With her long ombre curls, naval-baring streetwear top and chunky gold jewelry, Maggie Hikri looks like any other Tel Aviv millennial as she bikes through the city’s streets in the opening scene of her latest music video, “Alashoo.”

As soon as the first chords of “Alashoo” hit, with their amalgam of synthetic pop and classical Arabic ughniyah (pop melodies with elements of different Arabic regional styles) minor-key strains, it is clear that Hikri’s music is different. When the Jewish Israeli singer starts to rap, she spills out a syncopation in perfectly accented Arabic. 

Hikri, who goes by the stage name MAGI, released her first album in 2017 — and it is entirely in Arabic. The album merges the edgy street-style beats of modern Tel Aviv with the ancient Eastern musical traditions of her family’s Yemenite heritage. Like a handful of influential Israeli artists who came before her, Hikri is a Jewish Israeli musician who has chosen to perform entirely in the language of her ancestors. Among this new breed of Arabic-singing Israelis are the A-Wa sisters, whose “Habib Galbi” track was one of the primary Middle Eastern anthems of 2016; Egyptian- and Iraqi-influenced Dikla; and Arab Israeli singer Nasreen Qadri, whose music is loved equally by Jews and Muslims.

Nearly 50% of Israelis can trace their roots to Arabic-speaking nations like Yemen, Syria and Iraq. The discography of Israeli music shows that Arab-language music has held a small but hallowed place in the hearts of listeners in the Jewish state. Ofra Haza, aka "the Israeli Madonna,” filled Israeli airwaves with Yemen-inspired songs — in English, Hebrew and Arabic — as early as the 1970s. Iranian-born Rita, who achieved rock-star-level status in the 1980s and 1990s, sings in both Hebrew and Persian and represented Israel at the 1990 Eurovision Song Contest.