I love to listen to music in languages I don’t understand; the voice becomes another instrument. It’s a complex instrument, more evocative than the sustain of a plucked string. I know enough Spanish to find the local supermarket, order the meat I want, and ask the butcher to cut off the fish’s head.

But this isn’t Spanish…it’s Ladino, an endangered Sephardic Jewish language.

Nani performed Puncha Puncha (from her 2021 album, Andalusian Brew) a cappella at the Folk Alliance Song Circle hosted by Dan Navarro. She joined Zoom from Amsterdam, where she’s a professor at the London Performing Academy of Music and the Jerusalem Music Academy, and knocked us over with her strong, clear vocals – all across the globe.

She explained that the songs she recorded were all written by women, that Ladino is a matriarchal language.  Both in scripture and in literature, you can find many mother-daughter dialogues and they are directly connected to Mediaeval Jewish culture. Here’s an article Nani published about Ladino: The Spanish Yiddish

Some of the songs on her new album Ke Haber (which means What’s New in Ladino) are poems from ancient texts, like the homoerotic El Gacela – written by Shmuel Hanagid, a Jewish saint from the 11th century. Nani set it to her own musical composition and plays piano on the track. Sin Dingun Ijo Varon (Without Any Sons) comes from a text she found from the 13th century about a teenage girl coming out to her parents, a transgender transformation.

“When I saw the text, I just KNEW I had to write music to it,” she said. “So I did. This is probably my favourite song on the record.”

Read the rest of this deep and educational interview here, and learn more about the album Ke Haber in this review.

Please enjoy Fada de Mi Korazon, one of Nani’s original compositions. “This song is about a ritual hosted by the parents of newborn girls to protect them from the bad fairies of the underworld. The video description also contains info about the ritual.”

debora Ewing writes, paints, and screams at the stars because the world is still screwed up. She improves what she can with music collaboration, peer review for Consilience Science-Based Poetry Journal, and book design at Igneus Press. Find her art and word everywhere, including Jerry Jazz Musician, Shot Glass Journal, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, Cholla Needles, and Dodging the Rain. Follow her on “X” and Instagram @DebsValidation, and into seedy pool halls but probably not dark alleys.