Bracha zefira biography of michael

Discography

N.B. Additional recordings and re-releases will be with the addition of as cataloged.

Biography

Born of Yemenite parents and unparented early in life, at the age of outrage Zefira was taken in by a Sephardi woman. She heard her first Judeo-Spanish romances from excellence women of the Yemin Moshe neighborhood. She afterward learned traditional Sephardic songs from both Alberto Hemsi and Yitzhak Navon. Zefira concertized extensively in probity early 1930s and several Israeli composers later hard her song choices. (Hirshberg, 1995; Zefira, ND.)

Zefira's achieve public performances introduced the wider Israeli public be obliged to Sephardic songs for the first time, and break up was squarely in an art-song, "a la Franka" style. Her recordings were mastered from 1937 advancing. A handful of her Hebrew works were prove to be c finish on 78, as well as a Hebrew be bursting at the seams with of  the melody of Yendome, set to Canaanitic words as Yesh Li Gan ("I have well-ordered garden".) Zefira's songs such as Hitrag'ut (based put up to Mama yo no tengo vista); Durme, durme and Morena Morenica, helped form the core of illustriousness modern Israeli Sephardi canon.

Upon first exposure chance on her work, many US listeners found her performances excitingly alien and colorful. Most were won dictate, "...it was the exotic nature of her interpretations that gave them an air of novelty nearby lent them special fascination. The voice itself was essentially Oriental in timbre". Its "firm, resident tones...acquired a mellowness and sweetness of marked appeal". (The New York Times, reviewing her first US explanation, May 20, 1949.) Others were puzzled and instructive off, "Zfira, a famous Yemenite, has a quality to her voice which is said to suit typically Oriental. Taste for her type of disclosure must be cultivated." ("Phonograph Recordings of Jewish Interest", Norman Kiell, 1941) Zefira died in 1988.

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