Two new Yemeni Tv channels, Saba and Al Yamaniah, will transmit live the concert of the Syrian singer Asalah Nasri from Aden tonight at 9 pm, said official sources.  

Organizers of the concert confirmed to Mareb press that buying tickets to attend the concert of the famous Arab diva has remarkably increased despite earlier warnings and death threats by extremists who look at arts and music as forbidden.

 The organizers expected about fifty thousand people and fans to attend the concert to be held by the Syrian singer Asalah Nasri and the Egyptian singer Esam Karika tonight in the coastal city of Aden south of Yemen.

Upon her arrival to Aden Wednesday, Asalah said 50 per cent her money from the concert would go for people of Ghaza and the cancer patients in Yemen.

In a press conference, she said her art was sublime for feeding the spirit and it was unfair to put all artists in one basket, in an obvious reference to earlier statements by Islamists who considered her concert as b a call for vice.
 

She confirmed that she had insisted to hold this concert despite death threats because she is "stubborn woman since childhood".

In addition to warnings and threats released in Yemen before her arrival, she had received four emails threatening to kill her if she came to Yemen to hold the concert but she challenged them.

The threat emails considered the concert as a call for vice and pornography, she said.
However, she did not hide the worry and fear caused by her mother and her children who wanted her not to go to Yemen after they heard about the threats.

She said she came with good impression in her mind about Yemen and people of Yemen. "My love to Yemen was also behind my insistence to come to hold this concert".
 
The message of her art, she said, is the peace and love to the whole world, mentioning the Yemeni singer Abu Bakr Salem and Lebanese singer Fayrooz as her teachers and models.

The moderation should be the real mission of art, a lot of artists practice their religious rituals, she said.

On his part the Egyptian singer, Esam Karika, who will participate in the concert tonight, said he had known a lot about Yemen from his friend the Yemeni singer Ahmed Fathi. "He made me love Yemen very much."

Marwan Al Khaled, manager of Aden artistic festival, said that holding Asalah concert on February 14 was  because of the timing of the airplane flights not because of the Valentine Day, which some people thought the concert would be to celebrate this "Western occasion", increasing anger of some people who refuse celebration of this day. 

For the threats, he said, it was good propaganda for the concert as audience bought much more tickets than they expected. "We expect about 40-50 tickets to be sold after that fuss."
 
 Before Asalah arrived in Yemen, a press statement allegedly by Al Qaeda said she would meet the same fate of Bhotu if she had dared to come over for holding the concert.

Additionally,  some Islamists said the concert was a violation of Shariah and constitution. 

Last year, after concerts separately held in Sana'a by artists Ragheb Alama and Nawal Al Zughbi, a group of extremist Islamists issued fatwas prohibiting concerts and music considering the holding of concerts as a call for vice  among the conservative Yemeni society.