NOA (by IMusic Info) THE HISTORY (1997)

Noa heard her calling early. "At 18 I got this mortality thing," she says, reflecting on her years in the army, "this perspective on how short life is, how there is absolutely no time to waste. You better do what you love in life because if you don't, that's it -- you don't get a second chance. I love performing. It is my greatest strength." Noa is not shy about expressing her passion for this calling, or for Calling, her second album on Geffen Records.

And if Noa's calling is to perform, her mission is to make people think -- particularly about the power of communication and how it can break down the barriers separating cultures. As an Israeli raised in the Bronx, a resident of Tel Aviv whose stage is quite literally the world, and a pop songwriter of Yemenite descent who sings in English, she is eminently qualified for the job. "I've always considered myself an artist with something to say," Noa explains. "I embrace that responsibility. I want to convey something meaningful to people; there's too little time and too many things going on to squander that opportunity."

In pursuing her outspoken muse, Noa has created a uniquely Israeli-American music. Says guitarist Gil Dor, whom Noa calls her "musical director/artistic advisor" and with whom she has collaborated on four albums, "Noa's lyrical sensibility is American, but the harmonies, the inflections are Middle Eastern." She has been influenced by quintessentially American singer-songwriter Paul Simon and the Broadway stage, but she is also known for playing the Darbukkah, a hand-held Arabic drum. "It is a sound that serves the essence of Noa's being," Dor says of their cross-cultural medium, "the essential nature of this creature who hovers somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic, between Israel and America."

With Calling, Noa and Dor have managed to seamlessly fuse East and West. This feat has not always been so easy in Noa's personal life. "I learned to live with conflict at an early age," she confides. "But it's given me a perspective on life and people that I never would have gotten otherwise. Besides, most great songs come from some sort of internal conflict."

Though she did not experience a real "identity crisis" until she was a teenager -- an event that resulted in her return to Israel after 16 years -- Noa had long struggled with questions of self-definition. Her family moved from Israel to upstate New York when Noa was a year old (her full name is Achinoam Nini). They settled in the Bronx when she was five. At home she spoke Hebrew and Yemenite (the language handed down from her grandparents); elsewhere, she spoke English. She attended a Jewish day school where the majority of students were of European, not Arabic, extraction. When she got older and began going to dance clubs with her friends, she was frequently mistaken for a Puerto Rican.

By the time Noa turned 15 -- "the age of enlightenment," she says with a sly smile -- she began to feel deeply uncomfortable. "At some point I became very unhappy," she remembers. "I was torn between the traditional environment of my parents' home and the outside world. I needed to figure out who this dark-skinned thing was -- Jewish, Israeli, Yemenite, American? I was confused, and I started to become obsessed with understanding exactly what my identity was.

"I was also in love with this guy I'd met on a trip to Israel, whom I later married. And I wanted to leave home, be on my own." At 17 Noa left New York's High School for the Performing Arts and moved to Israel. Crediting her parents with considerable wisdom, she remarks, "They let me go my way. They trusted me with that choice, this huge responsibility. It gave me confidence and maturity."

In Israel, military service is mandatory. After finishing high school, Noa landed in an outfit charged with entertaining the troops. For the next two years she was a singing sergeant, traveling throughout Israel.