Bracha Zefira
Discography
N.B. Additional recordings and re-releases will be added as
cataloged.
Biography
Born of Yemenite parents and orphaned early in life, at the age of six Zefira
was taken in by a Sephardi widow. She heard her first Judeo-Spanish
romances from the women of the Yemin Moshe neighborhood. She later learned traditional
Sephardic songs from both Alberto Hemsi and Yitzhak Navon. Zefira
concertized extensively in the early 1930s and several Israeli composers
later arranged her song choices. (Hirshberg, 1995; Zefira, ND.)
Zefira's extensive public performances introduced the wider
Israeli public to Sephardic songs for the first time, and it was
squarely in an art-song, "a la Franka" style. Her recordings were
mastered from 1937 onward. A handful of her Hebrew works were issued on
78, as well as a Hebrew setting of the melody of Yendome,
set to Hebrew words as Yesh Li Gan ("I have a garden".) Zefira's
songs such as
Hitrag'ut (based on Mama yo no tengo vista); Durme, durme
and Morena Morenica, helped form the core
of the modern Israeli Sephardi canon.
Upon first exposure to her work, many US listeners found her
performances excitingly alien and colorful. Most were won over, "...it was the exotic nature of her
interpretations that gave them an air of novelty and lent them special
fascination. The voice itself was essentially Oriental in timbre". Its
"firm, resident tones...acquired a mellowness and sweetness of marked
appeal". (The New York Times, reviewing her first US recital, May 20,
1949.) Others were puzzled and put off, "Zfira, a famous Yemenite, has a
quality to her voice which is said to be typically Oriental. Taste for
her type of singing must be cultivated." ("Phonograph Recordings of
Jewish Interest", Norman Kiell, 1941) Zefira died in 1988.
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