Shoshana Damari

Shoshana Damari was born in 1923 in Bashar

Damari was born Shodia Damari in Bashar, Yemen, the youngest of five children. Her family walked to Aden and reached the Land of Israel by train on June 15, 1924. They settled in Rishon Lezion, where she went to the Habib school.

As a girl she sang and played drum beside her mother at Yemenite community events. She studied singing and acting at the Shulamit studio in Tel Aviv, run by Shlomo Bosmi. They married in February 1940, he became her agent, and their daughter Nava was born in 1943.

She first sang solo on radio in August 1938 and gave her first solo concert in 1939. With the Li-La-Lo theater she sang "Kalaniyot" by Natan Alterman and Moshe Wilensky, who composed most of her songs. During the War of Independence she sang for soldiers, and she toured the Cyprus internment camps.

Her first album came out in 1948. She acted in the films "Hill 24 Doesn't Answer" and "Be'Ein Moledet" and performed widely abroad. In 1987 she sang a duet with Boaz Sharabi, and in 1988 she received the Israel Prize and released the album "Or".

In 2005 she recorded two tracks with Idan Raichel's Project. She died of pneumonia in Tel Aviv in 2006 and was buried in the Trumpeldor Cemetery.