La Mar Enfortuna is the Sephardic side project from the alt rock group Elysian Fields

Elysian Fields (band)

Elysian Fields is a Brooklyn, New York based band founded in 1995 by co-composers Jennifer Charles and Oren Bloedow . Their music has been sometimes described as "noir rock", due to its sultry, dark and mysterious inflections, be it sonically or lyrically...

, Oren Bloedow

Oren Bloedow

Oren Bloedow is an American singer, guitarist, and composer. He founded the band Elysian Fields in 1995 with Jennifer Charles.His father, Jerry Bloedow, b...

 and Jennifer Charles

Jennifer Charles

Jennifer Charles is an American singer, musician, composer, and poet. Along with Oren Bloedow, she co-founded the New York band Elysian Fields.-Biography:...

. La Mar Enfortuna is a modern interpretation of lost or forgotten music, mostly of the Sephardim, from the 11th to the 16th century, with songs sung in Ladino

Ladino

Ladino may refer to:*Ladino is the name used primarily in Israel for Judaeo-Spanish, a Sephardic language, primarily spoken among Sephardic Jews, or for the written form used in religious texts and translations; compare to Ashkenazic Jews' language, Yiddish*Ladino is also used for the variety of...

, Arabic, Aramaic, Spanish

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

, Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

, and English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

. They incorporate the sounds of jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

, folk

Folk music

Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....

, rock

Rock music

Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...

, Middle Eastern, and Latin musics. Besides Charles and Bloedow, the core group as it now stands includes Doug Wieselman, Ted Reichman, Robert DiPietro, and Brahim Fribgane. The group released two albums, an eponymous album in 2001 and "Convivencia" in 2007, both on John Zorn

John Zorn

John Zorn is an American avant-garde composer, arranger, record producer, saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist. Zorn is a prolific artist: he has hundreds of album credits as performer, composer, or producer...

's Tzadik

Tzadik Records

Tzadik Records is a record label based in New York City specialising in avant-garde and experimental music. The label was established by the eclectic composer and saxophonist John Zorn in 1995; Zorn is the executive producer of all Tzadik releases...

label. Guests on "Convivencia" include Ljova Zhurbin, Chuscales, Liaqat Khan, and Benjamin Lapidus. The band has played in Washington, DC, New York City, at La Cigalle in Paris, La Huerta de Federico Garcia Lorca in Granada, Spain, and the Chicago World Music Festival.