As a Jewish social entrepreneurial venture, Shemspeed is committed to building a successful business founded on Jewish values, deeply rooted in the Jewish community, with a strong social conscience, and an activist agenda. Shemspeed is also dedicated to cultural, ethnic, and racial diversity. These ideals are reflected in Shemspeed’s programming — the Sephardic Music Festival, Keffiyeh Project, Israeli / World Music Party, and the Jewish Muslim Hip-Hop Sulha — as well as by our artistic collaborations with high profile personalities such as Matisyahu, Idan Raichel, Miri Ben-Ari, Rohan Marley, Snoop Dogg, Lou Reed, and Eminem. At Shemspeed, we believe in the power of music to break down boundaries, challenge stereotypes, and unify people from different faiths, races, and cultural backgrounds. As an organization, our core values include promoting creative collaboration, encouraging cultural bridge-building, establishing common ground, and celebrating diversity.

The Sephardic Music Festival is an annual event which is held concurrently with Hanukkah. Scheduling the Sephardic Music Festival over the Hanukkah holiday not only offers the Jewish community a unique and festive way to celebrate the season, the festival is ideally positioned to generate maximum media coverage. Last year’s Sephardic Music Festival (December, 2010) was the largest and most successful ever. The kick-off event for the festival was an “Art Rave” complete with live music, performance and graffiti artists, art and sculptural installations, and a fashion show. There was a massive tagging wall / art mural which gave attendees the opportunity to add their own creative and artistic stamp to the evening’s events. This remarkably successful event not only drew a young, hip, and enthusiastic audience, it generated major media coverage, including a spread in the Wall Street Journal. Publicity for the 6th Annual Sephardic Music Festival appeared in over 35 different media outlets including print, online, radio, T.V., and social networking / new media.

A start-up company, Shemspeed is a sustainable business with seven years of growth and a proven record of commercial success. With its expanding roster of artists / performers, its reputation for high production values, innovative marketing, and quality programming, its history of artistic collaboration and joint ventures, and its rock-solid understanding of market trends and the youth culture, Shemspeed is a recognized leader in the field of contemporary Jewish music. Shemspeed’s media coverage has skyrocketed in the last 12 months across all media categories — traditional print media, internet news sites, digital magazines, high profile blogs, social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube), as well as radio and television (both national and international). Coverage has included such diverse media sources as: the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, SPIN, XXL, Time Out New York, the Jewish Week, Tablet Magazine, Jewlicious.com, as well as Conan O’Brien, CBS, and BBC World. In addition to an established web presence, Shemspeed’s forward-looking utilization of social networking and new media is beginning to pay off in a big way. Shemspeed has 14,597,263 YouTube views (number is an aggregate of label and artist stats) — a record unmatched by any other label featuring Jewish music (Shemspeed’s YouTube views and Twitter followers are more than double that of our biggest competitor).

This year, the 7th Annual Sephardic Music Festival will be lighting up the eight nights of Hanukkah with concerts / live performances in venues around New York from December 20-28, 2011. The 2011 Sephardic Music Festival is expected to be the biggest and best one yet. While it is still in the planning stages, the festival will feature the latest Ladino, Mizrahi, and Yemenite musical talent, will showcase an outstanding range of musical styles and artistic visions, and will be an exotic, rhythm-filled, and heartfelt experience designed to make audiences’ hips shake and souls soar.