Various Artists: Yemenite Jews - COMPACT DISCS

Various Artists: Yemenite Jews - COMPACT DISCSTitle: Yemenite Jews Artist: Various Artists Label: Unesco Product Type: COMPACT DISCS UPC: 093077802424 Genre: International Release Date: 2015 01 13 Number of Discs: 1 After the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem in 586 BCE, a group of Jews settled in Yemen. They remained in exile, sometimes prosperous but frequently persecuted, until the 19th century. They then began to return to what is now Israel, first in small numbers and later in an

Title: Yemenite Jews
Artist: Various Artists
Label: Unesco
Product Type: COMPACT DISCS
UPC: 093077802424
Genre: International
Release Date: 2015-01-13
Number of Discs: 1

After the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem in 586 BCE, a group of Jews settled in Yemen. They remained in exile, sometimes prosperous but frequently persecuted, until the 19th century. They then began to return to what is now Israel, first in small numbers and later in an organized wave with the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948. They brought with them a rich heritage of religious, secular, and devotional (diwan) music, the last of which includes both religious and secular subjects.Every Jewish community in Yemen had it's own diwan, consisting of works from the renowned medieval Spanish poets of the Golden Age of Hebrew poetry, as well as original writings from community members. These poems, in the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic languages, were intended to be sung or chanted. According to the album's compiler Avner Bahat of the Jewish Music Research Centre, the Yemenite diwan is "the richest and most valuable of all." Eleven poems are presented in this 1976-77 recording. Structurally, the diwan is divided into three sections: nashid (an improvisational response sung without music or dance accompaniment), shira (the primary singing section featuring dance and rhythmic accompaniment on tin cans or copper plates), and hallel (a song of praise restricted to two or three notes around the tonic).

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