Mujeres de Agua
Wrasse Records WRASS88290
www.wrasserecords.com
Producer of Bebo Valdés, Diego El Cigala, Paco de Lucía, Niño Josele, Concha Buika and Enrique Morente, among others, Madrid native Javier Limón also is a talented guitarist, singer-songwriter, arranger and composer. With Mujeres de Agua he showcases a dozen female singers to be reckoned with from around the Mediterranean, in performances that blend a flamenco sensibility with strains from Portugal, Greece, Turkey and the Levant. Of the ten Limón originals, Aynur's "Amanecer en Estambul" features the evocative Turkish clarinet of Hüsnü Senlendiriçi, alluding to the historic Sephardic connection between the two nations. Yasmin Levy makes this linkage explicit with her interpretation of the traditional Ladino tune "Komo el pasharo ke bola." With Eleftheria Arvanitaki's "Milo mou kai mandarini," Limón finds kinship between Greek folk traditions and the flamenco sound. A Limón arrangement based on a Lebanese-Iraqi folk song, "El beso libanés" is a love lament by Montse Cortés. "Oro santo," co-penned with Limón, is a pensive vehicle for Buika, who along with Estrella Morente (heard here as well on "Manuela") is one of the most exciting Spanish singers today. Given the project's scope, covering the Mediterranean waterfront may be asking a lot, but if Limón is contemplating Volume Two, one can only hope for the addition of comparable voices from Italy, Israel, Palestine and North Africa.
