SAMPLING OF PRESS HIGHLIGHTS
Sarah Aroeste is selected as a Top-10 Finalist in the prestigious international "Festiladino" competition of original Ladino music. As shown on live Israeli National TV, Sarah performs with the Jerusalem Symphony an original Ladino song written with Roberto Rodriguez. Click here to watch the video.
Aroeste has dedicated herself to keeping Ladino music alive... [She wants] to bring Sephardic music outside of the Jewish world..and to a bigger audience.
Sarah Aroeste is interviewed by the international group, Leadership Elements, alongside the likes of Martin Indyk, Alan Dershowitz, Bernard Henri Levy, Joschka Fischer, Gary Lucas and More! Click here to view the video.
The music of the Sephardic Jews is rather underrepresented in today’s world music market. However, Sarah Aroeste and her band are going to change that.
If tired reinterpretations of klezmer music were a bagel from Dunkin Donuts, then Sarah Aroeste would be fresh cheese bourekas served at your favorite kosher Greek restaurant.
[Sarah Aroeste] is like a funkier, hipper Joan Baez of the Ladino world.
[Sarah Aroeste] takes traditional Ladino tunes and updates them with loads of New York sass and edgy attitude.
[Sarah Aroeste's] sophomore album, “Puertas,” is an argument about Ladino music’s future. Updating Sephardic sounds and Mediterranean melodies with rock flourishes, the group gives “Puertas” a low-fi garage vibe. The marriage of Ladino lyrics to this modern sensibility drives the album forward — showing that the past can not only infiltrate, but also add meaning to the present.
When Spain expelled its Jews half a millennium ago, some took with them a Castilian dialect called Ladino. Five hundred years later, Ladino is spoken only in small pockets of the world, mainly Israel, and rarely as a first language.
Except for New York's Sarah Aroeste, who sings Ladino rock 'n' roll.
From the first notes that sounded, there was no question that Chicagoans were hearing music of the highest artistic level...[Yet the festival’s] cultural agenda seemed almost modest alongside the reach of singer/songwriter Sarah Aroeste, who finds inspiration in the ancient poetry of Ladino...
NPR's Renee Montagne talks to two experts [Sarah Aroeste and Rabbi Mark Angel] about the past and future of Ladino, the 500-year-old language of Sephardic Jews.