When singer, fiddler and songwriter Lily Henley set out to make an album of Sephardic Jewish ballads set to new melodies, she was looking for her own way to interpret a critically endangered tradition. On Oras Dezaoradas, Henley highlights the Ladino language, a threatened tongue that fuses old Spanish with Hebrew, Arabic, Turkish, and Persian elements spoken by less than 100,000 people in the world today. Henley’s newly-penned songs are a reclamation and contribution, a living line between her roots in American and Celtic music traditions and the rich history and culture of her Sephardi ancestors.
These old ballads carry the hopes and dreams, daily worries, and existential thoughts of the Sephardi people. They tell stories of everyday life, loss, exile, lovers’ quarrels and advice-seeking daughters. Known for her expressive songwriting, gifted fiddling, and bell-like vocals, Henley brings new life to these songs and the independent female characters in them—drawing from a well so deep that disparate listeners all feel a connection to their own heritage. With a repertoire encompassing both her Sephardi musical lineage and influences from across the folk world, in concert, Henley weaves ancient and modern languages, cultures and styles to reveal their interconnectedness, and ours.
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Photo: Ori Dagan
