On July 9, amid rainwater cracks in limestone rock, charcoal ibex painted by prehistoric man and discarded artifacts from Victorian-era picnics, a loose collective of Jewish women will sing songs of the Sephardic Diaspora. Vocalists Sarah Aroeste, Mor Karbasi and Françoise Atlan will perform at the inaugural Gibraltar World Music Festival in the time-formed Cueva…
Any artist working in “World Music” (likely the vaguest genre for which Billboard tracks sales) has to determine the role traditional sounds play in their compositions. They hang suspended between the present and the past; too much fealty to the canon and the recordings become academic exercises in evoking a world long gone. Update your…
Before Golda, and even before Herzl, there was Dona Gracia Nasi, the 16th-century Zionist, feminist, and the Harriet Tubman of the Jewish people. She is one of the most remarkable women in Jewish history — and in history, period. It’s a tragedy that so few people know her name. Dona Gracia — the inspiration for…
Ladino, the language of the Judeo-Spanish Diaspora, has unfairly languished behind Yiddish in the Jewish language popularity sweepstakes. With the release of her 2009 U.K. album “Sentir” in the United States and an accompanying tour, including upcoming shows in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, Israeli singer Yasmin Levy joins a bevy of artists…
When Erez Safar started the Sephardic Music Festival in 2005, he was thinking about the future of Sephardic music. Having spent the last decade watching klezmer explode in popularity among artists like the avant-garde composer John Zorn and the Brooklyn punk band Golem, Safar realized klezmer was moving into a brave new future and was…
Last year as part of the “28 Days, 28 Ideas” project, Ladino chanteuse Sarah Aroeste made a case on The Sisterhood blog for more collaboration among Jewish female musicians. In the piece, she discussed her own work with fellow singer-songwriters Naomi Less and Chana Rothman. In an effort to highlight the work of female artists…
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