Israeli sisters' band rocks fans at home, abroad

Tel Aviv - The sisters in traditional embroidered dresses who make up the band A-WA recreate a desert party at their energetic concerts.

 Three Israeli sisters have built up a passionate fan base at home and abroad with music where past meets present with a twist: a mix of "Yemenite" folk, hip-hop and Arabic.
Looking rather like heroines from the Arabian Nights - apart from the tennis shoes - the sisters in traditional embroidered dresses who make up the band A-WA recreate a desert party at their energetic concerts.
"We belong to an ancestral tribe, that of our grandparents who left Yemen to emigrate to Israel," said Tair Haim, at 32 the oldest of the trio that includes Liron, 30, and Tagel, 26.
The three sisters grew up in the desert village of Shaharut in southern Israel, near the borders of Jordan and Egypt, the daughters of an architect and holistic therapist.
They found their musical inspiration in a past that came alive through the women in their family who sang Yemeni folk songs, an oral tradition handed down from generation to generation.
They were discovered by Israeli musician Tomer Yosef of the band Balkan Beat Box and signed on as the opening act at his concerts, before they made their own impact on the music scene and he became their producer.
"I heard traditional Yemenite music for the first time when I was young, at a henna ceremony," a tradition at Jewish, Arab and Muslim weddings, Tair Haim told.
In the spring of 2015, A-WA posted an online music video of "Habib Galbi" (Arabic for "Love of My Heart"), without mentioning they were Israeli Jews. Perched on a jeep cruising over vast sands after slipping away from chores for an officer in military uniform sporting a whip, the girls appear in the video wearing bright pink veils and singing in an unidentified Arabic dialect, before joining a dance session with three boys. "We wanted people to come to us with an open mind," said Tair Haim. "We just wrote something like: 'We are bringing you a fresh desert breeze.'" "It's incredible that we have so many fans in the Arab world," said Liron Haim.
Army radio, the most listened to in Israel, helped make Habib Galbi a summer hit, a first for a song in Arabic in the Jewish state. 
 

• MENA