Neta Elkayam – Arénas (self-released, 2026)
Neta Elkayam revisits North African Jewish musical traditions on Arénas, a delightful, absorbing and refreshing seven-track album that brings Moroccan Arabic song into dialogue with electronics, sampling, horns, and acoustic instrumentation.
The project was co-written and composed with producer Amit Hai Cohen. Both artists trace family roots to Amazigh (Berber) villages in Morocco, and the album reflects their shared interest in migration, memory, and diasporic identity.
The title refers to the Arénas transit camp in Marseille, where many North African Jewish families passed through during periods of migration. Elkayam later encountered archival reel-to-reel recordings from the camp in Jerusalem. Folklorist Prof. Yissakhar Ben-Ami recorded the tapes, which include women’s voices, fragments of songs, hums, broken melodies, and sounds from daily life.
“Not here, not there—a temporary pause between past and future, a kind of vacuum,” Elkayam says. “I found refuge in the transit camp Arénas in Marseille… a trembling sentence, a voice—continued to echo in my head, creating an avalanche of new words.”
Elkayam, an internationally recognized singer and multidisciplinary artist, sings in Moroccan Arabic and draws from Andalusian, Chaabi, and Amazigh traditions. Arénas is her first project centered on Amazigh musical traditions from the Atlas Mountains.
Cohen’s production combines synths, beats, sampling, bendirs, and New Orleans-influenced horns, while Elkayam’s voice remains central to the album’s personal reworking of Moroccan Jewish heritage.
Buy Arénas.
Author: Tyler Bennet
