“Yo Hanino Tu Hanina” (2017) – Shirley Johnson with Oliver Rajamani

Austin Texas-based accordionist and vocalist Shirley Johnson has Croatian roots, but she’s a specialist in many an international idiom. Her new album Dancing Angels includes a collaboration with fellow Austinite Oliver Rajamani (vocals and oud), on which she sets the accordion down, picks up her prim, and duets with him on a Bosnian Sephardic wedding song called “Yo Hanino Tu Hanina” (I’m handsome, you’re beautiful). Those vocals, along with the dancing strings, make this an addictive listen. They’re singing in Ladino, the nearly-extinct language of the Sephardic Jews who have populated a region of the world from Bosnia to North Africa to Turkey. You’ll hear its close linguistic relationship to Spanish.