Photo Credit: Ali Taskiran
By: Ella Joy Meir
On a Sunday evening in mid-February at the Berklee Performance Center (BPC) in Boston, a buzz of expectation was filling the air. This rather large venue (1,215 seats) was full of exciting people of all ages from different countries, spicing the atmosphere with their languages and cultures. Boston seems like the perfect place for a Yasmin Levy concert, and especially the BPC, for it’s well-known as a center for international students and for people from all around the globe. Levy’s music spreads throughout Spain, Greece, Israel, Turkey and more, weaving the story of Ladino with love and persistence.
Levy, born and raised in Jerusalem, is the daughter of the late Itzhak Levy, an Israeli composer who worked on raising awareness for the music of the Jews of Spanish origin, a culture based on the Judeo-Spanish language of Ladino. Levy tells the audience that her father used to go from village to village and write down the songs that he heard, thereby helping to preserve the Ladino culture. Yasmin, enchanted by this music, views herself as the heiress of her father’s dream. She travels around the world to revive this ancient music and keep the songs alive, as Ladino is a dying language and its speakers are mostly elderly. Her live concerts are an important platform for her to speak about her mission, or rather to sing her mission, and she fulfills it with the grace of a gifted storyteller.
The well-crafted show began with a dramatic entrance by the Queen of Ladino in a shiny black gown, accompanied by five wonderful musicians: Yechiel Hasson on guitar; Vardan Hovanissian on clarinet, duduk (an Armenian woodwind instrument) and zurna (a Middle-Eastern woodwind instrument); Daniel Mandelman on piano; Ofusu Danso on upright bass; and Ishay Amir on percussion. Ishay Amir is also Levy’s husband.
The set opened with a subtle groove and a hypnotizing Spanish melody on the guitar. Although the music was beautiful from the start, it took Levy a few songs to warm up and be entirely captivated in the moment. Some technical issues with the sound system certainly didn’t help, and Levy had to stop mid-song to ask the sound technician to fix her monitors. However, after three or four songs she was fully immersed in the music, and finally grew into her volcanically beautiful voice.
Photo Credit: Ali Taskiran
Levy, with the controlled sensuality of a flamenco dancer, cast a spell on the audience. She led the concert like a puppet master, confidently pulling the strings of the music, luring them into the night with tales of broken hearts and sad people, speaking the ancient tongues of Ladino, Spanish and Hebrew. At one point in the show she asked the audience, “Have I managed to make you sad by now?” and promised that the next song would be happy, or at least about someone who hasn’t died yet. Halfway through the concert, during “Una Noche Mas” (“One More Night”) something extraordinary happened that made the performance truly memorable: the music broke off into its own entity, while rising and swirling in the air like a tornado. Levy was conducting the blast with her enticing body language, and the instruments came to life like magical creatures in a fairytale. The whole audience fell into a trance. Moments like this are what every listener longs for, and what every musician hopes to deliver.
The next act, though, was a bit disappointing. “Un Pocito Mas” didn’t fill the space left by its predecessor, and even though it was driven by an accelerating beat on the darbuka and cachon, it felt like bubble gum, stretching out with endless cadences. The evening continued with a Ladino song from Turkey that told the story of a man willing to fight another to regain his loved one, and an authentic cover of Leonard Cohen’s angelic “Hallelujah” – a mixture of Middle Eastern rhythms and Spanish harmonies. Towards the end of the song Levy asked the audience to sing the chorus, while she broke off into an improvised prayer in Hebrew.
Another stunning moment was the beautiful duet between Levy and her father, who had died when Yasmin was one year old. She shared with the audience that she had wanted to sing with him for years, and due to new technology she had been able to clean a 50-year-old recording of his and use it on stage. The result was breathtaking. Levy, standing alone in a lit circle was singing with her father’s voice as if he were there, and all of a sudden she was a little girl longing for something that would forever remain beyond her reach. When they sang in unison, not an eye in the audience remained dry.
The grand finale of the performance was a Ladino song from Greece; a celebration of colors and scents created by Hovanissian’s mesmerizing melodies on clarinet and with Amir’s magnetic grooves. At this point the audience became ecstatic and stood up on their feet to clap to the music. Levy was moving to their percussive joy in what seemed to be part flamenco, part ritual dance.
Of course, after saying their goodbyes she announced with a grin, “Never believe us when we say we’re finished,” and the band resumed their seats to play the encore. “Adio, Querida” (“Goodbye, Dear”) was the perfect number to end this emotional experience. Even though the chorus is “Adio Querida, you made my life miserable,” she asked the audience to join her with good energies and sing.
Surprisingly, despite the large crowd, the show managed to maintain its intimacy. Levy was delivering the goods with her talented storytelling, inviting the audience to enter her world, and more importantly – the worlds of her characters. When she spoke she was a completely different woman than when she sang; much more humble, grounded, and even humorous. Interestingly, the two women complemented each other jointly reinforcing the big picture. The band’s playing was wonderfully vivid, at times very delicate and gentle, especially Hovanissian, who blew me away with his winding style. After one night with Yasmin Levy all I can say is “una noche mas, por favor.”
The band continued its assault on the audience following one song after another until the very end of the set. No in-between song banter, no crowd raising chants, no gimmicks. Mastodon is one of those bands that lets the music speak for them, which I really admire. However, they don’t let themselves take their performance too seriously. They are the kind of band that you know is having fun night after night upon seeing them even once. Whether it’s hearing guitarist Brent Hinds imitate a synth with his whistling, or watching the band’s oldest member, Troy Sanders (aged 38), bounce around the stage like a child on Christmas, it is evident that these guys absolutely love what they do.
