A mosaic of music which originated in southern Spain more than five centuries ago will be transported from the ancient world io the modern-day stage in a Friday night concert in Rockport with the Guy Mendilow Band.
The Mendilow group, whose concert is titled "Sephardi Songs of Imagined Migrations," will perform at the Shalin Liu Performance Center at 8 p.m.
The group's latest offering, The Ladino Project, features centuries-old music from Jewish communities in places such as Smyrna, Salonica, Jerusalem and Sarajevo recast through the lens of modern migrations. The colorful songs will be sung in Ladino, a language melding Spanish, Arabic, Greek and Hebrew.
The canticas — or songs — are filled with stories of sailors seduced by sirens at sea, intrigue, dreams and the treachery of kings and queens.
"When you hear Ladino, it's like listening to someone who stepped out of a time capsule," Guy Mendilow said in a telephone interview this week.
When the group performed at the Chicago World Music Festival, a Chicago Tribune critic wrote: "It's a folk music of hope and affirmation, sophisticated in its delivery but easily accessible to listeners anywhere."
The band also recently won a Boston Phoenix poll and was named Best World Music Act of 2011.
The music to be performed varies in age from 600 years ago to more recent times, about 1800 or the early 1900s.
This world music quintet has been together for almost seven years, and is also made up of a musicians with diverse cultural backgrounds, from Israel and Brazil to Japan and the United States.
Their blend of music is woven with Brazilian street beats, warm vocal harmonies and blues. In addition to Mendilow, the band is comprised of Keita Ogawa on percussion, Tammy Scheffer on vocals, Andy Bergman on electric mbira, clarinet, jaw harp, flutes, penny-whistle, saxophone, and Tomoko Omura on violin.
Mendilow, who was born in Israel, has a complex family history that is typical of the many Jewish families that fled Spain.
"The descendants of Jews who left Spain or Portugal after the 1492 expulsion are referred to as Sephardim," Rebecca Weiner wrote in the Jewish Virtual Library. "The word 'Sephardim' comes from the Hebrew word for Spain, Sepharad, that is stated in the Bible. It is believed that Jews have lived in Spain since the era of King Solomon (c. 965-930 B.C.E. — before the common era.)"
The family of the Israeli-born Mendilow has Sephardi origins.
"But like so many families with generations of moving around the question of identity and the idea of a pure identity is probably more myth than reality. A lot of our history was unfortunately lost in the Holocaust," said Mendilow.
His father's lineage wound up in England, with some of that history lost in the Blitz, and his mother's side of the family wound up in Romania and Hungary but a lot of her history was also lost to similar circumstances.
Mendilow speaks four languages and has triple citizenship with Israel, the United States and England. He speaks Hebrew, English, Spanish and Portuguese.
The concert focuses on the band's Ladino Project, which explores imagined cross-cultural journeys, as if Sephardi music landed today in places like Tel Aviv, Appalachia, or the streets of Salvador in northeastern Brazil, and present what they think that music would sound like.
"The project explores what happens when you leave one home for another. That is my family history," said Mendilow. "This is music that has done that. This is music that began in southern Spain and the Iberian peninsula and shifted to northern Africa and the Balkans, acquiring elements of many places but also retaining its roots in the transformation.
"It's a big game we play about what happens if the music continues to migrate and lands in places where it would be unlikely to migrate, like in Appalachia or a Tokyo night club," he added.
The song "La Reina Xerifa Mora" tells the story of a dark legend shared among Jewish, Muslim and Christian communities, which the band brings alive with regal Appalachian melodies and a touch of gritty blues.
The upbeat song "Mansevo Del Dor" is a tongue-in-cheek warning against social vanity, featuring Mendilow's berimbau guitar.
Mendilow has a complex education. He attended the American Boychoir (correct spelling) School in Princeton, performing in 200 concerts a year, from tiny churches to Carnegie Hall. The first time he came to Boston, where he now resides, was when he was a choirboy and they performed at Symphony Hall. He later attended Oberlin as an undergraduate and received is master's degree from Longy School of Music.
For information or tickets, visit www.rockportmusic.org or www.guymendilow.com.
Gail McCarthy may be contacted at 978-283-7000 x3445 or gmccarthy@gloucestertimes.com.
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