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Elizabeth Ayoub: Oceanos Y Lunas

  Tobias Fischer

Born of Lebanese parents who fled with her and her 6 siblings to Venezuela, Ayoub comes from a strange multilingual planet, where one minute Barbra Streisand would be belting on the radio and the next the family would be reciting the Koran.

There’s professional acting on her resume to go with this debut album, produced by Grammy winner Javier Limon, who has coaxed many gentle slopes and breezes out of the world-type sounds and vibes captured here. Not to say this is actually a world album, more like an unplugged, ethnically diverse whatzis that might as well have come from Gloria Estefan after a Wah bender, in other words yoga-workout chill.

Although her voice is quite like Estefan’s, Ayoub is more charming (certainly more unique-sounding) when warbling lyrics in Semitic tongues (“Habibi”) than Spanish, but that’s just nitpicking on my part – brainy soccer moms could get a lot out of this one.

By Eric Saeger

Homepage: Elizabeth Ayoub
Homepage: Four Quarters Entertainment