here's report on Ofra Haza's death

[KLEZMER313 <KLEZMER313...>]

Singer Ofra Haza Dies at 41

By RON KAMPEAS
.c The Associated Press

  
JERUSALEM (AP) - Ofra Haza, who melded ancient Yemenite Jewish devotional 
poetry with 1980s techno music to become Israel's first international pop 
music success, died Wednesday. She was 41. 

Haza, who was admitted to Tel Hashomer hospital in Tel Aviv 13 days ago, died 
of massive organ failure, Dr. Zeev Rortenstein said. He refused to say why 
she was hospitalized or what led to the organ failure, saying that was her 
wish. 

Haza, the youngest of nine siblings in a Yemenite Jewish family who lived in 
the Hatikvah slum of Tel Aviv, was discovered at age 12 by a talent scout. 
She attributed her full-throated voice to singing at home with her mother. By 
the time she was 19, she was a bubble gum pop success. 

``She was Israel's first female pop idol,'' said Benny Dudkevitch, Israel 
radio's pop music editor. 

Her signature song was the defiant 1979 hit, ``The Tart's Song,'' a 
celebration of being everything - funny, flirtatious, consumerist - a young 
woman of the time was not supposed to be, with the chorus declaring, ``I 
wanna shout out loud, `I'm a tart!''' 

Later in her career, Haza was among the artists who distanced themselves from 
efforts to consolidate an ``Israeli'' sound and delved into their parents' 
ethnic roots. 

``Yemenite Songs,'' released in 1985 with a photo of her in full Yemenite 
wedding gear on the cover, was an instant Israeli hit. 

Its signature track, ``Im Ninalu,'' (``If the Gates of Heaven were Locked'') 
expanded a devotional poem by 17th century rabbi Shalom Shabazi into a modern 
love song. The melody was pure Persian Gulf, a climactic assemblage of rising 
quarter tones; the beat was pure 1980s drum machine. 

But it was not until 1988, when American rap artists Eric B. and Rakim 
sampled ``Im Ninalu'' on their dance hit ``Paid in Full,'' that Haza became 
an international phenomenon. 

A savvy self-promoter, she rereleased ``Im Ninalu'' worldwide with English 
lyrics. It was an outstanding success. 

The rerelease of ``Yemenite Songs,'' and her next album, ``Shaday,'' brought 
her worldwide attention - suddenly Ofra Haza was the byword for world music. 
Reviewers would describe other ethnic music phenomenons as ``the Bulgarian 
Ofra Haza'' or ``the Indian Ofra Haza.'' 

``For audiences in Europe and the Far East, this was something completely 
new,'' Dudkevitch said. ``In Germany alone, it was selling 15,000 copies a 
day.'' 

Haza's insistence on privacy only stoked the Israeli public's interest in her 
life. She made headlines in 1987 when she survived a small airplane crash. 
She kept her marriage two years ago to businessman Doron Ashkenazi out of the 
public eye. 

After a flush of attention that lasted into the early 1990s, her fame 
receded, although she continued to make high-profile appearances. She 
performed in Oslo when Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Foreign Minister Shimon 
Peres and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994, 
and she sang the role of Moses' mother in the 1998 film ``The Prince of 
Egypt.'' 

In Haza's last days, fans gathered at the hospital, anxious for word of her 
recovery. After her death was announced, Israeli radio stations switched to 
retrospectives of her music. 

Prime Minister Ehud Barak said she represented the Israeli success story. 

``Ofra emerged from the Hatikvah slums to reach the peak of Israeli 
culture,'' he said. ``She has left a mark on us all.'' 

There was no word on funeral arrangements, or information about survivors 
other than her husband. 

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