Ofra Haza (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 her at number 186 on its list of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time.
Of Yemenite-Mizrahi descent, Haza performed music 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. By the 1990s, at the peak of her career, she was 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. Her death in 2000 from an AIDS-related illness shocked Israeli society.
Haza was a highly influential cultural figure in Israel, and is considered one of the country's biggest cultural icons, who helped popularize Mizrahi culture.
Bat-Sheva Ofra Haza was born in Tel Aviv, Israel, to Mizrahi Jewish parents from Yemen who had emigrated to Israel in 1949 with eight children. She was the youngest of nine children (six sisters and two brothers) born to Yefet and Shoshana Haza. They were raised in a Masorti household in the Hatikva Quarter, then an impoverished, working-class area 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 theatre troupe, named “Hatikva” (The Hope) which had been recently founded by a neighbour 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 featured her at front of stage in many of his productions, and later became her manager and mentor. At the age of 19, she was Israel's foremost pop star, and news articles have retrospectively described her as "the Madonna of the East". ...
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