Ayelet Tsabari’s novel Songs for the Brokenhearted is a profound and masterfully told debut.
Publishers Weekly wrote of the book:
“In this heartfelt and lyrical debut novel . . . Tsabari artfully plays up the religious and secular contrasts between East and West, and her well-developed characters, dramatic plot twists, and rich descriptions of Tel Aviv will keep readers turning the pages. This is transportive.”
In his own words, here is Ayelet Tsabari’s Book Notes music playlist for her debut novel Songs for the Brokenhearted:
Songs for the Brokenhearted is a novel that begs to be accompanied by a playlist. I guess having the word songs in the title is a solid clue. It’s a novel that started with songs, more precisely with my discovery of the singing tradition of my Yemeni Jewish ancestors, an oral tradition created, sung, and disseminated by illiterate women in a patriarchal society as a way to tell stories and voice their joys and heartaches in a poetic way.
The novel begins in 1995, when Zohara, a 30 something year old Israeli Yemeni woman living in New York, distant from her family and heritage, receives news that her mother, Saida, has died. Zohara’s life had already been a mess: her marriage to an American Jewish man ended following a scandalous affair, and she’s been on leave from her PhD program and unsure whether she wanted to continue. Back in Israel, she settles into her mother’s home, where she finds recordings of her mother’s singing in Yemeni Arabic. She embarks on a journey to unlock the mystery of these tapes, unearthing secrets about her mom’s life, and in the process learning about that rich musical tradition and herself.
A second storyline takes place in the ’50s, when the large immigration of Yemeni Jews arrived in Israel and was put in immigrant camps in dire conditions. This is where we get to follow the story of Saida, Zohara’s mom.
For the past few years, I’ve been immersed in the world of Yemeni music. Many of the songs in this playlist, and some of the artists, appear or are mentioned in the novel.
Growing up in Israel, Ofra Haza was my idol. Even before she achieved world success with her album of Yemeni Jewish songs. For a little Yemeni Israeli girl, just seeing someone like me in the media was a lot. Most Mizrahi music (which is how they called music that was sung by singers of North African and Middle eastern descent in Israel and was inspired by those traditions) was relegated to the fringes and sold in pirated tapes in the central bus station in Tel Aviv. But Ofra Haza, who hailed from an impoverished neighborhood in South Tel Aviv, managed to enter the mainstream. Probably because she sang pop music that was more palatable to the masses. That is, until she released Yemenite Songs in 1984, and Israeli radio ignored the album. It ended up being picked up in Europe and becoming a huge hit and only then Israeli radio followed suit. This song, “Galbi,” (my heart in Arabic), a popular song from the women’s songs tradition, was the first single from the album. A subsequent remixed version took European dance floors by storm. (In the US, the album was released under the title, Fifty Gates of Wisdom).
Ofra Haza, Im Nin’alu, Remix Version
“Im Nin’alu” was the next single to be released and its subsequent remixed version became the most successful Israeli song of all time, reaching number one in the charts in several countries for many successive weeks. “Im Nin’alu,” as opposed to “Galbi,” is from the tradition of the Yemeni men’s songs. While the women’s songs were sung in Yemeni Arabic, the men’s songs, devotional in nature, were sung in Hebrew. The poem was written by Rabbi Shalom Shabazi, a 17th century Jewish Yemeni poet and a spiritual leader of the community. As a Yemeni girl growing up in Israel, watching Haza’s international success was astonishing and encouraging. She was nominated for a Grammy. She sat on Johnny Carson’s couch. None of this had ever seemed in the realm of possibilities for Israeli artists let alone Mizrahi artists.
The Diwan Project, Thirteen Proportions
When I tell people about the importance of singing in Yemeni Jewish life, I often mention how melodious the Yemeni prayer is. I admit that the first time I heard Jews from other backgrounds pray I found their style of praying lackluster in comparison! This is an example of what Yemeni Jewish prayer sounds like. This is the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy that are mentioned in Exodus 34:6-7
In 2015, I received a Chalmers Fellowship Grant to conduct research about Yemeni Jewish women’s lives and culture in Israel. I knew Yemenis were known for singing, but I didn’t know enough about the women’s songs or the characteristics of the tradition. With the exception of my love for Ofra Haza, I hadn’t been particularly in touch with my Yemeni Jewish identity growing up. Until I moved away to Canada and began missing my home and my family. During my research I met Gila Behsari, a Yemeni Israeli singer, and an expert in traditional Yemeni singing. I listened to her talk about the women’s songs and how it was the way for women in a conservative, oppressive society to express what in their hearts and I was inspired and fascinated. Then I heard her sing and I was transformed. I knew I wanted to learn more. So, I asked her to teach me to sing and for the next couple of years, I studied the tradition with Gila as my guide.
This is a song that appears in the novel, in chapter 11. In the scene, Zohara’s friend Nir (one of my favorite characters) plays the song and describes the singer Bracha Cohen as “this amazing singer no one outside of the Yemeni community had ever heard of.” And then they both begin to dance the Yemeni step to it. It was important for me to mention this song in the novel and include it here, too, because this is exactly the kind of music we dance to at Yemeni weddings. In the novel, Nir asks, “doesn’t it instantly make you want to dance?” I think it does!
Ayelet Hen, Daklon and Rani Danoch
The song is also a staple in Yemeni weddings and many different artists performed it over the years (including Ofra Haza). Like “Im Nin’alu,” it’s a Shabazi’s poem from the men’s tradition and is sung in Hebrew. What I find interesting about this song (and it’s something that both Zohara and Yaqub – the character that narrates the 50s story line – raise in the novel) that it appears to be a love song to a woman. But Yemeni scholars always argue that Shabazi’s poetry shouldn’t be understood literally and that clearly it is a metaphor for the Shekinah, the feminine divine spirit. Zohara challenges that notion (which might get me in trouble with the older generation who think of Shabazi as near-holy).
Zion Golan, Yuma waYaba
I had to include Zion Golan on this playlist because he’s one of the most beloved Yemeni singers in the Jewish Yemeni community and is also hugely popular in Yemen, where they call him Ziyan Joulan. Other Yemeni Israeli musicians have spoken about how satisfying it had been for them to reach fans in Yemen and in the Arab world. In this day and age, especially, I find that hopeful. Cool fact: despite being a man, Golan sings from the women’s songs quite a lot (like this song, which is sung at the henna ceremony), and even cooler, his mother-in-law Naomi Amrani, born in Yemen, penned some of his most popular songs in Yemeni Arabic, continuing a tradition of Yemeni female songwriting that had almost been lost with the immigration to Israel. Despite the fast beat, the lyrics are actually quite sad, as they often are with the women’s songs. Since it was common for the groom to pay a bride price to the bride’s family, the young bride sings to her parents, “Why didn’t you have mercy on me? Sell the sheep and goat instead.”
Ofra Haza paved the road to other young Yemeni Israeli musicians who found inspiration in traditional Yemeni music. Ravid Kahalani of Yemen Blues is one of them. I saw Yemen Blues live in Toronto when I lived there, and it was so moving to me to be dancing to Yemeni music in what was then my adapted home. This song, which translates as “when my love comes,” is an original song written by Kahalani. The video, shot in the old city in Jerusalem, is particularly fun to watch (search for the unplugged version).
Oh, how I love A-WA! When the band of three sisters from a small village in the desert in Israel broke into the global scene with “Habib Galbi,” their first single, no one knew where they were from. The clip went viral in the Arab world and the band gained a huge following in Yemen. “Habib Galbi,” love of my heart, is a hip, modern remix of a popular song from the women’s tradition, a tradition they’d been introduced to by their grandmother at a young age. I wish I could include their entire album here. I’m their hugest fan.
A-wa, Ana Mash Hu al Yaman
In their second album, A-WA took on the challenge of writing original songs in the spirit of women’s songs tradition, and by doing that, they’ve been keeping it alive. This song is particularly meaningful because it’s a protest song lamenting the treatment of Yemeni Jews when they arrived in Israel. They did an amazing job summing up in their lyrics the themes I spent many words describing in this novel!
“Ya Mehija” is another popular wedding song and a personal favorite of mine. Here it is sung by Igal Mizrahi of Gulaza, who studied the women’s songs and sings beautiful renditions of them. The song tells, in Yemeni Arabic, the biblical story of Isaac and Rebecca’s marriage and wishes the couple a marriage as successful as theirs.
My most recent discovery is Shiran, who had started her career by releasing a Hebrew album but felt like her heart wasn’t really in it. Inspired by her Yemeni grandmother, Shiran finally found her true voice in traditional Yemeni music, and it was what granted her success in the world. Here she is singing — you guessed it — a traditional Yemeni wedding song.
Ayelet Tsabari is the author of The Art of Leaving, finalist for the Writer’s Trust Hilary Weston Prize, winner of the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for memoir, and an Apple Books and Kirkus Review Best Book of 2019. Her first book, The Best Place on Earth, won the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and has been published internationally. She’s the co-editor of the anthology Tongues: On Longing and Belonging Through Language and has taught creative writing at Guelph MFA in Creative Writing and The University of King’s College MFA. Her novel, Songs for the Brokenhearted is forthcoming with Random House and HarperCollins Canada in September 2024.