Through the Alleys of Time – for classical guitar and tape focuses on the Ladino language, culture, and way of life that is fading away as the older generation passes. My inspiration for this vanishing tradition came during a visit to Córdoba and Sevilla, where the alleys seemed to whisper the tales of long-gone local communities. I envisioned a once-thriving community that, after 1492, dispersed in various directions, taking its language and traditions to new places like Greece and Bulgaria.
The music narrates the journey of a troubadour—a folk singer traveling from village to village in search of a particular song. Along the way, he encounters fragments of other songs, prayers, and chants, including Jewish prayers, traditional Ladino songs (Judæo-Espagnol), narratives, and influences from Christianity and Islam. During the Golden Age in Andalucía, these three religions coexisted harmoniously, enriching each other's cultures.
All the recorded fragments are authentic, featuring elderly men and women singing songs from their childhood. They represent perhaps the last link in a long chain, as these songs and expressions were not fully passed down to subsequent generations, if at all. I am deeply grateful to Dr. Shoshana Weich-Shahak for her lifelong dedication to tracing these singers and informants, and for generously allowing me to use excerpts from her recordings. Thus, the work as a whole becomes a passage through time, where voices, sounds, and images from the past emerge before our troubadour, whose quest leads him to discover his long-awaited song – "La Serena."
In addition to these authentic recordings, the composition incorporates the sounds of soprano, oud, lute, recorders, viola da gamba, percussion, and additional classical guitar, each recorded separately and manipulated sonically. Additionally, I conducted field recordings in Spain to capture ambient sounds.
I extend my heartfelt thanks and credit to the following individuals:
Monica Garcia-Albea, soprano
Lara Morris, recorders
Myrna Herzog, viola da gamba
Guy Kark, oud and lute
Liat Cohen, classical guitar
Avi Agababa, percussion
Sound Track Editing and Mixing:
Dmitry Lifshitz, Yossi Ron
Sound Engineers:
Eldad Berman (Tel Aviv)
Marcus Fritzsch (Berlin)
Pierre Fardel (Paris)
Special acknowledgments to Dr. Shoshana Weich-Shahak for her invaluable support and assistance in locating authentic recordings, and to the National Sound Archives (Jerusalem, Israel), Yad Ben-Zvi Library (Jerusalem, Israel), Sebastián de la Obra, and Rosana de Aza at Casa De Sefarad (Córdoba).
Through the Alleys of Time was commissioned by the Legacy Heritage Fund, through the America-Israel Cultural Foundation, dedicated to Guitarist Liat Cohen.
