm records were primarily purchased by fellow Ottoman Jews whose singing in private homes or community celebrations often became inspired by the recordings.

I have chosen to radically recast these songs. GME performs new arrangements and re-compositions with cultural inflections and instrumentation that would have been alien to the Mediterranean and Balkan Ottoman communities from which these songs stem.

This decision to introduce old songs into new contexts is based on the means and aims underlying most of my composing and show-creation, summarized in this 3C framework (inspired by Dr. Devin Naar):

GME’s 4C’s:

1. Through efficacy in Craft, we move people.

2. By moving people we inspire personal Connection with what previously seemed unrelated or irrelevant.

3. Connection drives Curiosity, opening opportunities for learning.
Curiosity, especially directed by deft facilitation, expands willingness to explore, listen generously, and develop understanding of experiences, relationships and perspectives different from one’s own.

Why This Matters

• Sustained, deepened inquiry strengthens awareness of our own and of others’ often-tacit assumptions about how we relate to the world and to one another.

• Once we have heard someone’s story and understand more about how they have arrived at their beliefs and viewpoints, it becomes more difficult to dismiss/dehumanize them, even when we sharply disagree.

4. Over time, this increases informed agency in Choices we make.

The process is dynamic and multi-directional.

As Tim Shriver, co-founder and board chair of the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, puts it, “Emotion drives attention and attention drives learning… People learn when their heart is open, engaged, connected and filled with purpose.”

Judith Cohen from York University points out that recognition of a new, and different, interpretation of a traditional song does not automatically diminish that interpretation’s beauty or impact. If I have done my job sufficiently well, you may indeed be moved by this performance. But if you are not, the blame is wholly on me, and not on the vast, rich traditions of Ottoman Jewish song by which I am inspired.

— Guy Mendilow