Ofra Haza: Madonna of the dark soul

The day Ofra Haza died was actually the second time Israel had been plunged into a state of mourning for her. Thirteen years earlier, in February 1987, a Cessna aircraft carrying the most celebrated Israeli pop star of her generation had hit the side of a mountain on the border of Israel and Jordan. In the hours it took rescuers to find Haza and her entourage, Israeli newspapers assumed the worst. "We lay there in the desert," remembers Haza's manager Bezalel Aloni, who was also on the plane. "Ofra said that whatever happened next would be God's will. The day after that was like a national holiday. There was such jubilation."

For many Israelis, it was hard to detect "God's will" in the manner of Haza's eventual passing. Ten years ago, the news that she had died, aged 42, as a result of Aids-related illness, belied everything Israel thought it knew about her. Throughout the 1980s and 90s, she was almost a wholesome mirror image of the kind of star Madonna was in the west. "She kept a clean image," remembers Isthar Ashdoth, a producer and musician who worked with her. "You never saw a picture of her with a man or any dirty gossip. For her, it was all about the voice."

She had been entertaining audiences ever since she wandered into Aloni's orbit, aged just 11. Both Haza and Aloni came from the poor Hatikva district of Tel Aviv. She was the youngest of eight children, born to a generation of Yemeni Jews whose ancient way of life changed when their entire population was airlifted to the newly founded Israel. "She became part of my family along with my wife and two sons," says Aloni. "I wrote plays … I wanted to be a member of the Israeli parliament. I was not a songwriter, but I started writing songs for her, and – like a miracle! – they became hits."

By 1983, when Haza represented Israel in the Eurovision song contest in Munich, she had enjoyed a string of Aloni-penned hits in her own country, but there was little to suggest she wanted to do anything other than match the success of the western pop stars who were ubiquitous on Israeli radio. However, Haza's next album was conceived as a thank you to her family – an album of devotional poems and secular street songs passed down from her Yemeni forebears. When Haza sang them, she sounded like a woman who was mainlining the hardships of centuries.

Whatever status Yemenite Songs has gone on to accrue, the original reception meted out to it was bewilderment. Wally Brill, who would later work as a producer for Haza, attempts to put the album into context: "There has always been a sort of chav culture in Israel. The notion of Ofra becoming this poster girl of world music was surreal. It's on a par with Cheryl Cole deciding that her next album will be comprised of Northumbrian fishing shanties."

While Israel scratched its head, visiting British pirate DJ Grant Goddard happened upon one of Haza's new songs and proceeded to set off a remarkable domino effect. Over at the offices of the London indie label GlobeStyle, Ben Mandelson heard the song and set about finding out more. "We contacted her label in Israel and said this is an amazing record. Can we release it? And they said, 'Are you sure? But what about all the Eurovision stuff, all the great pop stuff?' And we said, 'No thank you. We'd like the Yemenite one, please.'"

Hearing Im Nin'Alu on John Peel's show, emerging DJs Coldcut sampled it for their remix of Eric B & Rakim's hit Paid in Full. Then, when the identity of the voice became known, Im Nin'Alu itself became a Top 20 hit.

As Haza's stock rose, Aloni was keen to ensure his charge received treatment commensurate to her new status. After signing with Sire in America, he recalls, "We changed our conditions to fly first class, and to always have a hotel suite, like a star." If Yemenite Songs – an album that cost £5,000 to record – had become a worldwide hit, then there was no telling where its major-label successor would propel her. But Shaday, recorded in unfocused sessions in Somerset and Paris, with Brill producing, appeared to a muted reception. Subsequent albums, recorded with rock-school LA sessioneers, cost far more to make than Yemenite Songs, yet sold a fraction of that record.

Still, Haza had reason to believe her star was in the ascendant. In Hollywood, she was asked to voice Yocheved, mother of Moses, in The Prince of Egypt and sing the film's keynote song, Deliver Us. When composer Hans Zimmer introduced Haza to the film's three directors, they modelled the character on her.

Having resisted the overtures of men for all of her adult life, Haza advanced towards her 40th year unsure who she would settle down with. When she met and fell in love with Tel Aviv businessman Doron Ashkenazi, her professional relationship with Aloni came to an end, causing her former svengali to question Ashkenazi and his motives for pursuing Haza.

At this point, the only help for which Haza was reaching out was musical. In mid-1999, Roger Armstrong, the soft-spoken Irish head of Ace records – GlobeStyle's parent company – received a phone call from her. "It was unusual for her to call me. Normally, it would be Bezalel, but of course, he was no longer there." With some trepidation, Armstrong agreed to meet Haza in a London hotel where she would play him some new songs. "Boy were they good. They just sparkled. I couldn't believe what I was hearing." Craig Leon, who produced those demos, agrees. "She was writing her own stuff. She'd said that this was what she had always been longing to do, but no one would let her."

The new recordings never got released: Haza died before a deal could be done.

Within hours of the news of Haza's death, the recriminations began. Many Israelis believed Ashkenazi – who died following a drug overdose in April 2001 – infected Haza with the Aids virus. His family have never revealed whether he, too, had Aids, but, for the first time, Craig Leon relays new information. Ashkenazi, he says, told him Haza became infected from a blood transfusion in a Turkish hospital after suffering a miscarriage.

And what of those final recordings? Aloni insists they shouldn't appear – "It's best for people to remember her in a good way, not in a crying way" – but he appears to have no legal claim over them. Craig Leon, himself unsure of their status, picks up a CD and plays me three of them. Barely adorned by instrumentation and piercingly beautiful, you can hear these songs in either of two ways. As liturgies to new love from a woman who has finally found her soulmate, or as cries of fathomless sadness from a place too dark to imagine.

The Israeli Madonna airs on Radio 4, on 30 December.