With her new live single "Jóga," ZOHARA takes an already fragile and beautiful Icelandic tune to dark, vibey territories with the addition of Arabic-inspired instrumentation, as well as fresh elements from the world of house and electronica. Heartland sings "Solsbury Hill." This reshaping of the classic track by the wild, genre-bending Heartland resonates with a profound emotional weight, underscoring it with a poignant context that's one part revolutionary go-round and another deep-seated in Heartland's personal and cultural experiences.
ZOHARA, a Moroccan-born artist raised in Tel Aviv, creates a sonic musical bridge between sonic worlds and political and spiritual realms. Combining live oud and darbuka with electro-acoustic production, she invokes the essence of her heritage as well as a tension and release format that reflects not only the emotional landscape of the original song but also the wider turmoil around her.
And this revisiting is a very deliberate act. Born out of escalating unease and apprehension, the song responds to fear and otherness with a grace that finds nuance in the very places we are most often categorized. Via ZOHARA, "Jóga" becomes an homage and a protest: celebrating the generative associations of Arabic culture while resisting erasure and partition.
ZOHARA reclaims this take, leaving room for identity, resilience, and emotional vulnerability to coexist. This is a sonic passage, not intended to be listened to but rather felt.