Cultural Geography #1 -- Andalusia -- Garbo

13th century depiction of a Christian and a Muslim sitting in a tent playing chess. 

Recently, I was watching a video by a musician on YouTube and he identified a song he played as Andalusian. And I thought "Oh yeah, Andelusia? Andalusia?" (It's the latter.) I frowned and thought. "Bottom coast of Spain, I think. . .?" Mental blurring followed.  Immediate consultation of Google Maps. 

Just a minute or looking and you can see so clearly how Africa and Europe come together with Spain on one side and Morocco on the other. 

I do best, when trying to keep geography in my head, by attaching cultural touch-points to specific areas. Even if the cultural depiction is skewed, biased, or just plain b.s., still it sticks in my mind and a place on the map becomes real. For example, with all the history Morocco has, and its fame for its architecture, rug designs, and amazing cuisine, I end up thinking about Marlene Dietrich and Gary Cooper in the 1930 film "Morocco."

Trailer for "Morocco"

One of the best-known films in the world, "Casablanca," is set in Morocco.  

Here's a zoomed-in version of a slightly different Google Map which shows where Casablanca is. 

Narration at the start of "Casablanca":

Over the water and up in coastal Spain, Jews have spoken  Ladino   for many generations

Ladino music is famous all over the world. Here, a musician performs with a group of other singers, and shares some memories of the Second World War, when she and her family spent two years in a refugee camp on an island in the Adriatic Sea. 

Casablanca, in Morocco, was a port town, and as the Nazi threat rose, many Jews used forged paperwork and money from selling their possessions to get on a ship and away.  As we see in the film "Casablanca,"it was mainly the Vichy (Nazi) French who hassled the Jews. The Moroccans, including the Sultan, were much more tolerant than the anti-Semitic French. 

From Wikipedia:

Sidi Mohammed Ben Youssef of Morocco, or Mohammad V, was the Sultan of Morocco during the World War II period.

... As Morocco was under Vichy control, Mohammad V had little power in the prevention of Vichy discrimination laws, but he expressed his moral objection to them in his dealings with French officials. Mohammad V did protect the Jewish population in some ways, preventing the use of the Star of David as an identifier of Jewish subjects from use in Morocco.

A book clled Destination: Casablanca goes into the complex history behind the events in the 1942 film.  Here is a link to an interview with the author about why she explored this bit of history. 

book cover

This political climate was nothing new; during the Spanish Inquisition, the Jews of Andalusia and other parts of Spain were formally expelled in the same year Columbus sailed the ocean blue. 

In a turbulent area along a heavily-traveled coastline, with constant cultural clashing arising from so many kinds of people mixing together, Jews had to move in various directions at different points in history. Around 1500, Jews moved to safety from Spain to the Arab lands of northern Africa. But in the 1940s, Jews fled to a port in Morocco to get away from Europe, but then had to dodge Vichy France's influence in Morocco itself while waiting to sail across the Atlantic to South America, the U.S., or Canada. 

Andalusia is where the city of Seville is. Seville has many groves of bitter oranges growing around it. 

And, according to an opera, Seville was famous for its singing barber. 

                          Elmer Fudd gets a new look in "Rabbit of Seville"

We can't leave the area of Andalusia  without mention of the most famous fictional character associated with the area: Othello.

Though most of the Shakespearean tragedy focuses on the dastardly Iago fanning the flames of Othello's jealousy around his wife Desdemona, Othello does have an actual job: he's a general. Othello, we are told, is a Moor, meaning that his ancestors were Black Muslims in Andalusia. But Othello's own life is centered in cosmopolitan Venice, where he is helping the Venetians try to take the island of Cyprus away from the Turks of the Ottoman Empire. 

 James Earl Jones, in 1981, as Othello

I began this post by mentioning the music of Andalusia. In the middle of today's entry, we had some Ladino music. To close things out, here's the best-known piece of music from the Andalusian region. The song is called "Lamma Bada Yatathana" (a lot of people just call it "Lamma Bada"), and you can find dozens, if not hundreds of recordings of it, both instrumental and with vocals. I like this one. 

See you next week!

Garbo