Habibi Yessa’ed Awkatu [May My Love’s Days Be Joyous]

Aviv Ezra and Johanna Riethmueller have been playing and studying Iraqi and Arabic music together for almost seven years. The two have been collaborating in the trio “Radio Baghdad” and with other singers and projects (Riff Cohen, “Ecoute” and others). Their musical practice and discourse are integrated into their daily lives, and lead to inventive collaborations with one another and with other artists and ensembles.
Aviv Ezra is a singer and musician who started learning music on a drum set at the age of eight. For the past twelve years he has been playing and studying Iraqi and classical Arabic music. He is active in the bands “Radio Baghdad” and “The Hallways.” In addition to being a singer, Ezra also plays the drums and Arab percussion instruments, oud and keyboards.
Johanna Riethmueller started playing the violin at a young age in Hamburg, graduated from the Jerusalem Academy of Music, and has been studying and practicing classical Arabic music since 2010. Riethmueller plays in ensembles and orchestras and in collaborations with top artists. Since 2021, she has been teaching at Musrara New Music Department.
About the work:
We are looking at a broken reality. Rifts between people, between nations. A fragment of culture, fragment of trust, and hope, and a reminder of the possibility of another reality. The rift is in the connection to the past, to the place, to the historical and cultural space in which we live. From our personal and musical reality, we want to pause, to linger in this rift and disconnect and touch the almost impossible connection. To linger in one song, one maqam, one note.
We chose to perform an old Egyptian song originally performed by Umm Kulthum and composed by Zakariyya Ahmad: “Habibi Yessa’ed Awkatu.” This piece was common among Mizrahim in Israel and even among ultra-Orthodox Mizrahim who combined its melody with liturgical texts, in an attempt to bring the beloved music into synagogues. The rift created at this time with Arab culture, among those of the Mizrahi descent and in general, puts us in what we consider an obligation to continue playing the piece, despite the trends of returning to the world of piyyutim and separating the Arabic language from the Jewish musical context.
The musical structures of this type of work, originating in 1930s’ Cairo, allows repetitions and lingering in the musical and textual sentences, in words, in syllables, down to the smallest detail from which the music emanates. We wish to offer the listeners a moment of lingering within that repetition, musical and emotional transcendence, expression of pain, and nostalgia along with the power of understanding our local and geographical cultural complexity.