Aman! Sefarad…

Sephardic music – the songs of Spanish Jews exiled in 1492 – has been popular in the early music scene for some time, but there have been fewer recordings exploring it from a world music perspective. It would be hard to imagine a finer group of musicians to have collaborated on this project: French singer Françoise Atlan is of Sephardic heritage herself and has studied this repertoire in depth, while En Chordais are well-established as a leading exponent of eastern Mediterranean music. The instruments played – oud (lute), qanun (zither), violin and percussion – are the same that would have accompanied these songs during the golden age of the Ottoman Empire but there is a vibrancy and finesse about the performances that lifts them above mere historic recreation. The sheer variety of the songs – flirty love ballads, devout sacred texts and even a recipe suggestion – makes this an enchanting recording. Atlan sings everything with grace and sensitivity: this is an intriguing window onto a culture that has long since vanished.