A radio program of the European Institute of Jewish Music hosted by Hervé Roten
MUSIQUES JUIVES D’HIER ET D’AUJOURD’HUI – TUESDAY NOVEMBER 3, 2015, JUDAÏQUES FM (94.8), 21H05. Radio program in French
For the occasion of the release of the CD Fuente Nueva performed by Keren Esther, this broadcast revives Tangier in the 1930’s and its « fontaine nouvelle » district where women went to draw water singing very old songs.
Around the fountain met young people. Among them: Yaacov and Yohevet who see and love each other. This love story gave birth to several children, among them, a girl, Clara, Esther’s mother. During her childhood, Keren Esther was rocked by Judeo-Spanish songs from her mother and grandmother. Songs that speak of love, marriage, but also abandoned wives. Songs of which some come from Turkey or the Balkans, that knit a story in which Keren Esther took part.
Last child of a family of four children, Keren Esther was born in the south of France, in Toulouse. Like many children of exiled people, she felt the need to renew with her origins. She recorded a first CD A la una yo naci. In 2015, she recorded a second album Fuente Nueva, produced by the European Institute of Jewish Music. With this album, Keren Esther built a musical bridge from the pink town Toulouse to the white town Tangier.
Accompanied by Paco Chambi on the guitar and Sylvain Fournier on percussion, endowed with a beautiful voice, Keren Esther brings back the memory of generations of Jewish Moroccan women holders of an ancestral oral musical tradition.
Purchase the CD Fuente nueva on the EIJM’s online shop
Officer of the Ordre of Arts and letters, PhD in musicology at Paris University Sorbonne, prize-winning graduate from the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris, Hervé Roten is the director of the European Institute of Jewish Music since its creation in 2006.
Ethnomusicologist, he quickly developed an interest in the safeguard and digitization of archives, subjects he taught for several years in Reims and Marne-La-Vallée universities.
Author of many articles, books and recordings related to Jewish music, producer of radio programs, Hervé Roten is recognized today as one of the best specialists of Jewish music in the world.
