It was not a smooth ride for the singer who burst into our lives in the early eighties • Hunger, failures, alienation from the industry - Shlomi Shabbat defeated them all
"I went through humiliations and difficult moments."
Shlomi Shabbat
Photography:
Coco
The waves of love and concern, along with the extensive media coverage he received this week, proved once again that Shlomi Shabbat is undoubtedly a consensus in Israel.
At 66 and after four decades of career, Shabbat is still one of the favorite musicians in the country.
The news of his hospitalization after falling ill in Corona and dealing with the virus made waves not only in terms of voyeurism, gossip or hunger for knowledge.
The man who likes to use the word "soul" in every possible variation, has a deep room for the Israeli one.
Music plays a big and important role in this, as does the character and personal and media persona (which are clearly sharp).
It also has a direct connection to the fact that Shlomi Shabbat has been a well-known and comforting name in Israeli culture since the 1980s, and 40 years of activity certainly has meaning - certainly in an era of successes at a dizzying pace.
But this has not always been a smooth ride for the singer who burst into our lives in the early eighties.
In fact, it was a winding road that also included failure, pain and despair, before it began to lead to safety.
In the early 1980s, after a difficult childhood year in a Turkish community saturated with drugs and alcohol in Yehud (he himself claims he never experienced them), and after leaving school (he was not a really successful student anyway), Shabbat began his career in the music world.
In 1986, Shas released his first album "From the Darkness I Returned" (an ironic name, in retrospect, given that Shabbat was still aware of many years of darkness before it came to light). Although the album will later produce songs that will continue to star in Shabbat performances (and with me The young Levy did a cover for him a few years ago on Yaron Ilan's "Mint" program, in real time it was a commercial failure.The reviews did not fade, to say the least, and Shabbat - years after proving his critics, does not forget the words written about him then.
The novelty to "Only Because of the Wind"
"'I came back from the dark' was my baby. It was his first album and they covered it," he told the writer in a 2017 interview.
"There were two journalists - Amos Oren and Yossi Khersonsky, who really killed me. They wrote about me, 'It sounds like a quarter of a chicken at a wedding. A quarter of a chicken. In retrospect, I owe them a lot of my success, because instead of being angry or hurt, I understood what they meant and learned from the sentences. "In the next album, 'Because of the Wind,' I've already changed the style."
We will get to the same album where the criticism was internalized and developed.
Before, there was the burning. "I could not believe they said it from a bad place," he explained.
And when asked how after all these years and success he still remembers exactly the exact expressions used by his critics, he replied: "What it remembers, it is tattooed."
The 1980s were a challenging time for Shabbat and his relatives.
Even before the debut album was released, he moved with his then-wife Hani and daughter Manor to the United States.
After years of shuffling and lack of success in the country, they thought Great America would schedule them a different kind of luck.
They soon discovered that reality had other plans.
"We had nothing to eat," he said in an interview with Israel Today in 2010.
"I do not use this sentence as a metaphor for something, I mean it. For example, we did not eat meat. I remember that some days the chicken wings were distributed free of charge. Hani would bring home, let the manor have some meat. I think during this period we ate all kinds of eggs: omelet "Scribbled, hard, soft, eye, vague. We lived in the basement for three years, we just wanted to survive. I tried to give Manor the feeling there, we bought her clothes with ruffles. But she did not believe it, she knew we did not and we try to make her feel good." .
In another interview, the singer recalled a difficult period in his life, describing it in the sentence "For a main course, we ate mayonnaise."
Suddenly even a quarter of a chicken at a wedding feels more worthy.
After Hani, who was already pregnant with their young son Avihu, decided to return to Israel, Shabbat remained in the United States.
He ran a department store in Brooklyn and was still struggling financially.
Only a decade ago he dared to share one of his low points from those days.
"This is the thing I'm most ashamed of all my life. In New York I got into a situation where I had no money for cigarettes. I walked into a store where a client bought socks, left a dollar and ten on the counter and left. A dollar and ten was exactly the price of a pack of Marlboroughs. I wondered what to do. , Then I took and put in my pocket.
"When the store was empty I fingered the money and wanted to go out and buy cigarettes, but I could not get up from the chair. I said to myself, 'Are you stealing for cigarettes?'. I printed the amount and the cashier made a noise. My boss looked at me and saw me messing with the cashier even though he was not a client. "One in the store. He asked me what happened. I told him I stole a dollar and ten from him to buy cigarettes and my conscience bothered me."
The story actually has a happy ending, maybe even a kind of hint to come: "I was sure he would fire me," Shabbat said.
"Suddenly I see he takes out five hundred dollar bills and gives them to me. I remember being so excited. I also did not steal and I got enough money to buy enough cigarettes to get cancer quietly. The US taught me everything I need about life."
"I think during this period we ate all kinds of eggs: scrambled, hard, soft, eye, hazy omelet. We lived in the basement for three years, we just wanted to survive."
The great success came at the end of that decade.
In 1989, Shabbat was connected to his little sister Leah, who composes it for him, in the words of Micha Sheetrit (a member of Natasha's band, who himself breaks into these years) what will become his breakthrough song.
"Because of the Wind", the theme song of his second album, will soon become a huge hit and will define Shlomi's career from now on.
Even today, 31 years later, it is still one of his favorite songs and a record moment in every show.
Due to its message, which deals with perseverance and dealing with failure and difficulties, "Because of the Wind" is much more than a pop hit.
It is a timeless anthem, which in some ways also describes the career of the man who sang it.
Apparently, last April and with the outbreak of the corona crisis, Shabbat renewed it on the occasion of the situation.
Oh, the irony.
Legend has it that the song that will make his career (at least in its early stages) was written by Sheetrit after he sat in a cafe during one of the days of the Galilee Peace War, together with Leah Shabbat and Arkady Duchin.
The mood in Israel was considered particularly difficult in those days, and the phrase "whatever it may be" was thrown into the conversation.
Sheetrit, who had tossed it on a paper napkin, wanted to give it to his bandmate Duchin to compose, but Shabbat decided to do it herself.
Brother Shlomi's performance brought it to life, and from here Shabbat became a household name.
The kind that participates in festivals (he did so in 1990, '91 and '94) and combines elements of oriental, rock and Latin music in his work.
Salsa rhythms meet ma'awalim and Shlomi Shabbat receives a media refinement.
Songs like "Don't Go Too Far" are a success, and Shlomi experiences a variety of styles - from South American to Caucasian.
In 1993 he released an album with Natasha's friends, but the collaboration with those who wrote his first hit did not produce the same success.
The album "One Hour Together" was not very successful.
Oriental music already reveals Eyal Golan, and Shlomi Shabbat is no longer a rising meteor.
A decade that began as a huge promise takes a turn towards the middle and puts Shlomi Shabbat in a good operating position, but not the kind of artists who attract thousands to performances.
Later he will talk about the depressive symptoms that characterized those years, and the disconnect between him and the media.
In other words - as talented as he was, Shabbat spends the rest of the nineties as someone one of the country's critics of Mediterranean music would define as a "tormented fringe artist."
Years before he conquered Caesarea and halls like "Nokia," it seemed that Shlomi Shabbat's destiny was to perform in dim, smoky nightclubs, in front of an audience of criminals.
"I went through humiliations and difficult moments that I do not wish on anyone," he said in a 2012 interview.
Like shifts in the Army, he gets the two-to-four show slot (before him, regularly on a midnight-to-two shift, one shows up, Margalit Tsanani).
"It's to perform for six and seven hours straight, with representatives of crime families sitting in the audience who won't let you off the stage. I will not forget how one night I performed at a club, I went on stage at two at night and was supposed to give a two-hour performance. , And sat down in front of me. He sent me banknotes of money, enjoying life. Towards four o'clock I turn to the audience and say 'Finally I will sing you' Margarita ''. Everyone claps, and suddenly the criminal gets up and shouts at me: 'What happened, Shlomi, you became a star then 20 minutes of performance? '. I explain to him from the stage that I've been here for two hours and he answers me rudely, with a dismissive hand gesture:' Come on, give me another hour. 'It's a terrible humiliation. You see that the person is drunk and out of control, and you understand "That he tells you, he can rip you off in an instant, on stage. It was one of the hardest moments of my life."
30 years after cracking a career, Shlomi Shabbat is in the heart of Israeli prime time, blowing up performances in the biggest halls and receiving the institutional seal of approval.
It took him a while, but since Shlomi Shabbat he has been a national icon
As soon as he remembered in particular, he appeared in front of the employees of a large insurance company, who were just waiting for a professional conference in which they took part to end.
Instead of staying and watching the show, they ran away en masse.
Shabbat still remembers himself accompanying them out in droves, while singing "Because of the Wind."
Certainly not simple years passed for someone who had already seen success, touched it and then had to watch it leave.
Even a Spanish and gypsy-influenced album released in 1998 does not really resonate with the audience.
But two years later, with the entry into the current millennium, Shabbat will get another chance.
The conditions provided by the first decade of the 21st century are rare: for the first time in many decades, Mediterranean music is producing mainstream hits.
Israeli radio can no longer ignore one of the most powerful artistic forces in the country, and singers like Golan and Kobi Peretz are bringing the Mizrahi singer revolution.
"I never won anything. No ACUM award, no song of the year, no record.
It bothers me, I got sick of it, "he once said in an interview." I am the eternal candidate.
Aviv Geffen once beat me with 'Skin Skins', and that year I sold 420,000 copies of my album.
It was frustrating to everyone, not just me.
Today I no longer want any prize.
I was severely harmed in the past, if they invite me now, I will not come again. "The same Aviv Geffen will be remembered very soon. This time they will sit side by side. For Saturday it is really a revival of a career, when the ripened conditions of the field merge with" everyone has ". A duet of him and the rising singer Lior Narkis, to the tune of Shabbat and lyrics by Uzi Hitman. This will be the last great song to be written by the late Hitman, and the one that will return Shlomi Shabbat to the position of a sought-after singer.
More than that - he will take him to places he has not visited before.
After capturing the "Song of the Year" box in the Hebrew Choral Parade of the C network, the singer releases in 2001 the duet album "Shlomi Shabbat and Friends", in which he hosts colleagues for a joint performance.
Shabbat sings with Gidi Gov, Boaz Sharabi, Arkady Duchin and even Shlomi Shaban (the similarity in names plays a role here, no doubt) and on the way wins platinum album status.
So the territory is indeed the territory, but the establishment is still not impressed.
The decade continues, and Shlomi understands the place to which the genre he helped develop and lead in Israel in the previous decade is heading.
In 2003, he shows that he also knows how to make oriental pop and releases the album "Love Time", in which the summer hit "Treftoni's Beach" stands out.
In light of the success of the previous album, in 2006 he releases another duet album (with the original name "Friends 2") and this time he hosts names like Moshe Peretz the young, the winner of the relatively new "Star Born" Shiri Maimon and Pablo Rosenberg.
The collaboration with the latter will prove to be especially significant for the two singers, will give birth to the huge ballad “Daddy” and continue to long-standing stage friendships.
By the end of that decade, Shlomi Shabbat will become one of the most beloved and successful singers in the country.
And he feels worthy, even requested, in the Israeli panel of judges "The Weiss", the reality reality singing show that airs in early 2012. On Saturday, he shares the judges' bench with Rami Kleinstein, Sarit Hadad and Aviv Geffen.
30 years after cracking a career, Shlomi Shabbat is in the heart of Israeli prime time, blowing up performances in the biggest halls and receiving the institutional seal of approval.
It took him a while, but since Shlomi Shabbat he has been a national icon.
"In the interview he was once asked what he would say to his young version." The first thing I would say to this Turk was 'You asked for a little, dreams. You will not believe in life that you will reach this situation you are in today,' "he replied.
"I do not like to talk about myself. I am proud of the way I did, I worked very hard and the funny thing is that I still work hard. I really like this profession. It's scary, but I'm growing and growing."
Another time, when asked to talk about the refinement he had received after many years of Sisyphean struggle, he said: "I'm beginning to understand that this is the reality, but I can not forget where I came from. Understanding that, after all the hard work, is the hardest task. It's still Not completely understood. "