Search - Yoel Ben-Simhon :: Yoel Ben-Simhon & Sultana Ensemble

As a child, composer/instrumentalist Yoel Ben-Simhon was immersed in the Moroccan-Jewish culture of his parents and grandparents, who emigrated to Israel in the late 1950s: "My grandmother Sultana was always my babysitter. At her house, I was exposed to my family's Moroccan and Arabic heritage. It was in the language they spoke, the tobacco my grandfather Mimon sniffed, the food they ate, and the music they picked up via short wave radio from Morocco. We went to a Moroccan synagogue, and I heard the music there, too; both liturgical hymns and secular songs." With the musicians and dancers of the Sultana Ensemble, Ben-Simhon blends the sights and sounds of his childhood in Israel with those of his adulthood, spent as a working musician in the United States. The resulting project is as personal in conception as it is global in scope, mixing elements of Moroccan, Andalusian, Sephardic, and Middle Eastern music and dance with Latin jazz.