Yardena y Son Ladino

Yardena y Son Ladino Led by Israeli-born jazz vocalist Yardena Namerdi "Yardena y Son Ladino," is Ladino-Afro Cuban Jazz, and represents a fusion of Sephardic Jewish and Middle Eastern music with Cuban rhythms. The fusion of these two traditions with so much common ancestry comes off as so natural as to sound startlingly inevitable.

Both share important roots in 15th century Spain, where an already thousand-year-old mix of Moors, Jews, and Gypsies gave to Iberia the essence of habanera and flamenco forms. In the then newly discovered Cuba this music was combined, and evolved with, African percussion for 500 more years, to become one of the most vital of all musical genres. With the expulsion of the "heretics," also 500 years ago, the Jews of Spain, a land they called 'Sepharad,' took with them their Castilian language, now known as 'Djudeo-Espanyol,' or Ladino, a language frozen in time. In a long odyssey from Moorish North Africa to Greece, the Balkans, Turkey, the Middle East itself, and even the New World, colorful words and rhythmic variants were absorbed into songs handed down, mother-to-child, from antiquity.

These Sephardic ballads and romances, with their language still reminiscent of Columbus and Cervantes, take on a soulful and very dynamic new life, refreshing the family of Afro-Cuban sounds like a long lost relative. It is a unique fusion of 500 year old Sepahardic folk songs with Afro-Cuban Jazz, highlighting their mutual roots in 15th century Spain.

Hear the music: Los Bilbilcos El Rey Nimrod
Booking and Performance inquiries: sephardic@j-arts.org