f38
vati Ester celebrates Mor’s grandmother Ester, a woman of such laughter and beauty that she could “convince the bees that the flowers printed on her dress were real”. Ester was married to a rabbi celebrated for the power of his words. He would write lines for peo- ple who brought their problems to him. These worked like charms. When he died, Ester sold his books of wisdom off cheaply. Years later a book of his charms was found with a snake wrapped around it as if in protection and the book was returned to the family.
N
Karbasi’s father’s family are from Iran, Jews from the East known as the Mizrahim. She believes this is where she gets her voice from and her Persian heritage is expressed not just through this but also in the album’s instrumentation,for example the ney flute, and the kemanche which features on the album’s opening track and is a Persian bowed instrument not a million miles away from the rubab. Throughout the album, percussion from award-winning Israeli play- ers steeped in North African, Persian and Arabic traditional music draws together rhythmic patterns from her origins. Joe Taylor’s sub- tle rock sensibility weaves in a modernity that makes for a com- pelling and relevant sound.
This is something that does not necessarily go down well with the Ladino speaking community in Israel, estimated at about 100,000 – mostly elderly people who are not so keen on change. But Karbasi says she’s not interested in saving a frozen culture. “I am not think- ing that I am preserving something. It’s nice if this is the outcome. I am very strong and impulsive, I research and talk to people in the vil- lages. I am not trying to be a scholar, I am trying to make beautiful music and if that preserves something, then that’s OK.”
She may not be trying to be a scholar, but she’s filled with enthusiasm for her research. As well as meeting up with Uziel Hazan, she meets with Marta Koen Serano, a highly respected academic and Ladino researcher who translates song texts for her, and the renowned poet and academic Margalit Matitiahu, who also helps with HebrewLadino text translations.
Ladino was in danger of disappearing altogether in an Israel dominated by Ash kenazi (Northern European Jewish) culture which erroneously lumped Sephardis from both East and West traditions and Mizrahi all together either as the Mizrahim or the Sephardim. Karbasi is part of a growing movement amongst a new generation of Israelis who are exploring their roots and discovering their cultur- al identity, realising it as a source of pride in a culture where, since the birth of Israel, it has been seen as ‘less than’. “The coin flipped,” says Karbasi, “in the time of the Ottoman Empire, in what is now Israel, it was less good to be Ashkenazi. If a Sephardi married an Ashken azi the Sephardi family would sit for seven days as if their bride or groom had died.”
But Karbasi, like her friend and fellow Ladino singer Yasmin
Levy, is not interested in forwarding ideas of division or separation. The last song on her album, Tres Morillas, a mediaeval song collected by Lorca, celebrates the beauty of young girls who were once Moors who had become Christians and a young man who falls in love with them. Karbasi’s mum has taken the idea and written a Hebrew ver- sion that Mor performs – where a young child falls for a Muslim, a Christian and Jewish line-up in a beautiful valley that as an adult he can no longer reach as fences have gone up that cut it off.
Mor says that politics has induced and encouraged division and separation between the Muslims and the Jews in Israel, who enjoyed a more cohesive relationship under Turkish rule before the creation of her country, where they would know each other’s prayers and mourn for the destruction of either’s holy temples.
She says she “left Israel during the bombing” which had escalat- ed during the 2000s. “Israel is very small. Life in Jerusalem as a teenager was a lottery. We could hang out in the mall or the market or the centre of the city, but these were the main targets of the bombs. It affects your whole perception of life you want to survive and you want to just live your life.”
She came to England to be with Joe and then to Spain. Return- ing to Jerusalem because she wanted her daughter to be born there (Yasmine is four this August) so that she might know her heritage and her family. Karbasi wants her to know everything possible. “If you don’t teach a child to love there is not much hope. All of us must
ot all of the stories on Ojos De Novia are grim though. Ijdigen is a Berber song celebrating the pure joy of singing, and others deal with a magical realism that gives Latin America a run for its money. In lyrics written by Karbasi’s mother Shoshona, a poet and writer, Ahu-
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84
