This playlist is the advanced release of Yuval Music Series 14, Splendid Singing Birds: Jewish Women’s Songs from Kerala. This is one of the longstanding projects of the Jewish Music Research Centre. Led with diligence, profound dedication and meticulous scholarship by anthropologist Barbara C. Johnson, the project relies on fieldwork carried out in India and Israel for over four decades. Johnson’s work, in collaboration with singer and translator Tzipporah (Venus) Lane, unravels the symbolic and aesthetic layers of the Malayalam language song repertoire, anchored in the life of the Jewish communities of Kerala, on the southwest seacoast of India.
The playlist is divided into five sections, each accompanied by a brief introduction describing its theme. In Section I, some songs narrate legendary accounts of how the Jews first arrived in Kerala, and others describe particular synagogues. Section II includes blessings sung by women at celebratory family feasts, plus a variety of romantic and playful songs associated with weddings. Songs in Section III recount stories from the Hebrew Bible and Midrash, many featuring women characters. Section IV includes Malayalam adaptations of Hebrew prayer songs, plus devotional songs with a uniquely Indian flavor. Section V presents 20th century Zionist songs composed in Kerala. Many of these anticipate the community’s aliyah (emigration to Israel), which began in the early 1950s, and some were composed to the melodies of popular Indian cinema songs of that era.
For full texts, click each Section to open and download it in PDF format. In addition, the following parts of the book are also available in PDF format: the Title Pages and Table of Contents; the Preface by Edwin Seroussi and the Introduction by Barbara Johnson; an essay by linguist Scaria Zacharia; the Bibliography; and the Acknowledgements. For all these attachments, see here.
See also the CD "Oh, Lovely Parrot! - Jewish Women's Songs from Kerala," published by the JMRC in 2004, which includes forty-two songs representing a selection of the traditional songs preserved by the Jewish women of Cochin.
