Sunday, August 1st, 6:00 PMNew Mexico History Museum Auditorium
113 Lincoln Avenue
With international concert artist Vanessa Paloma and Fattah Abbou on the oud
Pre-concert talk at 5:00 PM
Recent concerts:
Instituto Cervantes - Tangier
L’Alliance Israelite Universalle - Paris
New York Sephardic Music Festival
Vanessa Paloma, singer, performer, scholar and writer, brings the lyrical sounds of Jewish Morocco to Santa Fe. Vanessa is internationally known for her repertoire of Judeo-Spanish women’s songs and their role in Sephardic communities. She has performed and lectured on five continents.
In this concert, Vanessa highlights Sephardic music of the Moroccan Jewish community, past and present. She weaves her own family history from Morocco to South America and back again to Morocco where she lives in Casablanca.
Meet Vanessa Paloma
Vanessa Paloma is a singer, performer, recording artist, scholar and writer specializing in Sephardic women's songs and their connection to women's spiritual expression. Internationally known for this repertoire, she has performed on five continents, with concerts in Morocco, Spain, France, Portugal, Israel, Columbia, China and the U.S.
Of Spanish Moroccan ancestry herself, Paloma is now based in Casablanca and is associate editor of the Morocco Project of Gaon Books. She is the founder of KHOYA: Jewish Morocco Sound Archive, which serves as a repository of the memory and music of Morocco’s Jewish community and is available to the public at their site in Casablanca. She was a former Senior Fulbright Research Scholar and Artist in Morocco and has been selected for the prestigious Fellows program of the Posen Foundation.
Paloma is due to release her third album in 2014. She is the author of Mystic Siren: Woman’s Voice in the Balance of Creation and The Mountain, the Desert and the Pomegranate: stories from Morocco and beyond.
Meet Fattah Abbou
Fattah Abbou was born and raised in the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco, where he began playing traditional Tamazight “Berber” music at the age of seven. Recognized as a master of North African music, Fattah has studied and performed Tamazight (Berber) music, as well as other North African musical styles, for over thirty years. He recorded several CDs in Morocco with his former band Imdiazen, and has collaborated on recordings with many national and international artists.