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    Paco Diez

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    The author attended two concerts by Paco Diéz, an expert in Sephardic and Castilian folk music traditions. One concert was at the UW School of Music and attracted a diverse audience connected through experiencing the unfamiliar music. The other was at the Stroum Jewish Community Center and the audience was primarily Jewish individuals familiar with Sephardic culture. At this concert, the author felt welcomed into the Sephardic community despite having little prior exposure. Both concerts highlighted different types of communities brought together through shared cultural traditions.

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    Paco Diez

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    The author attended two concerts by Paco Diéz, an expert in Sephardic and Castilian folk music traditions. One concert was at the UW School of Music and attracted a diverse audience connected through experiencing the unfamiliar music. The other was at the Stroum Jewish Community Center and the audience was primarily Jewish individuals familiar with Sephardic culture. At this concert, the author felt welcomed into the Sephardic community despite having little prior exposure. Both concerts highlighted different types of communities brought together through shared cultural traditions.

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    The author attended two concerts by Paco Diéz, an expert in Sephardic and Castilian folk music traditions. One concert was at the UW School of Music and attracted a diverse audience connected through experiencing the unfamiliar music. The other was at the Stroum Jewish Community Center and the audience was primarily Jewish individuals familiar with Sephardic culture. At this concert, the author felt welcomed into the Sephardic community despite having little prior exposure. Both concerts highlighted different types of communities brought together through shared cultural traditions.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    79 views3 pages

    Paco Diez

    Uploaded by

    api-441530231
    The author attended two concerts by Paco Diéz, an expert in Sephardic and Castilian folk music traditions. One concert was at the UW School of Music and attracted a diverse audience connected through experiencing the unfamiliar music. The other was at the Stroum Jewish Community Center and the audience was primarily Jewish individuals familiar with Sephardic culture. At this concert, the author felt welcomed into the Sephardic community despite having little prior exposure. Both concerts highlighted different types of communities brought together through shared cultural traditions.

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    of 3

    1

    Claire Sarfatis

    Honors 210A

    27 November 2019

    American Sabor​ Community Events Reflection

    Over the course of this quarter, I attended two concerts given by Paco Diéz, an expert in

    Sephardic and Castilian folk musical traditions. One of these concerts took place at the Stroum

    Jewish Community Center, facilitated by the Seattle Sephardic Network, while the other took

    place in collaboration with the UW School of Music, here on campus. While neither of these

    concerts were performances alone, instead encouraging audience participation and inspiring a

    sense of community, the communities present at these two concerts were quite different.

    Diéz’s performance at UW was a celebration of community for UW students and faculty

    as well as the general community near the university, a community of which I comfortably count

    myself a part. The theatre filled up within minutes of the doors opening, and at least 20 people

    were left standing in the back or sitting in the aisles to enjoy the performance. Attendees,

    primarily college students and adults above middle-aged, listened to Diéz, his students for the

    quarter, and Professor Dudley perform a varied repertoire of primarily Castilian folk songs with

    a few Sephardic songs in Ladino. Audience participation was encouraged on a few songs, with a

    joke from Diéz about how singing would be easier if the audience opened their mouths. Though

    the music was somewhat unfamiliar, everyone in the room was connected in experiencing it. The

    majority of attendees were not of the same culture as the music, but we connected to and through

    its sounds and lyrics, coming together around concepts of love, family, and hard, repetitive work.
    2

    At the Stroum Center, in contrast, the community was unfamiliar to me but far more

    connected to the music Diéz sang and the culture it represented. As I told the woman checking

    online ticket purchases my name, she repeated it back to me with better pronunciation than my

    own. In case it is not immediately clear, Sarfatis is a Sephardic name, and, having grown up with

    little to no understanding of this culture to which my dad’s family belongs, this struck me

    immediately. As she searched the list for my order, another woman approached and greeted the

    first as a dear friend, mentioning seeing her at a recent Bar Mitzvah. I took a card that gave

    information on the Sephardic Network on one side and a recipe for cookies on the other and

    stepped into an auditorium full of people. These attendees were primarily in their 30s or older,

    for the most part visibly Jewish, and they loudly chatted with one another, waiting for the show

    to begin. Understanding that your recent ancestors were part of a cultural tradition and

    experiencing it yourself are very different concepts, so I found a seat near the back of the theatre

    and sat in an attempt to be unobtrusive. This effort failed, as a middle-aged couple sat

    immediately next to me within minutes, with the woman quickly starting a conversation. We

    stood and sang with Diéz when he arrived, and throughout the concert were encouraged to clap

    and sing along, helped by the lyrics to many of the latter half of the songs, being in Ladino,

    projected on a screen behind the stage. For these later songs, he was joined by Isaac Azose, a

    cantor in the local Sephardic community and expert in Ladino. Whereas at the later concert at

    UW I would feel comfortable in a familiar university community, at the Stroum Center I felt

    fully welcomed into a community I’ve never experienced but have lived much of my life with

    curiosity towards. My new friend in the woman sitting beside me asked after the concert if I

    spoke Ladino, because my understanding of Spanish allowed me to parse most of the language
    3

    I’d heard that night, and asked why I was there, telling me that I looked very Sephardic and,

    while she was Ashkenazi herself, her husband’s Sephardic heritage brought them both to the

    concert that night.

    The music Diéz performs provides understanding of a deep and specific cultural tradition

    for listeners. It inspired in me specifically a feeling of belonging to a group that is, like many

    Latin American communities in the United States, defined by the experience of a diaspora. As

    we have discussed in class, the cultural imaginary of any group is incredibly important to

    defining the identity of many members of that group, and seeing Diéz in concert provided one of

    the clearest glimpses of both general Iberian and specifically Sephardic cultural traditions I have

    ever experienced.

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