Lily Henley’s new album Oras Dezaoradas is out today! Dialoguing with centuries of Sephardic Jewish women across a global forced diaspora, Henley’s re-writing and re-working old Sephardic ballads in the endangered Ladino language, uncovering a heritage of fiercely independent women that kept these traditions alive over the years. She’s also writing new songs in Ladino, keeping the tradition fresh.

When singer, fiddler, songwriter, and composer 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 tradition that she saw as critically endangered. With Oras Dezaoradas, to be released on May 6, 2022 on Lior Éditions, Henley wanted to highlight the Ladino language, a threatened tongue that fuses old Spanish with Hebrew, Arabic, and Turkish elements and is spoken by less than 100,000 people in the world today.