Nani Noam Vazana about writing new music in the endangered Ladino language

On our program this week, our guest is Noam Vazana – or as she’s better known, Nani. She’s one of the very few artists in the world composing new songs in the nearly dead Ladino language – this is the language originally spoken by Sephardic Jews in Spain and Portugal before the time of the Spanish Inquisition in 1492 – and today, it’s spoken rarely, except for some communities in the Sephardic diaspora. Nani’s grandmother was one of those speakers, but Nani’s father prohibited them from speaking the language during Nani’s childhood.

We’ll hear music from Nani’s new album "Ke Haber" ("What's New"), featuring new music – often about contemporary subjects in Ladino – the language she was banned from speaking as a child. Later in the show, we’ll hear how Nani discovered an ancient poem that describes the transformation of a transgender teenage girl who came out to her parents, and wanted to be recognized as a boy. Nani found the poem when she was looking for material in an old library within a synagogue in Leiden, in the Netherlands.

With host Dan Rosenberg