VOA慢速英语2013 AS IT IS 2013-07-06 Arab-Israeli Singer Follows Her Passion

 

AS IT IS 2013-07-06 Arab-Israeli Singer Follows Her Passion

Hello again and welcome to As It Is! … your daily magazine show from VOA Learning English. I’m June Simms.

The Arab-Israeli singer-songwriter Mira Awad is well known in Europe and the Middle East. In recent years, she has also become increasingly popular in the United States. VOA’s Adam Phillips recently met up with the singer in New York. Today on As It Is, we’ll hear what she had to say and listen to some of her music.

Arab-Israeli Singer Follows Her Passion 

That’s Arab-Israeli songwriter and pop star Mira Awad. Her father is Palestinian. Her mother is from Bulgaria. Here she sings a traditional mountain song from the Arab village in northern Israel where she was born in 1975.

“It comes from the belly¹. It does not come from thinking. It does not come from a planned way of singing like opera or like the Western kind of singing, which is very, very calculated. This is much more passionate² like flamenco, like these things that really come from the blood. We say we have hot blood. It’s not by accident.”

There is an altogether different sort of heat in the soulful Europop songs that Awad’s fans are most familiar with. Consider “All My Faces,” the title song from her 2011 album.  

“It only tackles the level of my womanhood. But it’s like that about everything. We all have many faces. No one is one thing. That’s boring. We are all made of many, many, many, many, many layers.”    

Awad says this style of music would have raised eyebrows³ in her home village. Yet her village, she says was relatively⁴ modern compared to many Arab communities in the Galilee region.

“But nevertheless, it’s an Arab culture and still it is very patriarchal and the father decides for the family, the man decides for the woman. A woman is expected to go study, go work, have a career but choose the family life eventually. And I didn’t. I wanted a career. I wanted to go and follow my passions. The word ‘passions’ is scary in a culture like the one I come from. A woman having passions, that’s a woman that you can’t control.”

Breaking Away From Cultural Traditions

Awad’s history of protest and activism began at the age of 16, when she started to play in her own rock and roll band. The neighbors would often gossip and disapprove⁵ when her bandmates, all males, would pick her up in the village square and drive to nearby Nazareth to rehearse.

“It was very difficult for them to understand how come my father is letting me do that and they started even to interfere⁶ with the upbringing, you know [saying], ‘Take hold of your daughter. Put her in her place.’ So actually that’s the place that I started from protesting -- to have an equal say about my own life, to have a say at all about my own life and to choose differently if I liked to, as a woman.”

Awad left her village as soon as she could and enrolled⁷ at a university in Haifa. The Israeli city is well known for its mixed Jewish and Arab population. Awad had never defined herself in ethnic⁸ terms. But on campus, her fair skin and green eyes did not fit the common idea of what Palestinians looked like. Jewish students thought she was Jewish, and what some would say about Arabs angered her.  

“I suddenly started to realize how much racism⁹ there is against Palestinian citizens of Israel and I’m hearing this and my blood is boiling in my veins¹⁰!”   

Awad is well known in Israel and Europe for her songs about life and love. But she is possibly best known for her songs about peace, justice and equality. In 2009, she and Jewish Israeli singer Noa were chosen by the Eurovision Song Contest to sing her song “There Must Be Another Way.” The song is about building peace between their two peoples.

But Awad says her hopes go far beyond relations between Israelis and Palestinians.

“I believe that we have to go together as a human race and try to figure out how we share these resources of this poor planet that we’re on.”     

These days, one of Mira Awad’s favorite instruments is a friend’s cracked flute¹¹ that she saved from the trash. The Arab Israeli singer says she has learned to honor life’s imperfections. She says it is through such cracks that the light can shine through.

You are listening to As It Is, from VOA Learning English. I’m June Simms.

Today is a historic day for baseball fans across the United States. It was on this day in 1933 that Major League Baseball held its first ever All-Star Game. The game was held at Comiskey Park in Chicago, Illinois. Legendary¹² baseball player “Babe” Ruth -- who was well known for his career records in homeruns, slugging percentage and runs batted in -- led the American League as they defeated the National League 4-2.

1 belly   

n.肚子，腹部；(像肚子一样)鼓起的部分，膛

参考例句：

• The boss has a large belly.老板大腹便便。
• His eyes are bigger than his belly.他眼馋肚饱。

2 passionate   

adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的

参考例句：

• He is said to be the most passionate man.据说他是最有激情的人。
• He is very passionate about the project.他对那个项目非常热心。

3 eyebrows   

眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Eyebrows stop sweat from coming down into the eyes. 眉毛挡住汗水使其不能流进眼睛。
• His eyebrows project noticeably. 他的眉毛特别突出。

4 relatively   

adv.比较...地，相对地

参考例句：

• The rabbit is a relatively recent introduction in Australia.兔子是相对较新引入澳大利亚的物种。
• The operation was relatively painless.手术相对来说不痛。

5 disapprove   

v.不赞成，不同意，不批准

参考例句：

• I quite disapprove of his behaviour.我很不赞同他的行为。
• She wants to train for the theatre but her parents disapprove.她想训练自己做戏剧演员，但她的父母不赞成。

6 interfere   

v.(in)干涉，干预；(with)妨碍，打扰

参考例句：

• If we interfere, it may do more harm than good.如果我们干预的话，可能弊多利少。
• When others interfere in the affair,it always makes troubles. 别人一卷入这一事件，棘手的事情就来了。

7 enrolled   

adj.入学登记了的v.[亦作enrol]( enroll的过去式和过去分词 )；登记，招收，使入伍（或入会、入学等），参加，成为成员；记入名册；卷起，包起

参考例句：

• They have been studying hard from the moment they enrolled. 从入学时起，他们就一直努力学习。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He enrolled with an employment agency for a teaching position. 他在职业介绍所登了记以谋求一个教师的职位。 来自《简明英汉词典》

8 ethnic   

adj.人种的，种族的，异教徒的

参考例句：

• This music would sound more ethnic if you played it in steel drums.如果你用钢鼓演奏，这首乐曲将更具民族特色。
• The plan is likely only to aggravate ethnic frictions.这一方案很有可能只会加剧种族冲突。

9 racism   

n.民族主义；种族歧视(意识)

参考例句：

• He said that racism is endemic in this country.他说种族主义在该国很普遍。
• Racism causes political instability and violence.种族主义道致政治动荡和暴力事件。

10 veins   

n.纹理；矿脉( vein的名词复数 )；静脉；叶脉；纹理

参考例句：

• The blood flows from the capillaries back into the veins. 血从毛细血管流回静脉。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• I felt a pleasant glow in all my veins from the wine. 喝过酒后我浑身的血都热烘烘的，感到很舒服。 来自《简明英汉词典》

11 flute   

n.长笛；v.吹笛

参考例句：

• He took out his flute, and blew at it.他拿出笛子吹了起来。
• There is an extensive repertoire of music written for the flute.有很多供长笛演奏的曲目。

12 legendary   

adj.传奇（中）的，闻名遐迩的；n.传奇（文学）

参考例句：

• Legendary stories are passed down from parents to children.传奇故事是由父母传给孩子们的。
• Odysseus was a legendary Greek hero.奥狄修斯是传说中的希腊英雄。