Nights of Love with Yasmin Levy October 31, 2009

Yasmin Levy's deep, spiritual singing, passionate vocal delivery, and charismatic sense of humor have mesmerized audiences and media around the world. Proclaimed "the next world music superstar" by Robin Denselow of the London Guardian, the Israeli singer is an advocate for cultural tolerance and a champion of Ladino - an ancient language facing extinction which was spoken by the Sephardic Jews who fled Spain in 1492. As Ladino speaking communities spread to North Africa, Turkey, Greece and the Balkans, they encountered many cultures, beliefs, and languages which are reflected in the musical variety of Judeo-Spanish folk songs carried down to the present day.

Levy was born in 1957 in Bakaa, a neighborhood in Jerusalem, Israel. It's a vital part of Jerusalem's history - and Levy's soul. Here is where her musical interests began as a child, studying piano from age six to eighteen. She has a unique connection to her music, as many of the Ladino works she performs were catalogued by her late father, Yitzhak Levy. A composer and cantor born in Turkey, he was a musicologist devoted to the collection and preservation of Sephardic music passed down orally from generation to generation for over 500 years. It was in her family's kitchen where her mother, Kochava, sang the Ladino songs she had learned from Yasmin's father. "I took them from the kitchen to the stage," explains the singer, who at age twenty, began singing seriously, making her international debut at the WOMEX International World Music Expo in 2002. She has recorded three albums to increasing international acclaim, including the most recent Mano Suave, released in North America in September 2009.

"If I can manage in some small way to help keep these beautiful Ladino songs alive, I will be the happiest musician imaginable. My greatest fear is that the Ladino language may die out and if we don't save these songs, then nothing will remain from this beautiful and ancient culture," says Levy.

$18/$15 students.

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