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lages. She took these to the respected author Uziel Hazan who introduced her to his aunt, a Berber woman now living in Israel. Whilst making pickled fish in her home, the aged aunt poured forth her memories of life in the Atlas Mountains to Karbasi, who tells me “I


C


played her the songs whose melodies were haunting me and she told me they came from her vil- lage! She tran- scribed the words for me and showed me how to sing them.”


There are three Berber songs on Ojos De Novia and Karbasi keeps the traditional lyrics and melodies of these, whilst on other tracks, she composes her own music within the traditional style, whether this relates to Ladino, Moroccan Ara- bic or Hebrew texts. On Yal Mashta, a beautiful lament based on an ancient Moroccan Arabic text dealing with the (still relevant) subject of young girls being sold/sent off as child


brides, Karbasi was searching for a meditative musical experience. Using four chords that repeat all through the song on the strings, these “go in and out of the melodic scale”, heightening the sense of sadness that resonates with the plaintive sound of her voice and the haunting sound of the ney flute. In this as in Justicia Senor, a Moroccan Sephardic song, she sings the traditional slow vibrato and microtonal ululating style that conveys an uplift- ing sense of sorrow whether or not you understand the language.


The flamenco connection is further


enhanced by Tomatito Hijo’s guitar playing on Susona, a tale Karbasi unearthed walking through the hot narrow streets of the Jew- ish quarter in Seville. Susona, a Jewess, overhead her father plotting with the Moors against the Christians and betrayed him to her Christian love. He then turned up mob-handed and slaughtered her father and other high-ranking Jews in Seville, before ditching Susona. She then asked that her skeleton be hung from her doorway, La Calle de la Muerte, as a reminder of the horror she had unleashed.


ontinuing her research in Israel, Karbasi unearthed field recordings of old Berber women singing songs in their vil-


Photo: Rob O'Connor


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