Yasmin Levy‘s band sounded, in a word, warm. Melodic double bass, percussive Spanish guitar, wavering, klezmer-like clarinet, and laid back latin percussion. It was a thick, mid-range heavy sound, gently syncopated on slow songs, and pulsing quickly for the high energy numbers. It filled up the Somerville Theater Wednesday night. But all of it was backup to Levy’s voice, which just cut through the sound like Michael Jackson outclassing a line of backup dancers. Levy really has been blessed with a golden voice, with a rich, powerful tone and a range that goes both lower and higher than anyone could expect. It makes sense that her father Yitzhak was a cantor as well as a composer.
And Yitzhak Levy’s influence looms large in the concert. Yitzhak was almost the Alan Lomax of Sephardic music, recording and categorizing traditional songs from Greece to Morocco, mostly in the Ladino language. He died, as Levy told the audience that night, when she was one year old, living in Jerusalem. She doesn’t remember him. But her traditional songs, like her heart-rending finale of “Adio Kerida”, wouldn’t even exist without Yitzhak Levy. At one point in the show, she actually duetted with the deceased, singing over a recording of a slow, major key lament with her father, zikrono livrakha. In a different setting, the mix of live vocals and an old recording would seem experimental, perhaps alienating, but in the context of the show, one which owes so much to the deceased, it was a touching tribute.
It wasn’t entirely traditional music at the concert. Levy covered Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” in Ladino (sometimes it seems like Hallelujah has become traditional Jewish music, I’ve heard it at conservative services). Obviously, lots of people cover Hallelujah, but Levy and the band put a unique spin on it, Levy’s drifting, reaching vocals mixing with the insistent groove of the percussion. And a new song, one that Levy had never performed live before that night, “La Ultima Cancion”, was hypnotizing, with a fatalistic atmosphere that belied the catchy melody. Lyrically, most, probably all of the songs that night were sad and depressing, especially the traditional “La Hija de Juan Simon” (long story short, Juan Simon is a gravedigger, and he ends up doing some business for his family). Accompanied only by slow flamenco guitar, Levy stretched a short story to its limits vocally, drawing out long, weepy high notes, adapting the masks of different characters in the song, the grieving lover, and the father, really embracing mourning. It was cathartic, if depressing.
Visually, the concert had a different mood. The red lighting and art deco archaism of the Somerville Theater gave the scene a very organic feel. It gets more organic— Levy is visibly pregnant with her first child (Her husband is the percussionist). You really have to appreciate music where the lead singer sits down partway through her set so she can sing while resting. Traditional music is lived, not packaged.
But Levy seemed pessimistic about the continued life of this music, or at least, this culture. “Ladino is dying.” she told the crowd. “I don’t even speak Ladino, I speak Spanish, which is different. There are 150,000 speakers worldwide, they are old, and when they die, the culture will be gone.” She sounded so sad when she said this. So much will be lost.
