A-WA
A-WA performing in 2015
A-WA performing in 2015
Background information
OriginShaharut, Israel
Genres
Years active2015-
Labels
Members
  • Liron Haim
  • Tagel Haim<
  • Tair Haim
Websitea-wamusic.com

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]

Personal lives

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]

Musical career

A-WA first formed in 2011, after the trio finished college,[7] and they began uploading music to YouTube.[8]

A-WA in 2016

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]

Musical style

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]

Discography

  • Habib Galbi (2016)
  • Bayti Fi Rasi (2019)

See also

References

  1. ↑ "The Israeli Sisters Whose Music Video Is Sweeping Across the Arab World". Archived from the original on 6 April 2018. Retrieved 25 May 2016.
  2. 1 2 3 "A-Wa's Unlikely Journey from Rural Israel to Global Fame". The Forward. 6 August 2015. Retrieved 29 April 2023.
  3. ↑ Steinberg, Jessica. "The hip-hop groove of the Yemenite tune". www.timesofisrael.com. Retrieved 29 April 2023.
  4. 1 2 Paltrowitz, Darren (17 June 2019). "A-WA's Liron Haim, Tagel Haim and Tair Haim on Making Music that's Diverse". Jewish Journal. Retrieved 29 April 2023.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Davis, Barry (6 September 2015). "Digging them roots". The Jerusalem Post | JPost.com. Retrieved 29 April 2023.
  6. ↑ Arad, Dafna (3 April 2015). "The Other Haim Song-sisters Are Yemenite – and Just as Viral". Haaretz. Retrieved 29 April 2023.
  7. ↑ "Touring Tel Aviv with the Feminist and Fashionable A-WA Sisters". Vogue. 14 September 2016. Retrieved 29 April 2023.
  8. 1 2 Press, Viva Sarah (30 March 2015). "Israel's Haim sisters conquer Arab music world". ISRAEL21c. Retrieved 29 April 2023.
  9. ↑ Artsy, Avishay (5 June 2015). "Israel says A-WA — "Yes!" — to singing Yemeni sisters". The World. Retrieved 29 April 2023.
  10. ↑ "These singing sisters are wildly popular in Yemen. And they're Israeli Jews". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 29 April 2023.
  11. ↑ Ferla, Ruth La (1 July 2016). "Sister Act: Shopping with A-Wa". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 29 April 2023.
  12. ↑ Dwek, Joel (18 July 2020). "Israel: Habib Galbi – A-WA". 200worldalbums.com. Retrieved 15 October 2023.
  13. ↑ "Meet A-WA, the Israeli Sister Trio Merging Yemenite Folk Songs and Electronic Beats". www.vice.com. Retrieved 29 April 2023.
  14. 1 2 3 Burack, Emily (29 May 2019). "A-WA, a Band of Yemenite Jewish Sisters, Wants You to Feel at Home – Hey Alma". www.heyalma.com. Retrieved 29 April 2023.
  15. ↑ Ahronheim, Anna (18 July 2019). "The sounds of Yemen: 3 years after first album, the Haim girls are back". The Jerusalem Post | JPost.com. Retrieved 29 April 2023.
  16. 1 2 Shapiro, Ari; Lonsdorf, Kat (3 September 2019). "The Sisters of A-WA 'Want to Bring Something New' to Yemen's Musical Traditions". NPR. Retrieved 29 April 2023.
  17. ↑ Boilen, Bob (3 September 2015). "A-WA: Tiny Desk Concert". NPR. Retrieved 29 April 2023.
  18. ↑ Goldman, Hannah Aliza (21 May 2020). "Tair Haim's New Single Is a Powerful Ode to Mizrahi Women". Hey Alma. Retrieved 29 April 2023.
  19. ↑ "A-WA's desert groove goes down a storm at South by Southwest festival". thestar.com. 19 March 2016. Retrieved 29 April 2023.
  20. 1 2 Gehr, Richard (7 July 2016). "A-Wa: The Israeli Trio Making Yemenite Tradition Global". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 29 April 2023.
  21. ↑ "A-Wa : trois soeurs entre folk yéménite et rythmes électroniques". Konbini – Musique, cinéma, sport, food, news : le meilleur de la pop culture (in French). 26 June 2015. Retrieved 29 April 2023.
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