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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Bleak but still good Ofra album, January 30, 2003
Kirya, Ofra Haza's 1992 release, is a more sombre affair after the danceable Desert Wind. It's more thematic of Israel itself, its past history and current legacy as a Middle Eastern warzone.Her soaring vocals are still in effect in the Hebrew-sung title track. As she explains in a note before the lyrics, Kirya is an ancient Hebrew nickname for Jerusalem. It's a song praising Jerusalem as incomparable in beauty, but a city where so many of Israel's sons die everyday because of her, something that continues still today. "Horashoot (The Bridge)" implies crossing the bridge together, in a relationship like marriage, for a better tomorrow. This song is in reference to the Middle East situation, where neither side wants to cross that bridge, yet Ofra believes that "we can cross the bridge together/to cross the bridge forever." The musical tone is purely Middle Eastern, except she uses synthesizers instead of the darbouka which made Shaday such an exotic album. "Innocent" is a hymn to the refugees torn apart by war, bereft of hope, and in the case of children, bereft of parents. The chorus sung in Hebrew and puts Ofra's vocals to great effect: "Oh my god, I want to be wherever you are." It ends with a chorus of backing vocalists going "Na na na na na na. etc." The bleakest but best song on Kirya is "Trains Of No Return". This song is a reference to the trains carrying Jews to their destinations in Auschwitz, Dachau, and Buchenwald. She sings of the trains "Don't let them roll again" and "we need the rain...to wash the trains." This is song half in English. The elegiac violin adds to the song's desolateness in a way Itzhak Perlman's violin would do in Schindler's List. Another half-English song, "Mystery Fate and Love" has a mystical ambience about it, as she asks her god to "give me a hand to hold on to." Set in "ancient time", presumably Old Testament days, "Daw Da Hiya" is a young, beautiful, and passionate girl who violated the taboos of her time by taking a man without her father's permission, becoming pregnant out of wedlock, shamed her family, and ending up condemned to death. Iggy Pop does the English vocal narration while Ofra sings in Hebrew. It calls for progress in women's rights, as Iggy narrates: "In a time and place, where a woman can't show her face, her life is ruled by men. That shouldn't happen again." With the guitar, the music has a tinge of Spanish as well as Hebrew. "Don't Forsake Me" is a plea against abandonment in old age but also the realization of mortality. She sings "Don't cast me away when I start to fade, when my mind's unmade. At one point, the synthesizers have that Middle Eastern sound that made "Im Nin Alu" a hit. Mostly English lyrics. "Barefoot" is a slow samba-kind of number with Spanish guitar sung totally in Hebrew. "Take 7/8" is a Middle-Eastern flavoured dance song that figured in celebrations and wedding parties. The sax and ut, a bagpipe/violin like instrument figure here. When peace finally comes, let's all dance to this. Ofra's voice is still robust and lovely. Kirya had no hint of the drastic change that would come with what would be her last album. Yet compared to Shaday and Desert Wind, it's definitely bleaker, despite having upbeat numbers. That may be because it came on the heels of the intifadeh of the late 80's/early 90's. So the next time Israelis wonder why there should be peace, maybe they should remind themselves by the title track.
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by Ofra Haza 
