'Vogue' touts Israeli singer as 2016's top 'sexually liberated' voice

Venerated fashion magazine recognizes emerging Tel Aviv-based artist Ziv Barashi.

By SHAWN RODGERS
Updated: DECEMBER 20, 2016 17:23
Ziv Barashi (photo credit: FACEBOOK)
Ziv Barashi
(photo credit: FACEBOOK)
A little-known Israeli singer has been touted by Vogue magazine as the most sexually liberated new voice of 2016.
Twenty-year-old singer and beat-maker Ziv Barashi, who was born and raised in Jerusalem, but now resides in Tel Aviv, has just released her first extended play recording called Smoke To, Make Love To, Fall Into.
According to Vogue, the EP (a collection of five songs, two of which have love in the title) was born from Barashi’s own anxiety and struggle, both personal and political.
She recorded the songs last year in her native Jerusalem, during a time when not only her first real relationship was deteriorating, but also the spate of terrorist stabbings attacks were taking place in the Holy City.
“I was so scared that I stayed home and made beats all day long, and I made the whole EP,” Barashi says. “But, also, I had been living with the boy I loved, and things changed in my life. My first relationship – it was a tough love, and there were times that music was my only way to communicate.”
In the Vogue interview, Barashi describes the album as not morose – but rather glittering, spacey, and, most pointedly, sensual.
“Music should be hot, you know? I’m not afraid to talk about hot stuff: Yeah I’m a woman, and I make love, and I smoke weed, and I enjoy it,” Barashi says. Barashi said that she had to prove herself, as it’s “so rare to be a woman making her own beats in Israel.”
Through the help of YouTube tutorials, she taught herself how to hone her skills on an Ableton production program. “I want to be seen as a producer, not just as a female producer,” says Barashi.