Hey Yo-Ya

(Not to be confused with Yo Ya, four-wall block dance.)

Circle dance by Moshiko Halevy, 1976. The song is ethnic Arabic, sung on the recording by Moshiko himself.

Concerning the song, Moshiko says:

When i was 10 years old in my neighborhood in my village we used to gather in the evening at the center of the village, all the boys, making a fire and singing. This was one of the songs I used to sing, and they would answer just as on the recording. It's in Arabic, about [boys and girls], the dark girls, the hair of the girls, all kinds of fantasy.

Not everyone knows it, it's a very very old song, nobody remembers it. Muslims might be offended by it; the words are more for fun than [reality]. It's the way we used to sing when we were children, real Arabs would never sing this kind of song. But since it was a very initimate memory of my childhood I wanted to do something with it, so I choreographed a dance to it. [After] my childhood, through school and after that dancing and Army, until I arrived in America it took more than 20 years. So I decided that maybe it would be nice to put it as a dance.

Links

Hey Yo-Ya at israelidances.com

Video at Rokdim