Ladino (Judeo-espaniol) 

The Spanish Jews who fled Spain in 1492 after the Edict of Expulsion took with them a rich cultural heritage including the Spanish language. For nearly five centuries Sephardi Jews have kept alive the language of those Spanish exiles. Ladino, as it is popularly known, is an archaic form of Spanish with structures and vocabulary that can be traced back to the fifteenth-century. Over the centuries it has absorbed vocabulary from the countries in which the Iberian Jews had settled . Its Hebrew content mostly consists of religious terms such as haham, a rabbi. Whilst there remain very few native-Ladino speakers today, there has been a recent worldwide revival of interest in this ‘dying’ language.

Likewise enjoying great popularity today are Ladino songs. These can be divided into romansas, ballads (dramatic narrative poems) and kantigas (lyric songs), the most popular of which are love songs. Yasmin Levy’s repertoire includes both these types of song. Most of the ballads she sings and several of the songs can be traced back to medieval Spain.

Text by: Hilary Pomeroy