Nani Vazana likes bringing the chutzpah on stage when she performs, starting with the choice to perform in a language that few even know – Ladino.
“[My father] forbade it at home when I was a kid, and I hadn’t spoken it since I was 12 when my grandmother died,” Vazana said. “And then I took a trip to Morocco on tour, and I went to see my grandmother’s hometown, and there on the street, I heard some familiar melodies. It was a journey of two months to rediscover old songs that my grandmother used to sing to me when I was a kid. And I thought that’s an interesting repertoire.”
Vazana brings her music to the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis on Feb. 5, part of a seven-week North American tour. Vazana won the 2024 LIET International competition – known as the Eurovision for minority languages. She sang her winning song, “Una Segunda Piel” (“A Second Skin”) and was awarded first place hours after she learned her father passed away.
“The people who come to my shows, they’re like the audience comprises of two main groups, okay, one of them is people 60 plus years old that come for nostalgia, and they don’t, they don’t really find it, because what I deliver is more like a modern day interpretation, not only of the of the traditional songs, but I also write new songs about gender and gay rabbis and all kinds of things that they don’t want to hear,” she said. “There’s another group, people who are millennial and Gen Z around my age, who are looking for their roots. And they’re not necessarily Jewish.”
Ladino is a Judeo-Spanish language originally spoken by Spanish Jews, and it spread through North Africa and parts of the Mediterranean. It’s written using Hebrew characters. Vazana herself is, in a way, a mishmash of the language – Israeli-born of Moroccan heritage now living in the Netherlands.
“I studied with three different teachers. They all told me that the other teachers were wrong. It’s so Jewish,” she said. “I even have a bunch of scholars that are attacking me now because I don’t do it correctly and my grammar is shit. Of course it is; I studied it from my grandmother when I was eight, and I then I did not speak it for 20 years. How will my grammar be good? At least I’m trying.”
Vazana said that she’s looking to connect both to her own roots, but also to inspire others to do the same.
“I’m just sharing how it was for me to grow up, and what things I’m interested in today as a songwriter,” she said. “So I think when I write in Ladino, because I have the observation and the vocabulary of a child, I write very naively. There’s not a lot of subtext in it.”
Vazana compares it to the opera singer who knows the languages they perform in while not necessarily being a native speaker.
“You just study it and do it because you love it,” she said. “The point is to let the love linger in this generation, not to have a political debate.”
Her first album in Ladino, “Adalusian Brew,” was never actually intended for release. Vazana and a couple of friends sat in the living room and started playing.
“We just jammed on it, and it came out pretty good,” she said. “We thought, okay, we’ll record the demo and try to see if there’s a record label that’ll be interested. But we never re-recorded it.”
Vazana said the album’s imperfections give it charm.
“Some of the vocals are on the guitar mic, and some of the guitars are on the vocal mic, so you can’t mix it to a level that is super clear,” she explained. “I think it was the easiest album recording I’ve ever had, because I wasn’t paying attention to it having to be perfect. And maybe that’s why it’s so soothing.”