“Aah” Album

“Aah” first album for Yolla Khalife was born from the meeting of Yolla and brilliant musicians from Macedonia (Aleksandar  Petrov, Gazmend Berisha, Oliver Josifovski, Amet Aljus),  Vasil Hadzimanov ( from Serbia) and others

Between traditional and soft Arabic songs, Yolla suggested a musical, gentle and fluid trip.

A rare quality of music which offered a mixture of oriental and Balkanic, Tzigane, Jazz and world music.

Click Here to Listen to the Album

Dedication:

The singing bug.. I caught it early, when I was a little girl. The earliest tunes I recall caressed my ears at church, sitting in my pew, with my mother’s beautiful silhouette appearing before me…

As I hark back to my school days in the lush Jezzine Forest and to the moon-lit nights of my childhood, I hear the echo of my voice resounding after beyond the mountain, spreading, bouncing amidst the interplay of shade and golden sun rays of a breathtaking nature… A love story has been woven between me and singing…

I grew up with an all-consuming zeal and passion, while a secret garden filled my eyes and days with light…An internal gladness, a mysterious sweet melancholy, dreams, flights of the spirit, infinity…

This first-born baby is a summation of a life in which I experienced love, beauty, joy, friendship, pleasure, innocence, and impetuosity….

Intermixed with that experience was a bitter close of frustration, loneliness, sorrow, idleness, anxiety,  fears, illness, and the loss of places and people dear to me…

I had to learn to be a ease among hazards, to find intimacy with silence, to dig deep inside myself to exhaustion, to wrestle with myself, to succumb, and to rise after each death…

In this album, I recapture the tenderness of the childhood that had been left one day on the banks of a distant past, colored now with the experience of the woman that I have become…

I sing to myself… a call to life, an invocation to go and meet the essence in a virgin heart with the fervor of the present moment…

As I sing… I think of “Wedad”, my mother… the woman who made the greatest impression upon me in this world with her bashful dreams and her beating heart.. I think “Jamal”, my grandmother.. of how I was dazzled by her beautiful braids and her good looks.. I think of all the generous, loving women… mothers, lovers, lonesome souls… who carried life within them and around them… I think of my father, with his kind hands, fashioned of sweat and love, the joy of living… I think of my affectionate family… of my two sons, the jewels of my being…

I think of my numerous friends who supported me and pushed me to the depth and shepherded me beyond myself… I think of the magnificent musicians who gave the best of themselves. With them, I have shared a magical time of feeling and creativity…

I think of the renewal of seasons and lives….

I think of “Keandre”, his little legs, his beautiful eyes, his sunny laughter.