Tu [Audio CD] Los Desterrados

Los Desterrados - 'The Exiles' - are a London based sextet who on their album TU have created their own cosmopolitan take on the rootsy, Mediterranean folk music of the Sephardic Jews. Whilst many people will be familiar with the brass-heavy Klezmer music of Eastern Europe, the music of the Sephardic Jews is less well known. Growing up in the Iberian peninsula, the community was expelled from Spain and Portugal at the end of the 15th century by the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella. The majority of them went on to found new communities in countries around the Mediterranean basin such as Morocco, Turkey, Greece, Bosnia and France. All these influences can be heard on TU from the Turkish percussion of "El Rey De Francia Tres Hijas Tenia" to the Greek sarki of "Ocho Kandelikas". Daniel Jonas, the founder of Los Des (as their fans affectionately call them), describes their music as 'Sephardic Flamenco', yet within the genre they have created a sound that is wholly their own. Whilst the songs on the album are all traditional, with vocals sung either in Ladino - the language of the Sephardic Jews - or Hebrew, Los Desterrados wield boisterous rhyth