Vancouver, March 20, 1996
Dear Basil,
Met someone at the conservatory last week who claimed to know Miguel. He sent me some information the next day by courier. I'm sending the photographs separately, but, though I haven't been able to check his sources, here's the text as he sent it:
Documents just recovered after the lifting of the state
of seige around Sarajevo provide new clues about the
formerly mysterious early years of Miguel Siglo. Manuscripts
of juvenile piano compositions, notebooks, programs from classical musical
concerts, concert ticket stubs, have been found in the attic
of one of the last Jewish residents of the nearly destroyed
city. Siglo is finally identified as the member of a Sephardic
family resident in the Sarajevo area since the expulsion
of the Jews from Spain in 1492.
Among the recovered works in the Siglo family's effects
is a closely annotated copy of the monograph "Chansons Judeo-Espagnols:
1200-1650", by Haim Vidal Sephiha, Siglo's much older half brother. Sephiha's
book was accepted as a dissertation at the Sorbonne in the
early 1930's, and was the first to document the influences of
Moorish and Arabic poetry and music on the Jewish culture
of Central-Eastern Europe. The annotated book is inscribed to
Miguel, from the author.
Previously nothing was known of Siglo's childhood, till his
enrollment at the Vienna Conservatory in 1937. No records
exist of his war time years, nothing definite until 1949,
when Siglo surfaces as a bandleader and arranger at the Tropicana
nightclub in Havana, Cuba. Siglo is rumoured to have been
associated with the notorious Goebbels Gang, a jazz orchestra
composed of Jewish, black and other non-Aryan musicians employed by the
Nazi propaganda ministry to broadcast 'degenerate' music to
Allied troops. Eddie Rickenbacker, leader of the Goebbels
Gang between 1943-44 recalls a sensational young pianist who went by
the name Michael Sokolov, or sometimes, Socolo. Sokolov was once recorded
playing an unusually spicy blend of Arabic and Morrocan
tinged jazz, though the music is barely audible over the sound
of air raid sirens and bomb explosions."
So that's the story so far. We should have guessed that there was something special about our Miguel. More when I find it. Hope the customers are keeping you happy.
Much Love,
Jenny
