tonight though, i had something i wanted to blog about. i just got back from a concert by ahinoam nini (known as noa in italia). she is an israeli singer of yemenite origins and my cousin is her manager. she has a beautiful voice and has integrated many cultural and ethnic traditions and songs into her repertoire.
she is huge in europe, in fact, she is the one that i went on tour with for about a week when i was in italy, 9 some years ago. seeing her tonight coupled with the fact that i am going to roma on monday, really brought that trip back. kind of made want to talk to amanda even...
she has since added even more stuff to her repertoire. she now sings traditional yemenite songs while drumming on huge empty metal olive oil containers, she sings in italian - in particular the neopalitan dialect, and in a very beautiful way, has paired with an israeli arab singer to write and sing a few songs. in fact they represented israel in the eurovision competition this year with a very nice, conflict resolution, optimistic peace song. here is the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thDZrD8lblc
she also gained lots of fame for a song she did for the movie 'la vita e' bella' - life is beautiful. she wrote words to the composed soundtrack, sent it to bennini and made a video clip. in fact, when i was on tour with them, the award winning composer for the movie, played the music and she played the song (she asked me to translate a few sentences for her in italian in which she thanked the crowd... i felt important, and just a bit scared...). here is the clip to that song, it's really cute:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAhSf4NKeLA
it was really nice to see her sing with the arab singer. she has always been very outspoken and very peace/cooperation based and she has done many things in the past. she gets some crap for it in israel, but every one gets crap in israel for just about anything... anyway, it was a nice last thing to do here before leaving for a few months. in fact, i leave in 30 minutes... no, 12 minutes.
and tomorrow - going clubbing in cardiff!!!
So did you actually do a decent job of translating what she wanted to say into Italian? Were you upset that even though she didn't know the language and was using your words that she sounded more Italian than French?
ReplyDeleteMan, you are so far away. Israel, now Cardiff? At least you're going clubbing, which means that you'll be up very late at night on skype :-) and since you're not in Canada, the seals are safe.
Where is the next stop on your lecture tour? Vegas? I think that's where it should be :-)
Later gator, I'm off to watch Bruno. I'm not expecting a hangover.