Until a few years ago, Yasmin Levy did not know she was a singer. For 12 years she accompanied her mother, the singer, Kochava Levy, on the piano, certain that like her siblings, her music studies were intended solely for spiritual enrichment - part of her father's legacy - and under no circumstances had any professional purpose. She chose to become a veterinarian. Fate determined otherwise, as will be evident this evening, 21:45, at the Felicja Blumental International Music Festival at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.

"All the good things happen to me by chance and always surprise me," says Yasmin Levy.

"My flamenco teacher asked me to sing one day, and I told her I can't, that I'd never sung. She insisted, I opened my mouth for the first time - and I discovered I was a singer."

There were concerts all over Europe, followed by a disc (soon to be released in Israel and next month in Holland, along with a thick booklet in four languages) and contracts signed for concerts through the end of 2004.

Levy with an ensemble of a violinist, oud player, cellist, percussionist and pianist is embarking on an international career; not to conquer the world, but to transmit a message - the message of Ladino, she says.

Levy's family history is one of the most well-known in the study of folklore music: her father, Yitzhak Levy, was a pioneer researcher of the music of Spanish Jewry and published a rich anthology of songs he taped and recorded with notes after an ethnomusicological field study. The Jews preserved the songs - in many genres, including romance ballads and capellas - wherever they settled after the expulsion from Spain in 1492: the Balkan countries, Turkey and northern Morocco. And they took on a new format: the Ladino language, which is a mixture of old Castilian Spanish and the local languages. Yitzhak Levy's anthology is a milestone in the documentation and revival of this 1,000-year-old folk music.

Yasmin Levy is aware of the criticism of the anthology and she is especially aware of what her father stipulated should be done with the recordings after his death: "My father came from Turkey to Jerusalem when he was three years old and began the project of taping the songs as an adult. It was his life's work and he was worried that after his death, there would be people who disagreed with the way he recorded the notes for the music he heard from elderly people who sang it to him. That's why he ordered that his entire collection of recordings be destroyed after his death. Every time he would say to Mom: `What will you do after I die?' and she would always answer: `I'll tear everything up.' I remember myself the many spools that the whole family tore and I even hurt my finger from one of the coils."

And you agree with this decision?

"In my opinion, it's terrible, and if he were alive I'd ask him - why, why did you do it? But from the stories about my father, I know that he was very critical and determined and perhaps his sensitivity about his life's work is understandable."

Levy does not remember her father at all; he died when she was a little girl and she learned about his legacy from her mother, Kochava: "My mother was a wonderful singer, an academy graduate, but she gave up singing when she met my father and devoted her whole life to him. She was his second wife and 27 years his junior and because of his objection to her working as a singer, became a housewife. Instead of singing, she served food to all the singers who used to visit us. But she learned all the songs from him and after he died, she slowly returned to music.

"Around five years ago, after I had started singing, I learned everything from her - the words, how to express the emotion. We spent whole days working on it and she corrected me based on what she had learned from Dad - and it's strange that I, the daughter who doesn't remember him, am the only one of my siblings who followed in his footsteps."

Levy's disc also happened by chance: "At the age of 24, I wanted to do a recording, but I didn't know how so I did the arrangements myself. I went from one musician to another and explained to them what I wanted - I didn't think, it just came out."

Your arrangements are Middle Eastern and influenced by Arabic music. Why?

"Because I got a little fed up with the European guitar that accompanies Ladino songs. In Turkey they sang and played the songs on the street, wearing a tarboosh and banging on tin cans - that's how it should be, and even the Western instruments in the ensemble sound Middle Eastern." Levy cites as an example the song, "Buenos Noches," singing it in a popular Western style: "It really infuriates me," she says and then sings the song with Arabic-style trilling: "That's it, something new and correct."

And what were the reactions?

"Some were disappointed when they heard the disc. They thought I was audacious and asked why all of a sudden there is an oud in a Ladino song. I'm sure that even my father wouldn't have even dreamed of something like this and would have objected to the oud even though his mother played that instrument. But I also heard other opinions from mature people, and they say I sound the way the singer sounded 500 years ago. Suddenly I see new faces in the crowd," Levy continues, "both young people and those who didn't come before and I'm certain that what piques their interest is the new sound. I don't think that the young people suddenly fell in love with Ladino. They are drawn by what our arrangements and musicians have done to the songs."

For Yasmin Levy, Ladino song is a mission: "Every time, I discover how this music moves [people] so much, even those who have never heard it before and they discover in it their Jewish history. Until four years ago, they said Ladino was a dying language, but now this music comes and is showing us that there isn't anything to mourn. The music always wins and crosses cultural borders. Jew and Arab, the moment music is head, are like brothers."