If it is relevant roots you need to be able to give an art form justice, Shiran Shahar Borek – aka Shiran – has got that in spades. The 41-year-old singer has been putting out mellifluous, largely Greek-seasoned sounds for most of her life, with some Ladino fare thrown in for good measure.
That, in a nutshell, is what the Confederation House audience can expect to get when Shiran takes the stage at the venerable Jerusalem institution along with longtime sparring partner, guitarist Oded Melchner, with percussionist Moria Maatuf beefing up the sonic proceedings.
The May 2 (8:30 p.m.) concert marks the launch of Shiran’s debut album Ximeroni (The Rising Dawn) which is now out on various online platforms. A corporeal vinyl version is due out “sometime in the coming month.”
The audience members can, by all accounts, expect to get their money’s worth in terms of quantity as well as quality. “People will hear the whole album, and even some songs in Ladino which are from our next record,” says Shiran. With the debut release containing a full 24 numbers that’s quite a performance package.
“Ladino is my second area of expertise. So we said the next album has to be in Ladino, and we will bring those piyutim (liturgical songs). It’s about time we related to that side too.”
Steeped in Greek and Ladino
Shiran is, indeed, steeped in the traditions of the Greek and Ladino cultures and music. She imbibed their sounds, customs, and sensibilities with her mother’s milk, and grew up immersed in the ways and practices of her forebears, some of whom she was fortunate enough to meet and learn from firsthand.
“I grew up with my great-grandmother,” she notes. “My mother had me when she was 19, and her mother became a grandmother when she was 38, so the age gaps are very small,” she laughs. “My great-grandmother was my sort of kindergarten teacher until I was three.”
She got more than just love and affection. “She didn’t know Hebrew but she was fluent in seven languages,” says Shiran. That meant the youngster got a head start on two of those languages – Greek and Ladino. That multilingual backdrop was the result of the older generation having lived in Turkey, within a Greek-speaking community, and by being dropped straight into the Israeli melting pot.
“My great-grandmother spoke all the languages of the other olim they lived with in the ma’abara (transit camp for new immigrants). They all spoke Ladino as a common language, but they absorbed the other languages around them too.”
WITH BOTH great-grandparents – the pillars of the family as Shiran puts it – recently deceased, in quick succession, there was a darker plaintive side to Shiran’s earliest years. That also informed her evolving consciousness and, now, her vocal delivery.
“I was, really, born into family shock,” she says. “They passed on all the sadness, love, and longing to me. I was a sort of plaything that enabled the members of the family to recover from that pain.
“But I also absorbed the sadness, the mourning, and the deeper side. The earliest live singing I remember hearing was at the memorial events for my great-grandfathers. All the men would come to our home, to sing together, and I would be blown away by the beauty of their singing. The piyutim from Izmir are amazing, with quartertones that are more like singing than praying.”
That rich brew of emotion seasons the recordings and will be in plain sight in Jerusalem next week. The repertoire will also convey a sense of cultural layering with Melchner spicing up the aroma and textures of the proceedings with touches of his backdrop in flamenco and subtle Spanish filigree.
Shiran says she goes with the emotional and spiritual flow. “When I sing I connect to the therapeutic side, like in meditation. I don’t utilize any external feelings. I don’t try to make anyone feel anything. I just pass on my own feeling, and it comes out, naturally.” That’s the best and, at the end of the day, most convincing way.
“These songs touch my soul. I chose them carefully. There were so many other songs I wanted to include in the concert, but I think 24 is enough,” she laughs.
One of the numbers in the program sets the tone for the audience. “There is a song I do called ‘Tragudo,’ which translates as ‘I Am Singing,’” Shiran notes. “The lyrics say: ‘listen, don’t speak.” The song asks us to listen to the moaning guitar. Listen to the old gramophone like a gypsy song. Listen to the music, just absorb it.”
Sound and comforting advice.
For tickets and more information: (02) 539-9360 and www.confederationhouse.org
