14 - Ladino in U.S. Literature and Song

Summary

This chapter discusses the beginnings of Ladino usage in the United States, introducing the Ladino press and then offering a comprehensive picture of poets and writers who wrote in and about Ladino. It introduces a few contemporary artists who have created and performed in Ladino, and observes their stance toward language preservation, while interrogating their place in both the Jewish and the broader community. Indeed, non-Jewish Latinos have expressed interest in Ladino and in Sephardic genres, and nowhere is this interest more explicit than in music. The chapter focuses on music, a fluid commodity that travels across nation-states and acquires new meanings, as it encounters conditions unlike those in which it was created and is transformed by them. Ladino theater performers as well as Ladino singers and composers have made repeated attempts to reach out to an audience that extends beyond the Jewish community.