Lily Henley

When singer, fiddler and songwriter Lily Henley set out to make an album of Sephardic Jewish ballads set to new melodies, she was looking for her own way to interpret a critically endangered tradition. On Oras Dezaoradas (out on Lior Éditions Records), Henley highlights the Ladino language, a threatened tongue that fuses old Spanish with Hebrew, Arabic, Turkish, and Persian elements spoken by less than 100,000 people in the world today. Known for her expressive songwriting, gifted fiddling, and bell-like vocals, Henley brings new life to these songs and the independent female characters in them. With a repertoire encompassing both her Sephardi musical lineage and a broad expanse of influences from across the folk world, Henley weaves ancient and modern languages, cultures and styles.