A-WA

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]

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]

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]

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

• Music of Israel

• Official website
• Review of Habib Galbi at NPR
• A-WA's channel on YouTube