About the project

This study is the result of a long journey dedicated to culture and memory, and is based on the archive of Flora Molcho, daughter of Holocaust survivors from Thessaloniki, who generously donated it to the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki. The archive includes unique, authentic recordings of her parents, who tell stories and perform rare songs from the tradition of Thessaloniki. Through this material, some already known, but mainly rare and possibly unique songs of the Sephardic tradition, as it developed in Greece, are highlighted.

In addition, three important sources are used for the documentation of the material: Cancionero Sefardi by Alberto Hemsi, the work of Rabbi Michael Molho Traditions and Customs of the Sephardic Jews of Salonica, and the rich archive of the Turkish-Israeli journalist Moshe Saoul, which is housed at the Maale Adumim Institute. The songs are studied and compared in their different versions from various regions of Greece, such as Drama, Kavala, Rhodes, and Thessaloniki. They are classified both thematically (love, historical, religious, children's, etc.) and based on their lyrical form (kopla, kantiga, romansa, etc.). The translations are rendered accurately, mainly based on the dictionary of Joseph Nehama, with the contribution of Judeo-Spanish speakers from the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki. At the same time, an accurate rendering of the pronunciation of the lyrics is provided using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Finally, visitors have the option to download a lead sheet and perform each song easily.

The aim of the study is to offer musicians, researchers, educators, and other interested audiences a comprehensive understanding of each song: historical information, different lyrical versions, audio samples, access to key bibliographic sources, and musical guides based on the most complete recordings. Flora Molcho, a philologist who studied at Aristotle University and the University of Padua, taught Modern Greek for decades as a lecturer in Italy and Venice. As a translator of literary works and author of the autobiographical book In the Shadow of Memory, her life has always been a bridge between words and identities. Today, this experience inspired the research into the Sephardic musical tradition.

The overall curation of the project was carried out by researcher and scientific associate of the Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki, and PhD candidate at Aristotle University, Mariangela Chatzistamatiou, while the creation of the lead sheets, based on the audio archives, was undertaken by the musician Nikos Panagiotidis.