Tamar Ilana & Ventanas journey the world through music—and 20 languages—on Vancouver stage
The lead artist is a flamenco dancer and vocalist whose songs cross from the Mediterranean to the Middle East
Tamar Ilana & Ventanas.
Chutzpah! PLUS and Caravan World Rhythms present Tamar Ilana & Ventanas on February 3 at 7:30 pm at Norman and Annette Rothstein Theatre
TAMAR ILANA HAD an atypical childhood. Her mother was an ethnomusicologist who travelled the globe, the Toronto-born girl tagging along with her to places like Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Turkey, Greece, and Israel. It’s no wonder the artist specializes in world music.
“I accompanied her on-stage and have been singing since I was about four, then I worked as a field assistant since about age eight, holding the camera and helping her with interviews and learning songs from all around the Mediterranean,” Ilana tells Stir in an interview from Ireland, where she’s on tour with her group, Ventanas, before heading to Vancouver in a Chutzpah! and Caravan World Rhythms show. “I just never stopped.
“Everything is world music,” she adds. “I don’t want to sound clichéd, but it’s a language everyone can communicate in. It’s really what I feel most comfortable in. Working with so many people from so many different places feels the most comfortable to me. Whether it’s Middle Eastern or Arabic, that’s where I feel at home playing that music.”
Ilana also grew up dancing flamenco, and she’ll be sharing steps when she and Ventanas perform in Vancouver.
Her five band members come from different backgrounds but all live in Toronto now, each having trained in classical music and jazz.
Drawing inspiration from such legendary artists as the Silk Road Ensemble, Paco de Lucía, and Yasmin Levy, they play violin, bass, percussion, flamenco guitar, and oud. In concert, the artists sing in no less than 20 different languages, including Ladino, Spanish, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Hebrew, French, Romani, and Arabic. They draw inspiration from the themes of migration and identity and mix modern versions of ancient ballads with original compositions.
Throughout the pandemic, Ventanas served as the house band for a new performing-arts organization called FabCollab and the Women in Song series, collaborating with primarily BIPOC women artists such as Tara Moneka (Iraq), Eliana Cuevas (Venezuela), OKAN (Cuba), Aline Morales (Brazil), Maryem Tollar (Egypt), Kaeja d’Dance (Canada), Dimitra Kahrimanidis (Greece), Nastasia Y (Ukraine) and others, in Toronto venues such as Koerner Hall and the Aga Khan Museum. The series was also livestreamed by the National Arts Centre and drew more than 100,000 online views. Nominated for four Canadian Folk Music Awards, Ventanas is currently working on its fourth studio album.
The act takes its name from the Spanish word for windows. “We’re windows into other cultures and back into ourselves,” Ilana says.
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