El Sueo de la Hija del Rey - Sephardic Ladino Song

Vocals, arrangement and video by Farya Faraji. This is a folk song from the traditional repertoire of the Sephardic Jewish community; the diaspora that was expelled from the Iberian Peninsula following the completion of the Reconquista; at least those who did not convert or were executed. The Sephardic community would go on to live across the Mediterranean basin, especially North Africa and the Ottoman Empire, where they would form important Jewish centres in Greek areas such as Thessaloniki and Rhodes, the latter being where this clip was filmed. The instrumentation consists of a Greek lavta, a violin, a qanun, and a darbuka drum. Hence, Sephardic music would always be reflective of whatever territory they occupied, and for the most part, the canonical instrumental arsenal of the tradition is comprised of ouds, kanuns, lyres and other instruments widely played across these areas of the Mediterranean. The everyday language of the Sephardis is Ladino; a Romance-language of the Iberian peninsula like Ca