Love of my heart

Say you love me, sing pop stars for Tel Aviv Pride Week

Static, Ben El Tavori and Nasreen Qadri join together in a LGBTQ-studded video celebrating Gay Pride

By Jessica Steinberg
  • Jessica Steinberg, The Times of Israel's culture and lifestyles editor, covers the Sabra scene from south to north and back to the center
 25 June 2020, 8:25 pm
Static (left), Nasreen Qadri (center) and Ben El Tavori sing about gay pride in the 2020 Pride Week single, commissioned by the city of Tel Aviv, which had to cancel its Pride celebration due to the coronavirus (Courtesy screen grab)

There isn’t a Gay Pride Parade in Tel Aviv this year due to the coronavirus, but the city is celebrating Pride Week with an official song, “Habib Albi” (Arabic for “Love of my Heart”), commissioned for the event.

The song is performed in Hebrew, English and Arabic by the colorful duo Static and Ben El Tavori, together with Nasreen Qadri and produced by Yarden Jordi Peleg.

Qadri, a Muslim convert to Judaism who sings in Hebrew and some Arabic, offers a more sultry, feminine foil to Static and Ben El Tavori’s boyish antics throughout the song, while the glamour and beat is weighted by the visages and presence of some of Tel Aviv’s LGBTQ icons, including actor Shefi Marziano, drag queen Genderika and model Stav Strashko.

It’s a single that blends Israel’s many musical worlds, including the strum of Arab hafla, Latin beats and the rhythms of hip-hop, with locations that include Tel Aviv’s light rail construction sites, the recently renovated Bloomfield Stadium and the new Yehudit pedestrian bridge over the Ayalon Highway.


 

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