“En La Mar”, one of the best loved songs in the Ladino repertoire and one that also travels under the name “La Sirena”, strands a maiden alone in a tower above the sea, calling to the sailors going past, wanting love and wanting out. Rachel Valfer sings her in the Judeo-Spanish that Sephardic Jews took with them when Spain expelled them in 1492 and the Ottoman Empire gave them shelter. David Mac Lean‘s flamenco guitar brings Andalusia back to the song, and the players around it mark where the song went instead: Dan Cantrell on accordion, Faisal Zedan on Arabic percussion, Eliyahu Sills on upright bass and on the bansuri he has played with the group since their first album in 2009.

The track comes from Entre Las Huertas, released on 28 August, the third album by the Bay Area’s Qadim Ensemble and the first given over entirely to Ladino. Most of it comes from the kantigas, the songs Sephardic women kept and handed on, so the record runs through lullabies, a wedding party number and a mother unloading about her straying husband while she rocks the baby to sleep.

Valfer and Sills have run the group from Berkeley for close to twenty years, she singing in seven languages after six years studying maqam and Persian dastgah in Israel and Palestine, he moving between ney, oud and bass. For this album they went into the studio and played, cutting most of the record live before guests came in with flamenco guitar and qanun.

Stream “En La Mar” HERE and take home Entre Las Huertas through THIS LINK