Noam Vazana: Ladino Life

“What I like about writing in Ladino is that when I look at the past, I see the future. They are intertwined and relevant and alive today,” says Noam Vazana, or Nani. She’s an Israeli-born singer, based in Amsterdam for the last 13 years. Ladino, or Judeo-Spanish, was the language of the Jews in Spain in the Middle Ages until their expulsion by Ferdinand and Isabella after the Christian Reconquista in 1492.

Nani’s weaving of past and present is done with both traditional and newly composed lyrics that address contemporary issues. For instance, the song ‘El Gacela’ is a homoerotic piece written by two rabbis (Samuel ibn Naghrillah and Moses ibn Ezra) in the tenth century. “It’s erotic poetry, very explicit,” she laughs. “It says, ‘I saw him and he was attractive. I took him to his mother’s house and he took off my clothes and I kissed his lips and then he sucked me…’ The guys I was recording with are Spanish and understand the lyrics and they said, ‘do you know what you are singing?’ Yes, I do!” The song has an original, but traditional-sounding melody and there’s a wonderfully delicate flamenco guitar solo at the heart of it.

It appears on Nani’s latest album (her fourth), Ke Haber (What’s New), which features mostly original songs in Ladino. Another song that intertwines past and present is based on 12th-century lyrics about gender transformation and another about an alternative passing away ceremony. Nani explains that the song, ‘Una Segunda Piel’ (A Second Skin), says “I’m already at peace with my death. I’m throwing a party to say that today I’m being reborn and leaving all my worries behind. It’s based on this ceremony called la mortaja in the Sephardic tradition – when you reach your ‘golden years’ of 80 or 90 and you invite friends and family and everybody throws around you the shroud of the dead, the cloth you will be put in the grave with. It’s basically symbolising rebirth more than death.”

Nani’s fascination with the Ladino world centres on the way this medieval society, which appears traditional and orthodox from the outside, reveals special rituals and superstitions on deeper inspection. There’s another song, ‘Fada de Mi Korazon’ (Fairy of My Heart), in which women gather to protect a newborn girl from bad fairies. “The ritual of women gathering in a circle and passing the baby around and blessing it goes back to the 12th century, but it’s still done today,” she explains.

One of the riches of Ladino music is its matriarchal repertoire. When the Jews came to the Iberian Peninsula they didn’t speak the local languages. The men spent all day in the synagogue speaking Hebrew and it was the women who maintained the household, looked after the kids, dealt with the local merchants and created the Ladino language. “So, most of the songs and poetry we know today were created by women and have all these matriarchal qualities attached to it,” Nani explains. “There are songs about recipes [‘Los Guisados de la Berenjena’ (Seven Ways to Cook an Aubergine) was the opening song on her first Ladino album, Andalusian Brew, released in 2017], impossible love, mother-daughter relationships and freedom from the golden cages in which they found themselves imprisoned.”

Nani’s personal background is complicated. She was adopted and brought up by Sephardic adoptive parents in Israel. “My parents are Sephardic Jews of Moroccan descent. My grandma on my mother’s side spoke Ladino and was from Casablanca. But my father, from Fes, forbade us to speak Ladino at home because he suffered in a pogrom in Morocco in the 1950s when they infiltrated schools and killed a lot of kids. Because of that he wanted to leave Morocco behind and at home Ladino was forbidden. My mum was not allowed to speak Arabic with her mum. But I do have some vivid memories of my grandmother before she became ill. We were in the kitchen peeling beans, cooking and singing songs in Ladino (when my dad was not there). That was very authentic.”

Nani studied classical piano and trombone, yet it was to be some years before a trip to Morocco for the Tangier Jazz Festival – with stop-offs at both Casablanca and Fes – fired up her interest in Ladino music. Until that point, she had been discouraged by the nostalgic world of the old romansas (ballads) and the style of many Sephardic singers. “All the Ladino singers I have heard are so decorative and put in so much ornamentation.” She imitates them, singing a melody drenched in vibrato and laughs. “I thought, where’s the music? It really put me off. Singers I really like are Mercedes Sosa and Nina Simone, they only put vibrato in when it’s necessary, not all the time. I’m looking for meaning, not to show off.”

Interestingly, Nani’s new album includes ‘Gracias a la Vida’ (Thanks to Life), a Spanish song by Violeta Parra, popularised by Mercedes Sosa at the height of the nueva canción movement in Latin America. Nani sees her music more in that vein. “I’m not so interested in fitting into the rubric of the old tradition. I don’t think of it as the art of the past or future, I’m adding to the general Latin tapestry, to world music or Latin pop, rather than ancient, irrelevant music from a past that has to be preserved.”

On Ke Haber, Nani plays piano and trombone while Jorge Bravo (from Chile) plays guitar and charango and Ayoze de Alejandro (from the Canary Islands) plays percussion, including bombo legüero, a woody bass drum, hit with mallets. “It’s all very organic,” adds Nani, “there are no rim-shots!”

It’s estimated that there are fewer than 60,000 speakers of Ladino, so why is it important to Nani to create new songs in a dying tongue? “It’s a beautiful language, it’s very round and very musical. Not a lot has been done in this language and I would hate to see it passing out of this world without it reaching people like me. I would love for my audience to know what Ladino is, and maybe inspire them to look at their own roots. To hear my stories, but then to inspire them to look for their own story.”

This interview originally appeared in the December 2021 issue of Songlines magazine. Never miss an issue – subscribe today