This audio recording presents an ethnically inspired version of the first eight verses of Eishet Chayil by Qiyan Krets, a female musical ensemble that describe themselves as a Nordic excursion into the world of Al-Andalusian, Medieval and Sephardic music who take up the threads of the Sephardic, Arabic and Occidental traditions and follow them through time and space to the present day. The group crosses musical barriers, experimenting with different epochs and genres, including oriental, folk, ethnic roots music, African, Balkan, Latin-American, reggae, Sephardic and classical. They perform the popular melody for Eishet Chayil composed by Hasidic Askenazi musician, Ben Zion Shenker, with a Sephardic influenced musical style.
About Qiyan
In explaining the name of their group, the women explain as follows:
The name of their group is based on the medieval Qiyan, highly educated slave-women of varying ethnic backgrounds who entertained at the Muslim courts. These women were highly prized poets, singers, instrumentalists and dancers, and were responsible for performing and spreading the works of the composers of the period. As the Christian warlords conquered more and more of the Muslim territories in Spain, qiyan were captured and taken back to the courts of Europe as booty.
Sephardic Music
In explaining their affinity to Sephardic music, the women explain as follows:
When the Sephardic Jews were driven out of their "Sepharad,"Spain, in 1492, they had been living there since pre-Christian times. Many of them settled in the Ottoman Empire where they were received well. However a number of them also settled in, amongst other places, North Africa, America and western Europe.
During the Umayyaddynastin in Al-Andalus, or Moslem Spain (the district now known as Andalusia), the Jews had experienced a Golden Age during which their poetic and musical cultural expression had been enriched and refined through the amazing mixture of Arabian, Christian and Jewish influences they were surrounded by in that era.
The Sephardic Jews took their music and song with them into exile, including a wealth of secular songs sung in their own language, Ladino, a form of early Spanish. These were handed down from woman to woman, despite the disapproval of their male religious leaders.
We have these women's flouting of authority to thank for the unbroken Sephardic song tradition that we celebrate today! We do it in our way, just as our predecessors did – countless new elements have crept in during the centuries, both in texts and melodies.