Ofra Haza

Bat-Sheva Ofra Haza was born in Tel Aviv, Israel, to Mizrahi Jewish parents from Yemen who had immigrated to Israel in 1949 with eight children.

She was the youngest of nine children (six sisters and two brothers) to Yefet and Shoshana Haza.

They were raised in a Masorti household in the Hatikva Quarter, then an impoverished, working-class neighborhood of Tel Aviv.

Although named Bat-Sheva by her parents, her sisters disliked the name, and preferred to call her by her middle name, Ofra, instead.

Haza's earliest musical influences included her learning traditional Yemenite songs from her parents; Haza's mother in particular, Shoshana, proved a major influence on her musical direction.

Shoshana had been a professional singer in Yemen and often performed at family celebrations, with Haza also recalling her mother singing to her children from an early age.

Additionally early influences in her music came from Israeli folk songs, the Beatles, and Elvis Presley.

Haza herself began to exhibit a similar musical inclination to that of her mother, and began singing at an early age, including at local weddings and as a soloist in her school choir.

At the age of 12, Haza joined a local protest theater troupe, named “Hatikva” (The Hope) which had been recently founded by a neighbor of hers, Bezalel Aloni.

Haza soon emerged as one of the most gifted performers in the troupe, and manager Bezalel Aloni soon noticed her singing talent.

He spotlighted her in many of his productions, and later became her manager and mentor.

At 19, she was Israel's foremost pop star, and news articles have retrospectively described her as "the Madonna of the East".

Haza served two years in the Israel Defense Forces.

Ofra Haza (עפרה חזה; 19 November 1957 – 23 February 2000) 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.

Of Mizrahi Jewish (Yemenite-Jewish) descent, Haza's music is known as a mixture of traditional Middle Eastern and commercial singing styles, fusing elements of Eastern and Western instrumentation, orchestration and dance-beat, as well as lyrics from Mizrahi and Jewish folk tales and poetry.

By the late 1980s, Haza was an internationally successful artist, achieving large success in Europe and the Americas and appearing regularly on MTV.

During her singing career, she earned many platinum and gold discs and her music proved highly popular in the club scene.

She represented Israel in the Eurovision Song Contest 1983, with the song "Hi", finishing second with 136 points.

Her major international breakthrough came in the wake of the album Shirei Teiman ("Yemenite songs"), which she recorded in 1984.

The album consisted of songs that Haza had heard in childhood, using arrangements that combined authentic Middle Eastern percussion with classical instruments.

Haza also received critical acclaim for the albums Fifty Gates of Wisdom (1984), Desert Wind (1989), Kirya (1992) and Ofra Haza (1997).

Further recognition came with the single "Im Nin'alu", taken from the album Shaday (1988), which won the New Music Award for Best International Album of the Year.

The song topped the Eurochart for two weeks in June that year and was on heavy rotation on MTV channels across the continent.

In the annals of classical hip-hop this song would be extensively re-released, re-mixed and sampled, for example on Coldcut's remix of Eric B. & Rakim's "Paid in Full".

The single made only a brief appearance in the UK top 40 singles chart, but became a dance floor favorite across Europe and the US, topping the German charts for nine weeks.

Subsequent singles were also given the dance-beat / MTV-style video treatment, most notably, Galbi, Daw Da Hiya and Mata Hari, but none quite matched the runaway success of her first hit.

By the 1990s, at the peak of her career, she regularly featured in movie soundtracks, such as that of Dick Tracy (1990) and famously in The Prince of Egypt (1998), and her vocals were popularly sampled in hip hop.

In 1992, Kirya (co-produced by Don Was) received a Grammy nomination.

Her collaborative work with internationally established acts included the single "Temple of Love (Touched by the Hand of Ofra Haza)", recorded with The Sisters of Mercy in 1992.

Thomas Dolby co-produced Yemenite Songs and Desert Wind, on which he was also a guest musician.

In 1994, Haza released her first Hebrew album in seven years, Kol Haneshama ("The Whole Soul").

Though not an initial chart success, the album produced one of her biggest hits to date, Le'orech Hayam ("Along The Sea"), written by Ayala Asherov.

The song did not have any substantial chart success upon its release to radio but became an anthem after Haza performed it on the assembly in memorial to deceased Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, a week after he was assassinated.

Radio stations around the country began to play it.

Her death in 2000 from an AIDS -related illness shocked Israeli society.

In Israel, Haza was a highly influential cultural figure, referred to as one of the country's biggest cultural icons, who helped to popularize Mizrahi culture.

Its lyrics became even more symbolic following Haza's own death in 2000.

Im Nin'alu would go on to be featured on an in-game radio playlist of the video game Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories, released in 2005 and featured on Panjabi MC's album "Indian Timing" in 2009.