KlezCalendar

The 92nd Street Y concludes its series, "Music and Dance of the Jewish Wedding," on Thursday, February 3, at 8:00 p.m. with a concert devoted to Moroccan Jewish wedding music from the Sephardic tradition. Whereas the Ashkenazic and Bukharan wedding programs earlier in this series presented skeletal reenactments of traditional weddings, this performance is a concert presentation of North Moroccan wedding songs rather than a staged recreation of traditional rituals; this concert also focuses primarily on music rather than dance. The renowned Israeli singer Esti Kenan-Ofri is one of Israel's foremost interpreters of Sephardic song; she performs with her group, the Kol Oud Tof Trio. Their concert focuses on the traditions of Jews in the northern Moroccan cities of Tetuan and Tangier, whose culture was heavily influenced by the Sephardic (Hispanic) traditions of Spain (roughly 50 miles to the north across the Straits of Gibraltar) and the Hekatia (pronounced Ha-kah-TEE-ya) tradition, which incorporated Spanish, Hebrew and Arabic elements in its language and culture.