KANSAS CITY, Missouri — In recent years, Israel-born singer and trombonist Nani Vazana has taken on the mission of reviving a dying Ladino language — at least as much as a musician can. On the road 200 days a year, she’s attracting a substantial and still-growing following, with locals from Taiwan to New Orleans flocking to her performances eager to hear ancient tunes and new compositions.
She’s also had some recent high-profile gigs performing at the US Library of Congress, festivals in North Carolina and Indiana, and a Rosh Hashanah event at the Israeli Embassy in Washington.
Scholars such as the University of Washington’s Devin Naar who study the growing popularity of Ladino music say that the phenomenon is important to all those interested in preserving Ladino.
“Music is playing an important role in enabling younger generations to gain some familiarity with Ladino language and culture,” Naar said. “In a world with essentially no families raising their children speaking Ladino, songs become an important way for people’s lives to be infused with the language even if they are not, or can not speak it.”
Vazana’s largest audience to date was at an Independence Day festival in the Netherlands, where she performed before 15,000.
While she waves her trombone — an instrument she learned to play at age 9 in Beersheba — her voice glides between musical phrases redolent of the Andes mountains, Jamaican calypso, Spanish flamenco and Turkish folk music.
Nani Vazana performs at the Tanjazz festival in Tangier, Morocco, September 14, 2017. (Courtesy of Vazana/via JTA)
Her target audience includes millennials close to her age and older Sephardic people who remember many snippets of her melodies from their childhoods in Salonica, Izmir, Rhodes, or Morocco, where her family once lived. She also courts all other comers interested in what she is up to — even in far-off Taiwan and Canada, where she soon heads.
“I’d like Ladino not to die out,” Vazana told The Times of Israel after a recent performance in Kansas City, Missouri. “At least for the timeframe I’m here.”
Her mission to celebrate and spread the Ladino language stems from a trip to Morocco in 2016 where she was on tour as a musician. She went to Fez, where her mother’s mother once lived, and had a Proustian moment, a vivid recollection of her childhood. She heard a group of men on the street singing a soulful melody in Arabic. She immediately recognized the melody — and recalled the Ladino words that went with it — from a song her grandmother had sung to her when Vazana was a child in her kitchen.
Nani Vazana at the Montana Folk Fest. (Courtesy)
When she was a child, her father strictly forbade her and others in the family from speaking Ladino — probably, Vazana said, because of the trauma the family experienced ahead of their exodus to Israel.
After being stirred to recollect her childhood memory in Fez, Vazana studied Ladino for two years and she learned the language well enough to understand written texts, even if she did not become fully fluent. She gets guidance on grammar from linguists but takes some liberty with her composition if it is warranted by her artistic impulses.
“For the sake of the beauty of the poem you can bend the rules a little bit,” she said.
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The singer left Israel at age 23 for Amsterdam after receiving a prized internship from the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, where she continued to study and play the trombone.
Musically, she has embraced a variety of styles until settling in on her Ladino project six or seven years ago.
Her latest album, out last year, is “Ke Haber” (“What’s New”), ranked #13 on European World Music Charts. It is her second Ladino album and was preceded by two albums in English.
Naar said he knows Vazana’s work — as well as that of others who are enlisted in the Ladino musical revival.
“The kind of music she is creating can be conceptualized together with the music of Sarah Aroeste, who sings traditional songs, traditional lyrics with rock music, and has created her own songs, especially for children. Both are part of a broader trend of musicians engaging with Ladino music in new ways both to preserve or renew the culture, to educate and to entertain,” he said.
“We could also add a performer like Guy Mendilow to the mix as he situated Ladino music in the framework of world music,” Naar said.
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Naar also noted other projects, including Zach Youcha and the Elias band, who play traditional Ladino music from Monastir (Bitola, Macedonia) in Monastir itself for mostly non-Jewish Macedonians, and Simon Salmone at UCLA, who is documenting and re-enlivening the Ladino songs performed by her own grandparents, who were noted musicians in LA.
Naar has even composed a few Ladino songs for and about his own children, including a Ladino version of Old McDonald called “Chilibon el Bakchavan,” which he recently spoke about on the podcast “El Ponte.”
Vazana, in addition to being a consummate artist, singer and performer, is focused intently on the business of her artistry.
She speaks somewhat critically about Spotify, where many stream their music, as bad news of sorts for those creating the melodies we enjoy.
“My last check from Spotify was $36 — it is not worth it,” she said.
Nani Vazana left her native Israel at the age of 23 to study with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. (Courtesy)
To make ends meet, she is not shy about promoting her CDs, vinyl recordings and merch on sale at her performances, and encourages all who love her music to become “family” and stream and download music from her website for a nominal monthly fee.
“This is — without doubt — the best way to support what I do… I’m laying this here for future sustainability,” she writes on her website.
From her home in Amsterdam, she teaches the business of music via Zoom to students at the London Performing Academy of Music.
When pressed, she said she has been doing well financially for the last five or six years, but it has been a struggle getting to that level of security and comfort.
“When you are working a long time, people get to know you. With time, it happens. There is no such thing as an overnight success. It takes time. Twenty years,” she said.
Vazana steers clear of discussing politics, but is rather forceful in expressing her belief that more should unite us than divide us. That is why many of her fans who know “nada” about Ladino can be moved by her songs.
“They understand the emotions behind it,” she said.
Asked if she knows any other musician who, like her, is trying to revive a dying language, she quickly mentioned Mapi Quintana, who she studied with in Amsterdam. Quintana works with traditional songs from Asturias, Spain.
“If you can expose people to the language through the music, it could become a treasure,” Vazana said of such efforts.
Noam ‘Nani’ Vazana performs with an ensemble of Kansas City musicians during a recent concert performance in Kansas City, Missouri, September 16, 2023. (Martin Rosenberg)
Asked about her creative process, she admitted, “I get bored very quickly. I want my songs to surprise me. My audiences enjoy that too. It keeps them on their feet.”
The music she prefers: Bach, Debussy, Nina Simone, Tori Amos and Sting.
Asked what would happen if she were ever to get diverted from her Ladino project, the artist said she must remain true to her inner calling.
“To create music — moments, when they come, I have to stop everything and do it, catch them before they leave,” she said.
