Yasmin Levy teams up with iconic Greek singer Haris Alexiou
A Mediterranean marriage made in heaven
By BARRY DAVISYASMIN LEVY: ‘We should all try something which really has no chance of succeeding.’(photo credit: ALI TASKIRAN)
Our first telephone interview slot did not work out. Yasmin Levy, the famed Ladino and flamenco singer apologized for not being available as she had met up with a friend and they were sipping some vino. “I’m old and drunk,” she jocularly WhatsApped me.Inebriation, especially in these trying times, can offer some release from some of the pervading pandemic-driven doom and gloom. But old? I duly accepted the apology from the 44-year-old internationally acclaimed singer, and we rescheduled.Over the years Levy, who has a voice blessed with sultry rich textures and that packs an emotive powder keg, has generally come across as very intense.This was not our first chat – I think the first time I interviewed her must be around 20 years ago – and I would come away with mixed feelings. I could not help but be bowled over by her zestful character and seemingly boundless enthusiasm, but it was also a little tiring.Fast forward to 2020, amid the coronavirus, and the Yasmin Levy I spoke to this time sounded more grounded, breathing more easily and, yes, older and wiser. She seems to have shifted down a couple of gears and to be taking a more considered approach to her professional and personal life.“I haven’t put out an album for eight years, which is not really done,” she notes. That was largely the result of some sage words from a respected colleague.“A wonderful record producer I know said to me ‘Yasmin, an album is not a collection of pretty songs.’ All my life that’s what I thought, so I asked him what an album really is, and he told me, ‘An album is what you want to say now.’ That changed my life.”Levy now feels she has something to say. There is a new record on the way, and she has just released a single in which she joins forces with iconic Greek singer Haris Alexiou. The song is called “This Shadow,” and it appears to be striking a chord with people all over the world. Four days after it was uploaded to YouTube, it had garnered around 58,000 views, which rose to 75,000 a couple of days later. Not quite viral but a pretty impressive incremental rise all the same.The lyrics to “This Shadow,” with Alexiou writing in Greek and Levy in Spanish, put to Levy’s score, do not make for easy reading or listening. This is clearly a well thought-out, heartfelt offering that both women produced from their emotional innards.Alexiou is now almost 70 and has been at the top of the Greek popular music stakes for around five decades, but the Levy co-production is her last.
“She announced her retirement about a month ago,” says Levy. “I have been an admirer of hers for many many years.”“This Shadow,” for Levy, was a dream come true achieved at the nth hour. “We have known each other for years,” Levy continues. “We talked about this 10 years ago, that we would sing together sometime. I didn’t believe it would happen.”Prompted by her husband, percussionist Yishai Amir, she rattled off emails to a couple of addresses she had for Alexiou without expecting too much.“I didn’t think I’d hear back from her. Yes, we know each other and hug when we meet, but I didn’t think she’d agree to sing with me.”THREE MONTHS went by and Amir suggested that there may have been a problem with the email addresses. Again, not feeling too hopeful, Levy found another email address for the Greek singer and it was third-time lucky.“The other addresses had actually been incorrect. Haris immediately agreed to do the song with me. She grabbed the opportunity with both hands,” Levy says happily.Alexiou, it seems, had not been in a good way for some time. She hadn’t sung for six years, but was moved by Levy’s idea.“I helped to release Haris from some sort of dark place,” she says. “From her point of view, I gave her another whiff of oxygen, but she leaves [the music scene]. It is very moving.”The lyrics make for thought-provoking reading.“There is a shadow always standing beside you. It doesn’t talk. It doesn’t hear. It doesn’t ask. But it’s always faithful,” Alexiou muses in the opening stanza. There are clearly some inner demons doing some talking here.“The thing that is always missing. It is neither an idea nor a human being. It raises sadness deep inside me. It raises that irresistible emptiness too,” the Greek sings further on in the song.The dark mood resonates in Levy’s textual contribution too. “Faithful and treacherous, it lives inside me,” she sings. “And wounds me without shame. It has no land or landscape. It slowly kills my joy.”This isn’t exactly happy-go-lucky pop material here. Levy has fought her own battles too.“I connected so well with Haris’s words because I have been like that all my life,” she explains. “All this polarity [of emotions] and the lack of tranquility, which I use to fuel my creative work. There were times over the last eight years when I said I don’t want this,” she adds referencing her madcap professional lifestyle, plane-hopping around the globe and performing before large audiences. That had to be juggled with being a mother of two small children, ages nine and five.The price of success was too high for her and she began hankering for a quieter, more modest, simpler way of living.“When I lived in a neighborhood in Jerusalem, the most exciting thing that happened there was when there was a wedding. We all went to the weddings, and beforehand we’d all go to the local hairdresser. He caught our hair short and dyed it a shade of red, and we wouldn’t shower for a week to the color wouldn’t run,” she laughs. “When I had tough times I thought, “Why can’t I enjoy something like those exciting times when I was a kid?”The global pandemic also played a role. “Often, when I was home with the family, I wouldn’t really be there. My mind was always somewhere else, thinking about the music, a show. Now I am a mother and wife, in the true sense of the word. I worked on this single in between household chores. I washed the dishes, took a break to sing something, and then went back to the dishes. That’s a healthier way to live.”Levy is spreading her artistic net too. For the past three years she has been trying her hand at scriptwriting a crime thriller for TV, which she hopes will come to fruition in a couple of years’ time.“I didn’t really believe I could do that but it is happening. That’s amazing,” she says.That is a message she says she tries to convey in “This Shadow.” “We should all try something which really has no chance of succeeding. Just live life. I don’t want to get on a plane and fly off to sing for thousands of people. That doesn’t interest me anymore. I’d rather sing for five people for whom I know the music is important. You have to enjoy the beautiful road. There is so much beauty on the way.
