If you can buy only a couple of albums this year, absolutely make this one of them! Of Yemenite Jewish parentage, Ofra may be Israel’s biggest star; winning awards year after year, successfully combining her indescribable voice with traditional songs (up to 2500 years old!) and contemporary rhythms...resulting in a sound so compelling, so driving, so haunting, so moving, that language ceases to be such a barrier. This album features Yemenite Jewish music from one of the oldest communities in the world, performed in Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic. The secular songs are traditionally sung only by women; some of the devotional material descends from poetry of complex medieval meter and rhyme written by Rabbi Shalom Shabazi (1616-1670). Very, very highly recommended. LP only. (GlobeStyle 006) $9.95