"Intuition and Gambling": Behind the Songs of Shlomo Artzi | Israel today

Five years ago, TV director Yaron Shilon ("A Wonderful Land") discovered the treasure inherent in the video and audio archive of singer Shlomo Artzi.

As a curious man who immediately understood what was in front of his eyes, he insisted on preserving the ingredients and dived into them.

The result - a new podcast called "The Big Albums", which aired this week on Galgalatz's digital and other digital platforms, each of its ten episodes reviews one of Artzi's big albums.

Also in the summer, HOT8 will host the docu-series "Artzi - Musical Biography", about the career of the beloved singer.

"About five years ago, I decided to go into Shlomo Artzi's video archive, which I know, and while diving, my eyes and ears were constantly on the audio archive," says Yaron Shilon, who has accompanied Artzi for the past 16 years as his performance director and documentary filmmaker.

Hidden in the vast audio archive is every song Shlomo has ever sung on guitar in the room.

I was able to convince Shlomo's production to sample it, and began a thorough sampling operation from the recordings in his house in the room to working versions of songs - including performances.

From this thing was born the album 'Yesterday Was Good', which came out about two years ago and where I built one of the 40 years of recordings, which went up on digital platforms.

"It's less common in the country because it's not economical, but Shlomo understood, and I can not help but salute him here, because it's also a way to keep in touch with the listeners and the heritage.

" Like the first version of 'Moon' on the guitar, songs I grew up on in other lyrics, shelved recordings, things that if you work with the person and relate to him and love his piece, you have to start asking questions: Why didn't this song come in?

Did it not fit the period?

Are you sorry? "

About two and a half years ago, Shilon began working with his two friends, Amir Ben David and Morris Ben Muir, on a series that will air during the summer on HOT8, "Artzi - Musical Biography."

It is a musical biography of Shlomo's life, which also tells the story of his career, and according to Shilon, "in a way also tells the story of the country."

In the series, Artzi talks about his past with rare honesty and openness, and is accompanied by exciting archive footage from the private and family archive, testimonies from family members and travel partners, meetings with key figures from key stations in his career and rare behind-the-scenes footage, performances and studios.

"In light of my acquaintance with Shlomo's work, I realized that a lot of things that interest me would not go into the series. Instead of getting mad I realized I needed to fill in my gaps and offered Shlomo to meet, I would play albums and talk about them. I realized this was the place to use this archive. "The meetings became magical, and an intimacy was created that really served the purpose. For me, as a TV man, I did something here that you don't see, and that's the most liberating thing in the world."

Shilon,

What did you find that surprised you?

"The things that leave me speechless here are when you talk about songs that are really a mythology of Shlomo and the Israeli music world, that you expect to be done on the van, and you find that a lot of the songs at the end are intuition and gamble, and you say, wow, so that's how you work? "You learn so much about him, about creation and about yourself. The podcast is full of such wonders, because creation is something big that is hard to contain at all."

When Shiron talks about the connection between them, he is not just talking about work.

Along with the fact that he has been with Artzi for 16 years, over the years he became a family member, when he married Shahar in 2011, the daughter of Artzi's partner.

The fact that you have become a helpful family working together or may interfere?

"I think it's a very big advantage, but with it comes responsibility. Much stricter laws apply to me, for better or worse. When we work we do not bring home to work, neither as a happy factor nor as a hindrance. But obviously we are human beings, and there is a lot of compassion in this regard, Love and openness. "

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