“Three world renowned singers of Sephardic music” perform “songs in Ladino, Greek, Turkish, Arabic, Hebrew, and English” in studio and live. You get the idea – a tossed salad of eastern Mediterranean folk styles, many of which mean plaintive singing in gentle voices, sensitive guitar and oud plucking and strumming, and simple hand drumming. Topics covered run the gamut from beautiful brides to Old Testament stories to prayers to springtime love. Nice enough, not very challenging of any conventions (nor is it meant to be) – even the catholic (small ‘c’) selection of tunes is a bit of a cliché by now. Of course, that’s the irony of mixed-culture albums such as this – even as it becomes obvious to the listener (not to mention the players) that there is a common heritage in the various cultures, some members of those cultures are bent on splitting hairs (not to mention atoms) in an attempt to destroy their perceived enemies, who in fact are not very distant relations. Oy vey.
One is at a loss at how to review this track by track as the sound is not all that different from one to the next. Let’s say that track 7 is slow and instrumental, track 9 is slow and slightly more longing, track 11 is a bit of a dance number, and the rest are mid-tempo, mid-loud, mid-emotional, mid-dle of the road.