After nine years in New York, we brought our Sephardic Music Festival (SMF) to Los Angeles, California between March 2 — 11, 2014. The Sephardic Music Festival is the first music festival to focus exclusively on the less familiar but captivating culture of the Jews who lived for centuries among the vibrant cultures of North Africa, Spain, and the Middle East. The festival is a cross-generational Jewish diversity party, blending events that are more traditional with party nights that are more trap based.
The festival featured Yemen Blues, Asaf Avidan, Diwon, Automatic Toys, David Sussia, Shahs of Sinai, The Sephardic Story Slam, Body Painting, Drum Circle classes, Jewelry and Hamsa making, Belly Dancing and lots more.
Shemspeed is an independent recording label and promotional agency highlighting cross-over music artists with positive and unifying messages. Founded by Erez Safar, an American-Israeli DJ/Producer, Shemspeed promotes over 15 dynamic artists representing a wide range of genres including hip-hop, reggae, and rock. These artists include Y-Love (revolutionary Jewish hip-hop), Diwon (Yemenite / Sephardic hip-hop, Israeli music and more), DeScribe (soul-awakening dancehall, hip-hop, & soul), and Electro Morocco (Israeli rock, dance music.) Shemspeed artists, collectively showcasing the diversity in world Jewish music, have performed with musicians as varied as Snoop Dogg, Lou Reed, Idan Raichel and Eminem; they’ve been profiled in Rolling Stone, SPIN, The New York Times and XXL; and they’ve been seen and heard around the world on various TV appearances (Conan O’Brien, CBS and BBC World) and global radio. Shemspeed’s mission is unifying people through culture and education, celebrating diversity and common ground. By way of this work, we add a public Jewish voice to multi-cultural, inter-faith, creative and collaborative bridge-building.