A-WA | |
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 A-WA performing in 2015 | |
| Background information | |
| Origin | Shaharut, Israel |
| Genres | |
| Years active | 2015- |
| Labels |
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| Members |
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| Website | a-wamusic |
A-WA (Arabic for Yes) is an Israeli band made up of the three sisters Tair, Liron, and Tagel Haim. Their single "Habib Galbi" (Love of My Heart) became a global hit, with its Yemenite traditional music mixed with hip hop and electronic music. [1]
The Haim sisters grew up in the community settlement of Shaharut, a village of about thirty families in the Arava Valley desert of southern Israel, to a father of Yemenite Jewish origin and a mother of mixed Ukrainian and Moroccan Jewish heritage. [2] Their paternal grandparents are originally from Sana'a and were brought to Israel during Operation Magic Carpet.
The Haim sisters spent most of their holidays with their paternal grandparents, singing piyyutim, [3] traditional liturgical poems in Hebrew and Aramaic, as well as traditional Yemenite songs in Arabic sung by women. Their parents also played a variety of music genres in their house, with their father playing guitar, bouzouki, and darbuka. [4] At school, the sister took voice, piano, theater, and dance lessons. [5]
Tair has a BA in music from Levinsky College of Education in Tel Aviv, while Liron is an architect, and Tagel is a graphic designer and illustrator. They also have two younger sisters, Shir and Tzlil, and a brother, Evyatar, who is a sound technician and was involved in the production of the album Habib Galbi. [6]
A-WA first formed in 2011, after the trio finished college, [7] and they began uploading music to YouTube. [8]
The trio was discovered by Tomer Yosef, the lead singer of Balkan Beat Box, to whom they sent a demo of "Habib Galbi", a traditional Yemenite melody sung in the Yemenite dialect of Judeo-Arabic. He showed the demo to a few elder Yemenite women, who mistook the sisters for actual singers from Yemen. [2] The music video, released in early March, [8] went viral in the Muslim world, [9] especially in Yemen. [10] [11] The three officially released the single in April 2015, [5] and it became the first song in Arabic to hit number 1 on the Israeli pop charts. [12] [13] They toured in Europe after the single's release. [5] The trio debuted the other songs from their debut album during performances in September 2015. [5] The record itself was released in 2016. [5]
A-WA's second studio album, Bayti Fi Rasi, was released in 2019. It is inspired by their great-grandmother Rachel's experiences when immigrating to Israel from Yemen as a single mother and subsequent life in a transition camp. [14] [15] [16] The trio directed a music video for one of the album's songs, "Hana Mash Hu Al Yaman". [14] That same year, the group was invited to perform at the torch-lighting ceremony on Israel's independence day. [14] In September 2019, A-WA was invited to play a Tiny Desk Concert at NPR's headquarters in Washington, D.C. [16] [17] Throughout the end of the year, they toured in Europe and the United States. [4]
In early 2020, Tair released a solo single, titled "Mitbashelet Leat". [18]
During their childhood, the three sisters listened to many different kinds of music, including Greek, jazz, R&B, hip hop, reggae, and progressive rock, but their major source of inspiration has been the traditional Yemenite songs heard at their paternal grandparents' home. [19] Their music follows the same trend as did Ofra Haza, their main inspiration, [20] decades ago, [2] mixing in this case traditional Yemenite folk music with electronic tunes, reggae, and hip hop, which they call "yemenite folk n' beat". [21]
The trio also cites psychedelic rock, including Deep Purple and Pink Floyd, as influential in their music. [20]
Ofra Haza was an Israeli singer, songwriter and actress, commonly known in the Western world as "the Madonna of the East", or "the Israeli Madonna". Her voice has been described as a "tender" mezzo-soprano. In 2023, Rolling Stone ranked Haza at number 186 on its list of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time.
Yemen, a country on the Arabian Peninsula, holds a prominent position in the realm of music, garnering recognition for its distinctive musical traditions. Revered as a cultural capital within the Arab world, Yemen has contributed significantly to the musical landscape of the region.
The music of Israel is a combination of Jewish and non-Jewish music traditions that have come together over the course of a century to create a distinctive musical culture. For almost 150 years, musicians have sought original stylistic elements that would define the emerging national spirit. In addition to creating an Israeli style and sound, Israel's musicians have made significant contributions to classical, jazz, pop rock and other international music genres. Since the 1970s, there has been a flowering of musical diversity, with Israeli rock, folk and jazz musicians creating and performing extensively, both locally and abroad. Many of the world's top classical musicians are Israelis or Israeli expatriates. The works of Israeli classical composers have been performed by leading orchestras worldwide.
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Shoshana Damari was a Yemeni-Israeli singer known as the "Queen of Hebrew Music."
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Arabic hip-hop is a segment of hip hop music performed in the Arabic-speaking world. Due to variety of dialects and local genres which exist in the localities, Arabic hip-hop music may appear very diverse depending on the country of the song. Like most artists of the genre, the hip-hop artists from the Arabic-speaking world are highly influenced by American hip-hop.
DAM is a Palestinian hip-hop group founded in 1999 by brothers Tamer and Suhell Nafar and their friend Mahmoud Jreri from the mixed city of Lod. In 2015 female singer Maysa Daw joined the group. The group's songs are themed on protest, inequality, Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and self-criticism of Arab-Israeli society, including the violence and drug dealing within Israel's mixed cities. DAM is the best-known and most famous Palestinian hip hop group; it is also often called the "quintessential Palestinian resistance band".
Shaday is an album by Israeli singer Ofra Haza, released in 1988. Shaday, recorded in both Tel Aviv and England, became Haza's international breakthrough album and includes the Hebrew-English language remix singles "Im Nin'alu" and "Galbi," as well as "Shaday" and "Da'Ale Da'Ale," also released as remix singles.
Yemenite Songs is a 1984 album by Ofra Haza, in which the Israeli pop star returned to her roots interpreting traditional Yemeni Jewish songs with lyrics coming from the poetry of 16th century Rabbi Shalom Shabazi. The album was recorded with both traditional and modern musical instruments; wooden and metal percussion, Yemenite tin and tambala, strings, brass and woodwind as well as drum machines and synthesizers. The songs are sung in Hebrew with a Yemenite accent and in Arabic.
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"Galbi" is an Arabic musical poem by Yemenite Aharon Amram that was sung by Israeli Yemenite singer Ofra Haza and others. The 1988 remix of the song, taken from the album Shaday, was issued as the follow-up to Haza's worldwide chart hit "Im Nin'Alu ".
Haim Moshe, born 20 September 1955 is an Israeli singer whose musical style has crossed over from Yemenite and Mediterranean "ethnic" music to include mainstream Israeli and western pop elements. He has helped Mizrahi music achieve wide popularity both in Israel and in Arab countries.
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Balqees Ahmed Fathi, widely known by the mononym Balqees (بلقيس), is a Yemeni-Emirati singer and actress. She came from an artistic family as her father Ahmed Fathi was a well-known Yemeni musician and her mother is also a Yemeni with an Emirati citizenship.
Yemenite Jewish poetry, often referred to as "paraliturgical poetry" because of its religious nature, has been an integral part of Yemenite Jewish culture since time immemorial. The Jews of Yemen have preserved a well-defined singing arrangement which not only includes the very poetic creation itself, but also involves a vocal and dance performance, accompanied in certain villages outside Sana'a by drumming on an empty tin-can (tanakeh) or a copper tray. The Jews of Yemen, maintaining strict adherence to Talmudic and Maimonidean halakha, observed the gezeirah which prohibited playing musical instruments, and "instead of developing the playing of musical instruments, they perfected singing and rhythm." This arrangement was integrated into the walks of life familiar to the Jews of Yemen. The texts used in the arrangement were put down in writing and later included in separate song collections (dīwāns). The social strictures and norms in Yemenite Jewish culture provide for separate settings for men and for women, where the sexes are never mixed. Men’s song usually expressed the national aspirations of the Jewish people, and it was far removed from the singing associated with the Muslim environment, whereas folk songs of Jewish women were sung by rote memory and expressed the happiness and sorrows inherent in their daily life and was, as a rule, closer to that of Muslim women.
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