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The Sarah Aroeste Band will perform 8 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 15 in the Farinon College Center Snack Bar. The event is free.
In addition to the performance in Farinon, the campus community is invited to a pre-performance Mediterranean dinner reception with the band 5:30 p.m. Wednesday at Hillel House, located at 524 Clinton Terrace on the corner of McCartney Street.
This event is sponsored by Hillel Society with the support of the departments of music and foreign languages & literatures, Jewish Studies program, International Students Association, Hispanic Society of Lafayette, and Office of Intercultural Development.
“The Sarah Aroeste Band is the only Ladino rock group in the world. Audience members will be introduced to a rich body of music with a modern and sexy sensibility, as Sarah Aroeste, with her swishing hips and belly dance moves on stage, brings Ladino music back to life for a new generation,” says Hillel adviser Rebecca Metzger, reference and instruction librarian at Skillman Library. “Since this music and language is the result of the blend of many different Mediterranean cultures, the concert should appeal to students from a wide range of ethnic, linguistic, religious, and cultural heritages.”
The Sarah Aroeste Band includes vocalist Aroeste and musicians Yotam Beery, Yaron Eilam, Dan Nadel, and Liron Peled, and combines traditional Mediterranean sounds with contemporary rock, funk, jazz, and blues. Using traditional instruments such as oud and dumbek alongside electric guitar, bass, and drums, Aroeste brings new life and energy to the beautiful and mysterious sounds of Sephardic music.
Influenced by her Spanish and Greek heritage, American-born Aroeste sings in Ladino, an archaic form of Castilian Spanish originated by Spanish Jews after their expulsion from Spain in 1492. Ladino combines bits of Greek, Turkish, Arabic, Portuguese, French, Italian, and Hebrew. This exotic pan-Mediterranean language has been fading away and is hardly spoken anymore. Aroeste’s sets include contemporary takes on traditional Ladino songs, as well as original songs written in English, set to Spanish Mediterranean backgrounds.
The Sarah Aroeste Band performs traditional Ladino folksongs in which most lyrics, although derived soon after the Inquisition 500 years ago, could just as easily have been written today. They are songs about family, unrequited love, and going off to war – all themes that cross centuries, as well as geographic and ethnic boundaries.
Since Aroeste launched her band in 2001, she has performed in major music venues in New York City, Chicago, Atlanta, Detroit, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and Los Angeles, and has been featured in both the national and international press.