A WA is a band formed by 3 sisters who combine Yemenite folk singing with electronic dance music.
A-WA Habib Galbi: Yemenite Folk Meets Electronic Dance
Here is what the Times of Israel: had to say
It’s the sound of A-Wa (pronounced Ay Wah, and Arabic for “yes”), a trio of sisters who are about to release their first single, “Habib Galbi,” based on the music they’ve been hearing since birth.
“It’s like we ransacked everything,” said Tair Haim, 31, the eldest, and smallest, of the three. “We’re sisters, and we’re three sisters, we’re Yemenite, we’re from this tiny place down south, and we’re adding hip-hop and reggae to traditional Yemenite music.”
Tair, Liron and Tagel Haim, 31, 29 and 25, are perched close together on an old black leather couch in the Kaboom studio, on the edge of Tel Aviv’s Florentin. They just completed a rehearsal for next week’s gig at Barby, Tel Aviv’s club for local rockers.
The three are the oldest of their parents’ six children, raised on Shaharut, a remote southern farming community in the Arava where they learned to rely on one another.
It was Tair Haim who was first bitten by the performance bug. She got up on a makeshift stage at her seventh birthday party and announced an upcoming performance, to which she graciously invited Liron, the next in line.
The Haim sisters aren’t the first Israeli singers to sing in Yemeni Judeo-Arabic, the dialect particular to Jews from Yemen. There was Ofra Haza, who successfully sang in Yemenite, bridging the divide between Jewish and Arab cultures, as well as Achinoam Nini and other mainstream Israeli singers. Local band Yemen Blues merges ancient melodies with West African rhythms, mambo and funk.
A-WA // Yemenite Rain Song
Visit Their web site at: http://www.a-wamusic.com/
A-WA Habib Galbi: Yemenite Folk Meets Electronic Dance
