About the diverse Israeli culture. This blog focus on the positive diverse faces of Israel and is a political blog and it covers my personal taste in music, films, TV-shows and news.
Now a new israeli duo is turning the arabic-iranian-spanish hit HENNA into a hebrew hit.
Cheb Khaled, the king of raï,had a great success with the hit HENNA with Swedish-Iranian singer Cameron Cartio in the arab countries and Europe. Raï is northafrican music mixed with arabic and western music. Cheb Khaled has become very famous for his big hit "Aisha" that was covered in hebrew by israeli singer Haim Moshe previously
The israeli singers are Itzik Shamli and Oshri Abergel and the hebrew song title is "Layla", meaning "Night"...
The first nice report Swedish media has made in years from Israel.
The face-book activist Ronny Edrys initiative to peaceful relations to Iran got some attentions here in Swedish media. I think the posters are beutiful
Eyal Golan oriental show right now live from Tel Aviv. It reminds me of my Dudu Aharon show. Infact they actually performed duets with Dudu Aharon in tonights final show.
Tonight an arab woman was in the final...She, Nashreen Qadri won together with Maor Ashuel the honorable prize to record an oriental album... On the question what of her performances she liked best of her performances she told mako.co.il that it was the song "Sma Israel"
Here is her clip when she is singing that song:
Lyrics of the song:
"Shma (Hear) Israel my God, you're the omnipotent You gave me my life, you gave me everything
In my eyes a tear, the heart cries quietly And when the heart is quiet, the soul screams"
in the colors of the rainbow she decorates herself
Salama ya Salama
she opens her heart and sells love"
One of my favorite singers of last year and this year is a young female singer from Israel. Her name is Eti Biton. With her newly released album in Israel called "Chinese Proverb", she re-uses arabic pop melodies but adds completely new hebrew lyrics and life to the melodies. Her record companies way of totally legally lending melodies from arabic composers has caused controversy among some arabic composers claiming israelis are "stealing" the melodies...Unfortunatelly this is a sign of the backward racism towards israelis from nations surrounding Israel. Record companies can buy a composers melody from another record company which has bought rights to the songs from the original composer.
Anyway...the album has some great commercial hits like "Chinese Proverb", "My thief", "Your mother" and "Salama ya Salama" ...You who know the arabic original lyrics of "Salma ya Salama" performed by Dalida may think the lyrics are odd as the new lyrics tell the story of a prostitute instead of a love story....
The Queen of gipsy arabic songs, Ishtar is back in a lovely duet.
Her albums are as rare as her shows but I am sure you all heard her arabic/latino hits.("Alabina, "Salma Ya salama", "Vengan")
In 2009 she recorded the arabic/hebrew duet "Yahad" in duet with Israeli mizrahi singer Kobi Peretz, a duet which was awarded as 'Song Of The Year' at the Apple Music Awards in New York.
This year they are united again in arabic/hebrew duet Zachiti ("I won") included on Kobis new album. Kobi comes from Moroccan jewish family and the music runs in his blood. His father was a singer at the Moroccan king Hassan II court.
Hebrew male lyrics: "I Can not live one minute without love without love with you
I admit I have won
My heart says I was not mistaken
I want to tell you again so that you´ll understand
There is only one in my heart, believe it!
arabic female lyrics: ده حبيبي ده أيوا ايوا This is my beloved, yes he is كدة كدة في هواه انا دايبة I'm dissolved in his love like this الوعد اللي بيني وبينه خلوني اعيش وياه The promise between me & him, let me live with him
Male hebrew lyrics:
Only with you I feel the fire in my soul , my soul
Nothing will stop me when you're with me, my love
I thank God that I have won
My heart says I was not mistaken
I want to tell you again so that you'll understand
There is only one in my heart, believe it!
female arabic lyrics:
.... ننسى كلام الناس .... let's forget people's words ..... بحبنا عاشقين نفسي بس نتهنى الزمن ما بستنى لا لا I only wish to be happy Time doesn't wait, no it doesn't
Shimon Peres , the president of Israel is launching a facebook site to speak to Arabs in the world. To succeed to promote his facebooks site Shimon Peres, 89, joined the most played DJ in the countries of Arab Spring, Noy Alooshe, who is Israeli with Tunisian background .He created the Khaddaffi song that reached millions of Arabs during the war against Khadaffi. So here Peres goes techno...a cool way to reach out to the world for peace!
