Deep Roots Artist in Residence, in collaboration with Ross Creek Centre for the Arts
Artist at Acadia, in collaboration with Acadia University
Deep Roots Festival Performer
Described by BBC Radio 3 as “a voice that transports you from ancient markets to modern jazz clubs in one breath,” Nani Vazana is one of the most singular musical voices of her generation – a millennial Ladino songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and tireless champion of a language that history nearly erased.
Vazana first knew Ladino as a language of secrets, spoken by women to each other in the kitchen, whispered by adults to keep information from children, sung softly by her grandmother at bedtime. Her parents arrived in the new state of Israel in the 1950s as refugees from Morocco, and wanting to leave the family’s traumatic history behind, her father insisted the household speak only Hebrew – but her grandmother, who gave her the nickname Nani, would sing Ladino songs whenever they were alone, to ensure the language and culture survived. It was while performing at the Tangier Jazz Festival in Morocco in 2016 that a chance encounter on the streets of Fez -her grandmother’s hometown – changed everything: she heard those same melodies sung in Arabic at a joyful street party, and what followed was a calling. She returned to the language her father had forbidden, learned it deeply, and began writing original songs in it – an act both of artistic creation and cultural resurrection.
Ladino – also known as Judeo-Español – is a rich blend of Castilian Spanish, Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, Turkish, French, and other Balkan languages, born from the world Sephardic Jews carried with them after their expulsion from the Iberian Peninsula in 1492. Vazana describes it as a matriarchal language – one of women’s everyday life, full of passion and story – and her music honours that heritage while refusing to be contained by it. Her sound fuses raw, flamenco-inspired vocals with soft choral trombone, mariachi guitar, percussion, and piano: a magical realist mosaic that captures the smells and sounds of the marketplace and carries them into urgent, contemporary storytelling celebrating migration, gender, and female empowerment.
In 2024, Vazana won the Eurovision for Minority Languages – Liet International – representing the Netherlands with her original song Una Segunda Piel (A Second Skin). Her album Ke Haber (What’s New) was documented and preserved by the Library of Congress, ranked #11 on the International World Music Chart and #13 on the World Music Chart Europe, and she has performed at the Kennedy Center, the London Jazz Festival, and TEDx Amsterdam.
Audience connection, for Vazana, is not just about shared heritage. “If people can feel inspired to find their own roots, that makes me happy.” At Deep Roots, she’ll have every opportunity to do just that. As our Artist in Residence, Vazana will be in residence at Ross Creek Centre for the Arts, exploring themes of language, memory, migration, and belonging that resonate far beyond the Sephardic world. As our Artist at Acadia for the Thursday Concert Credit series, she brings that same spirit of intimate storytelling and musical discovery to student audiences. And on the Festival stage, she delivers the full force of a performance that is, all at once, ancient and alive.
Nani Noam Vazana sings traditional Jewish Sephardic song Morenika, in the language of her ancestors, Ladino. Nani is a passionate singer & songwriter, reviving the Ladino language worldwide.
Get Nani’s albums: on: http://NaniMusic.com/Shop
Music: Traditional Jewish Sephardic Ladino
Vocals: Nani Noam Vazana
Guitar: Boris Mogilevski
EWI: Itay Weissman
Video by Asaf Lewkowitz
Lyrics:
Morenika a mi me llaman, yo blanca nací
Y del sol del enverano, to m’hize ansí.
Morenika, graciozica sos,
Tu morena y yo graciozo,
Y ojos pretos tú.
Morenika a mi me llaman, Los marineros.
Si otra vez a mi me llaman, Yo me vo con ellos
Translation: I am called the brunette, but I was born fair
And it is the summer sun that made me so
Brunette, you are graceful,
You are dark and I am a fool,
And your eyes are dark.
They call me the brunette, the sailors
If they call me again I will go with them
