Patrons of Manhattan's Village Vanguard have long been bombarded by the roughest, readiest folk music in the U.S. Last week they were finding the red-blooded singing of a dark-eyed Israeli woman as stirring in its way as the best of Leadbelly, the Weavers and Chippie Hill. Her name: Shoshana Damari, 28.
Songstress Shoshana (Hebrew for Rose) has a deceptive way with her. She announces her songs demurely in broken English. Then, above a tinkling piano accompaniment, her voice rises plaintively while her hands trace delicate arabesques. As she sings an ancient Sephardic spiritual or a song of Yemen's lonely shepherds, her voice rises in volume and takes on a coarser quality, and the melodies take eerie slides and leaps. By the time she reaches the song's climax, her head tossed back, her voice a full-throated wail, the nightclub is pulsating with a savage beat.
Most of the songs Shoshana sings are the kind that Jewish men & women have sung since the days of David and Bathsheba: prayers, laments, love songs, or songs that tell a story, such as The Magic Carpet—an account of the exodus of modern Yemenite Jews from their home on the Arabian peninsula. Few in the audience can understand the Hebrew words, but Shoshana's gestures, mobile face and throbbing voice make them exciting listening anyway.
Like some of the Jews she sings of, Shoshana made the trek from Yemen to Palestine as a child of three. At 13 she persuaded her family to let her quit elementary school, go to a dramatics academy in Tel Aviv. Soon she was starring in school folk reviews, appearing regularly on Tel Aviv's radio station. At 18 she had a national reputation as a folk singer, was giving recitals and appearing in concerts with symphony orchestras.
Last fall Promoter Max Nemirof hired Shoshana as star of the show at his new Israeli cabaret in Manhattan. Her singing kept customers coming back for five months. After her Vanguard appearance, she is planning a three-month coast-to-coast tour of the U.S.
Shoshana thinks a pretty girl who can sing should be a fine ambassador for Israeli. "I came mostly for good will," she says. "I am really a sentimental woman."