Taken from
http://israelipalestinian.newstrove.com/
Published in Jerusalem
Post - Indexed on Mar 20, 2002
If
singer Esther Ofarim were to adopt a motto for the frequency of her appearances
in this country, "absence makes the heart grow fonder" would be an apt
choice. Ofarim's forthcoming concert at Tel Aviv's Mann Auditorium on Wednesday
will be her first here for over two years. "There are no hard-and-fast
rules in these things," says Ofarim in a telephone call from her Hamburg
home. "I'm always happy to come to Israel, either just to visit or to give
a show." Since she first came to prominence just over 40 years ago, Ofarim
has attained and maintained a venerated status among our popular music artists.
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(March 18) - She left Israel in the Sixties to pursue a career in London. Now singer Esther Ofarim returns to perform, and tells Barry Davis what has kept her away from home for so long.
If singer Esther Ofarim were to adopt a motto for the frequency of her appearances in this country, "absence makes the heart grow fonder" would be an apt choice. Ofarim's forthcoming concert at Tel Aviv's Mann Auditorium on Wednesday will be her first here for over two years.
"There are no hard-and-fast rules in these things," says Ofarim in a telephone call from her Hamburg home. "I'm always happy to come to Israel, either just to visit or to give a show."
Since she first came to prominence just over 40 years ago, Ofarim has attained and maintained a venerated status among our popular music artists. Her infrequent concerts here are always sell outs. Songs like "Layla Layla," "Rakefet" and "Ten Li Yad" are staple items in practically any golden-oldies radio program, and appear in a four-CD box set compilation of 78 classics recorded by Ofarim, recently released by Media Direct.
Ofarim was born in Safed and moved with her family to Haifa as a young child. Initially, her artistic endeavors were of a more thespian nature.
"I was active in children's theater productions when I was at school. Then Peter Fry came over from America and started up what they called then 'community theater.' I really wanted to be an actress."
She was in her teens when she discovered a love - and an innate talent - for singing. "I was always the soloist, the lead voice in choirs, at school. I started appearing in small local clubs in and around Haifa when I was 17. I was still a baby and didn't really understand what was going on around me. That was in the late Fifties. I didn't come from a musical home: The talent came from God."
For a couple of years she remained very much the low-profile provincial performer until she hit the headlines by winning the first two places in the 1961 National Song Contest with "Sh'ani Imcha" and "Na'ama."
"At that time, going to Tel Aviv seemed to me about as ambitious a project as flying to the moon," she recalls. "It was quite a jump for me to win the song contest. It was really a classic story of success, of the unknown young artist making it to the big city and to wide recognition."
THERE WAS no stopping Ofarim after that initial success. Europe was the next stop. In 1962, she represented Israel at an international competition in Rome, and then took first place at another international song contest in Sopot, Poland. It was soon after that that she left Israel for Geneva and, when she placed second in the 1963 Eurovision Song Contest, she did so as the Swiss entry.
It was in the late Sixties that Ofarim really made the big time on the international scene as one half of the Avi and Esther Ofarim Duo, with her then husband. Avi and Esther first met when he came to her school to help choreograph a sixth-grade play in which Esther appeared. The next time their paths crossed was when Ofarim performed in an amateur production of Cinderella, directed by Fry, when Avi once again was in charge of the choreography. They subsequently began performing as a singing-guitar playing duo in small Haifa clubs, and married when they were still in the army.
In the mid-Sixties, Ofarim, both as a soloist and as a member of the duo, won a number of prestigious awards, including the Silver Rose at the 1964 Monterey Pop Festival, and two Ofarim Duo records went gold in Europe.
After their European successes, they eventually made it to London at the height of the Swinging Sixties, with hits like "Cinderella Rockefeller."
"That was a special time," Ofarim recalls. "London was the place to be then, with Carnaby Street and the whole scene there. We'd been gathering momentum for a while, so our success in England wasn't entirely unexpected, but we made it there at the right time - and we made it to the top. London has always been one of my favorite places in the world."
Like many of her contemporaries, Ofarim was influenced by the pop and rock scene of the Sixties, and her performance and recording repertoires generally include several classics by the top acts of yesteryear. "I sing songs by the Beatles, Gentle Giant and Leonard Cohen. I don't think I'm stuck in the Sixties, but I love a lot of the stuff that was going then."
IN THIS country, Ofarim is known primarily for renditions of classic Israeli material. However, she has also been involved in some adventurous progressive musical projects over the years. "In the Eighties, I recorded an album in Germany, which no one knows about in Israel, with a lot of electronic material. The producer was one of the leading figures on the electronic scene here. Half of the album is in English, and the other half in German. That was a completely different experience for me - no folk, no swinging London."
Ofarim also has a penchant for material composed by Kurt Weill. "I love music and anything which, to me, sounds good and suitable for me. I have just added a couple of Weill songs to my repertoire from his American years - although I'm not a great fan of American musicals. I have even sung Renaissance material. I'm open to all sorts of influences."
One of those influences is Israeli pianist-singer-songwriter Yoni Rechter, who is a longtime collaborator with Ofarim, and will be on the stage with her in Tel Aviv on Wednesday. Ofarim and Rechter will also be joined by veteran jazz bassist Eli Magen, guitarist Yossi Levi, wind instrument player Guri Agmon and German violinist Michael Paveletz.
"Yoni and I have developed a very close relationship in the way we perform music. I also like [keyboardist-flutist-songwriter] Shem-Tov Levy, and I sing quite a few songs of his, as well as material by [Mordechai] Ze'ira - songs like 'Hayu Leilotā' and 'Layla Layla.' Ze'ira's songs have been part of my repertoire since the very beginning of my singing career."
Her wandering multinational minstrel career has left Ofarim with a more than an adequate grasp of and affinity with several languages. Besides Hebrew, she sings in English, French, Italian, Spanish and, of course, German.
Although she says there is a basic difference in the ambiance at her performances in Israel compared to her appearances in Germany and other countries, she maintains the same professional approach to her work regardless of locale.
"The language aspect is not so important here, in Germany. A while ago I started including songs in Hebrew at my shows in Germany - today around half of the repertoire I do here is in Hebrew. It works well, not because they understand the language or know the songs, it is the emotional content which they take on board. They respond to the emotion I express, even without understanding the actual words. There really is no language barrier."
Linguists and philologists would, presumably, question Ofarim's ability to evoke the same response from an audience irrespective of the language she sings in. After all, language incorporates cultural and historical baggage, besides the personal allegiance and emotional attachment a person generally feels for his or her mother tongue.
"I feel perfectly comfortable singing in English, French or Spanish. Maybe it's the chameleon-like talent I have which allows me to accommodate the attributes of different languages. But, at the end of the day, I feel the most genuine in Hebrew."
Although she has lived most of her life abroad, Ofarim insists she still feels she is first and foremost Israeli, and an Israeli singer. "I never say I left Israel. I feel I left for a while - and that while has lasted quite a long time - but I never left the country. I lived in London for two years, I lived in Paris, Geneva, New York a couple of times, as well as Germany.
"I am a sort of wandering Jew, and happily so. The
songs I sing in Hebrew are a part of me and my soul, of who I am. So it doesn't
make any difference where I happen to be when I sing them."