Gila Beshari

Gila's parents, like most of Israel's Yemenite community, immigrated to Israel from Yemen if the first two years after the Jewish state was founded in 1948. Gila was born in Israel into a close-knit, traditional family, where her liberal father not only encouraged her to sing, but also taught her the closed world of men's songs. The young Gila fell in love with the melodies and inflections of the Yemenite synagogues – with the innocent, but impossible dream of becoming a Yemenite cantor herself. To this day, Gila's mastery of Yemenite men's songs remains unrivalled among Yemenite women singers. Embraced by the divas who had learnt their craft in the different villages of Yemen, Gila established a reputation for authenticity in women's songs as well. She became passionately interested in preserving the haunting melodies being lost with that passing generation and began collecting old Yemenite recordings, revitalizing many in her concerts. After receiving rave reviews from New Delhi to Carnegie Hall, Gila was repeatedly pursued to record an album of Yemenite music. Gila demurred, less concerned about showcasing her voice then doing the music justice. Finally She found a team that shared her vision: an esthetic, yet totally ethnic, Yemenite production with a full array of acoustic instruments from the Arabian Gulf. Gila became famous as a result of her solo for Israeli composer Mark Kopytman's "Memory..." (1981) under the conducting of Gary Bertini. You will find your spirits awash in her melodious singing style of the beautiful sounds of Yemeni Hebrew and the Judeo-Hispanic language Ladino.