Freshly Beaten Tracks

Listening Post 361. Like Appalachian dew at sunrise, Lily Henley’s voice sparkles on her second full-length album, but beneath the surface of her songs run forces that have rearranged landscapes for more than 500 years. The pillars of Oras Dezaoradas (Timeless Hours) are the artist’s nomadic childhood, her family having moved more than a dozen times; the fiddle camps she attended every summer that became an anchor of her identity; and the legacy her Sephardic Jewish ancestors nurtured after their expulsion from Spain in 1492. Those refugees carried medieval Spanish with them, many settling in the Ottoman Empire, adding words from Balkan, Greek, Turkish, Arabic and Hebrew founts, fashioning not only a language—Ladino—for everyday use but also adopting their new neighbors’ musical styles. Henley’s natural-but-audacious innovation is to do what Sephardic artists did for centuries: Compose traditional and newly written Ladino ballads with the tropes of new environments, in this case string band, bluegrass, folk and American old-time music, with flamenco and klezmer touches. She sings of estrangement, love and heartbreak, often from the viewpoint of strong and independent women. Themes run from betrayal and payback in Duermite Mi Alma (Sleep My Darling, video 1), portraying a woman waiting for her husband to return from his lover; to defiance of propriety in Morena Mi Yaman (They Call Me Wild Girl, video 2); to a brief tryst in Esta Noche Te Amare (I’ll Love You This Night, video 3). The personal and national seem to overlap in Arvoles Yoran Por Luvya (Trees Cry for Rain, video 4), in which a faraway ideal may be a person or a lost homeland. Exile alone propels La Galud (Diaspora, video 5), though it may evoke contemporary dislocations as much as it recalls 1492. Built on the scaffolding of Henley’s life, heritage and vision, Oras Dezaoradas is a masterly saga of wandering and wonder. (Lior Éditions)

Lily Henley: Oras Dezaoradas
Lily Henley: Vocals, violin, guitars
Duncan Wickel: Violin, cello, guitars, octave mandolin, piano, backing vocals
Haggai Cohen-Milo: double bass

 

Duermite Mi Alma / Sleep My Darling
Lyrics: Traditional/Music: Lily Henley

(From the Ladino lyrics)
Sleep my darling/Sleep my sweetheart
For your father is returning/From the arms of his new lover

I followed behind him/To see where he was going
And I saw who was with him/His new lover!

Oh new love…

I followed him further/To see what more was there
I viewed a beautiful table/Set with a lavish feast

Back to my house I fled/Saddened and grieving
I locked my door/With seven locks

Oh new pain…

“Open, my darling/Open, my sweetheart
For I return to you tired/From wandering the road”

“If you return tired/Tired you will leave!
Where you spent the night/You may also spend the day!”

Oh new pain…

“Demon woman!/Who told you?!”
“Devilish man!/I saw it for myself!”

Sleep my darling/Sleep my sweetheart
For your father is returning/From the arms of his new lover

Oh new love…

 

Morena Me Yaman / They Call Me ‘Wild Girl’
Lyrics: Traditional/Music: Lily Henley

Wild girl they call me/Though innocent I was born
As one lives, one changes

Dressed in green/And in scarlet
What is shared between/A lover and her sweetheart?

Through open windows/They shoot arrows at me
If they are the arrows of love/May they fly straight!

Dressed in green/And in scarlet
What is shared between/A lover and her sweetheart?

Wild girl they call me/Oh, the sailors
If they call to me again/I will go with them!

Dressed in green/And in scarlet
What is shared between/A lover and her sweetheart?

 

Esta Noche Te Amare / I’ll Love You This Night
Lyrics & music: Lily Henley

There she lay asleep that night, in her bed all alone/When she heard a knock and at the window a light shone
He stood there and held a candle to the window pane/Used his cap to shield it from the rain

What if someone spies your candle gleaming on the hill/Lighting up our faces as it flickers on the sill
Still she watched the shadows play across his handsome face/Thinking of the warmth of his embrace

Won’t you let me in?/I’ve walked all this long way
For you I’ve been/Waiting just to say
How I love you/I do, and I’ll love you tonight

Carefully she slid the window up against the wall/Hawthorn boughs and metal bolts were shaking in the squall
Up he came, her lover, and he held her in his arms/Sheltered in the darkness of her room 

Then he pressed his lips to hers and called her by her name/His candle having burned away, now she was his flame
The fire burned to embers and he promised her his life/Wishing she’d consent to be his wife

Now you’ve let me in/I’ll never let you go
For months I’ve been/Hoping you might know
How I love you/I do, and I’ll love you tonight

When they woke the cloak of night had been replaced by day/Tantalizing mystery had all but blown away
With cold day dawning an answer came/Never would she take his family name 

Now I’ve let you in/I know you hope I’ll stay
So long/My love has held you in its sway
But it’s a love that I knew/Could never last the night

 

Arvoles Yoran Por Luvya / Trees Cry for Rain
Lyrics: Traditional/Music: Lily Henley

Trees cry for rain/Mountains cry for air
Just as I weep/For you, my love

I lament and wonder/What will happen to me?
On foreign lands I have come to die/I have come only to die

Fair is your face/Fair is your form
Fair flowers fall on you/Over all that is your beauty

I lament and wonder/What will happen to me?
On foreign lands I have come to die/I have come only to die.

If I could take the petals from a rose/And make myself a dress
Then I might walk with you, my love

I lament and I wonder/What will happen to me?
On foreign lands I have come to die/I have come only to die

In front of me there is an angel/He looks at me with your eyes
I want to weep, but I’m unable/I sigh…

I lament and I wonder/What will happen to me?
On foreign lands I have come to die/I have come only to die

 

La Galud / Diaspora
Lyrics & music: Lily Henley

Remember our house on the hilltop?/All of our family lived there
We ate our meals by firelight/Invited guests to share

Remember that night on the seashore?/There, in the eye of the storm
I held you close and I promised you/I would keep you safe from harm

Oh, that was then/And we may never be safe again
We’ve lived our lives/In an exile, my friend

Remember those days in the market?/Selling to tourists each day
Your smile alone could have won you success/But you wanted me to stay

Remember that great celebration?/They held in the wide open street
You called my house and we agreed/On a place we both could meet

Oh, that was then/And we may never meet there again
We’ve lived our lives/In an exile, my friend

Remember those nights in our childhood/Wrapped in our godfather’s coat
You turned to me and you called me your brother/And that’s when I found hope

Oh, that was then/But I know that I’ll find hope again
We’ve lived our lives/In this exile, my friend

Oh, that was then/But I know that we’ll find hope again
Please, don’t let go/In your exile, my friend
We’ve hope to hold/In our exile, my friend