Biography
Yasmin Levy (Hebrew: יסמין לוי; born December 23, 1975) is an Israeli-Spanish singer-songwriter of Judeo-Spanish music and Sephardic descent.
Her late father, Yitzhak Isaac Levy (1919–1977), was a composer and hazzan (cantor), as well as a pioneer researcher into the long and rich history of the Ladino music and culture of Spanish Jewry and its diaspora, being the editor of the Ladino language magazine “Aki Yerushalayim”.
With her distinctive and emotive style, Levy has brought a new interpretation to the medieval Judeo-Spanish (Ladino) song by incorporating more “modern” sounds of Andalusian flamenco and Persian, as well as combining instruments like the darbuka, oud, violin, cello, and piano.
Her debut album was “Romance & Yasmin” in 2000, which earned her a nomination as “Best Newcomer” for the fRoots / BBC Radio 3 World Music Awards 2005, followed in 2005 with her second album “La Judería” (Spanish: The Jewish Quarter). In 2006, she was nominated again, then in the category “Culture Crossing”.
On her second album, La Judería, she also covered the popular songs “Gracias a la Vida” by Violeta Parra and “Nací en Alamó” from the film ‘Vengo’, directed by Tony Gatlif, which in its original version won the 2001 César Award for Best Music Written for a Film (itself being a cover of “The song of the Gypsies”, written by Greek songwriter Dionysis Tsaknis in 1990).
Levy’s work earned her the Anna Lindh Euro-Mediterranean Foundation Award for promoting cross-cultural dialogue between musicians from three cultures.
Levy was also a goodwill ambassador for the charity “Children of Peace”.
