Yasmin Levy
at Union Chapel Islington, 18 Oct 2006
"I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to do with your tickets", said the usher woman as she ripped my credit card receipt by mistake. One gets the feeling that the event organizers at Union Chapel aren't very organized, judging by the shambolic queues outside that left people waiting 40 minutes to collect pre-booked tickets. Having said that, it's a great venue for an intimate concert - an octagonal church with a high, vaulted, wood-panelled ceiling, with great natural acoustics. Although I don't know about people having kebabs and diet Coke in a church, and I'd suggest you bring yourself a cushion.
The supporting act was a half-hour set by Roxy Rawson, a singer-songwriter-violinist playing an interesting mix of folk-rock-blues. It's all a little hippie for my liking and, although she has a nice voice (I think we decided on a cross between Eva Cassidy, Alanis Morissette, Björk and someone else I can't remember), I couldn't understand a word she was saying and she looked kind of awkward on stage, more like a 12-year old at a school concert. But I'm being unkind - check out Roxy Rawson's MySpace page. Perhaps you can get it to stop playing Philanthropy.
Yasmin Levy is an Israeli Ladino singer, interpreter of Sephardi songs. Her father, Itzhak Levy, collected and transcribed thousands of songs from Sephardi families, passed down from 15th Century Jews expelled from the Iberian peninsula. The songs are mainly in Ladino, old Spanish subsequently mixed with Turkish and Hungarian. Befitting the mixed origins of the music, Levy's band comprises a Chilean cajón player, an Israeli guitar player and percussionist, an Egyptian violinist and an Armenian duduk player. The result is a unique blend of middle eastern and flamenco rhythms, and old and modern Sephardi and Spanish song, perhaps not so popular with the purists, but a totally absorbing experience. Levy not only has a great voice, but is also a charming story-teller, taking you back to her childhood learning songs from her mother drumming rhythms on a cooking pot (which she re-enacted with a traditional prayer on stage), describing the Ladino lyrics or re-telling experiences that inspired her own songwriting. The Sephardi songs in particular are tinged with dark irony, with harshly vicious lyrics often sung over beautiful melodies - Mi suegra la negra (my mother-in-law the wench) and Adio Kerida
("Goodbye, goodbye, my darling, I don't want this life, you've made it miserable for me") are great examples. Levy also has more mainstream, light flamenco crowd-pleasers, such her cover of Mayte Martin's Inténtalo encontrar and the gypsy Nací en Alamo. Her surprise of the evening was a duet with Navroz, a Kurdish singer who can do amazing things with his voice. But the evening ended with Ora y media al balkon, a roaring, riotous song that takes you on a trip to medieval Turkey, drunken old men with cigars drumming on table tops and glasses and singing of duelling over their bewitching beloved up on the balcony, watched over by her snake of a sister.
Check out Yasmin Levy's website.
"I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to do with your tickets", said the usher woman as she ripped my credit card receipt by mistake. One gets the feeling that the event organizers at Union Chapel aren't very organized, judging by the shambolic queues outside that left people waiting 40 minutes to collect pre-booked tickets. Having said that, it's a great venue for an intimate concert - an octagonal church with a high, vaulted, wood-panelled ceiling, with great natural acoustics. Although I don't know about people having kebabs and diet Coke in a church, and I'd suggest you bring yourself a cushion.
The supporting act was a half-hour set by Roxy Rawson, a singer-songwriter-violinist playing an interesting mix of folk-rock-blues. It's all a little hippie for my liking and, although she has a nice voice (I think we decided on a cross between Eva Cassidy, Alanis Morissette, Björk and someone else I can't remember), I couldn't understand a word she was saying and she looked kind of awkward on stage, more like a 12-year old at a school concert. But I'm being unkind - check out Roxy Rawson's MySpace page. Perhaps you can get it to stop playing Philanthropy.
Yasmin Levy is an Israeli Ladino singer, interpreter of Sephardi songs. Her father, Itzhak Levy, collected and transcribed thousands of songs from Sephardi families, passed down from 15th Century Jews expelled from the Iberian peninsula. The songs are mainly in Ladino, old Spanish subsequently mixed with Turkish and Hungarian. Befitting the mixed origins of the music, Levy's band comprises a Chilean cajón player, an Israeli guitar player and percussionist, an Egyptian violinist and an Armenian duduk player. The result is a unique blend of middle eastern and flamenco rhythms, and old and modern Sephardi and Spanish song, perhaps not so popular with the purists, but a totally absorbing experience. Levy not only has a great voice, but is also a charming story-teller, taking you back to her childhood learning songs from her mother drumming rhythms on a cooking pot (which she re-enacted with a traditional prayer on stage), describing the Ladino lyrics or re-telling experiences that inspired her own songwriting. The Sephardi songs in particular are tinged with dark irony, with harshly vicious lyrics often sung over beautiful melodies - Mi suegra la negra (my mother-in-law the wench) and Adio Kerida
("Goodbye, goodbye, my darling, I don't want this life, you've made it miserable for me") are great examples. Levy also has more mainstream, light flamenco crowd-pleasers, such her cover of Mayte Martin's Inténtalo encontrar and the gypsy Nací en Alamo. Her surprise of the evening was a duet with Navroz, a Kurdish singer who can do amazing things with his voice. But the evening ended with Ora y media al balkon, a roaring, riotous song that takes you on a trip to medieval Turkey, drunken old men with cigars drumming on table tops and glasses and singing of duelling over their bewitching beloved up on the balcony, watched over by her snake of a sister.
Check out Yasmin Levy's website.
posted by CCT at 9:40 am
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