He taught Bree Sakharof how to curl prayers, persuaded the Israeli audience to treat poetry performances like concerts, and despite the dome on his head, he has no problem singing with women. • The poet Lior Elmalach prepares for the World Piyut festival and remembers the day he sang to Cristiano Ronaldo

• "We had to educate the audience that Oriental music does not have to be at weddings or nightclubs" // Photo: Ofer Chen

"Throughout my career I have set myself a vision," smiles Lior Elmalach with satisfaction, "to be the bridge between the original world of poetry then and the world of contemporary art. My dream was to bring the poetry to the forefront in the country, and to my delight, I was able to fulfill it."

Explain.

"In the 'State of the Sound' show in the 70's for Independence String Servants of Singing with Shully Rand. It was a huge event held at Beersheba Park and broadcast on TV. At the upcoming State Memorial Day ceremony at Mount Herzl, I was supposed to sing the poem 'Bein' Rebel ' , Written by Rabbi David Buzaglo, on the melody of "Bab al-Wad." This is a poem that speaks of the sanctity of life.

"On the other side, and unlike me, I was honored to perform live on national television the national anthem when the Israeli national team hosted the Portugal national team in 2013. I met Ronaldo, which was amazing. A different kind of experience."

For more than three decades Elmalih (45) has appeared as a villain, not least due to his unrelenting personal urge as an artist, producer and entrepreneur. Through a long line of projects, which he won, the Eastern Piyut poem reached almost every ear in Israel. The seeds he sowed from the 1990s paved the way for contemporary successful artists, including Yishai Ribo, Hanan ben Ari and Shuli Rand, who now fill Caesarea and the Sultan Pool in the faith music genre.

"I brought the Piyut field to the mainstream," he says naturally, "in my field I am the only one who is both a Feiten singer and a producer and artistic director. I have been producing a lot of work for myself and my genre for years. I love production challenges. Give me a job, A show like this - and I already know how to make it myself. "

How did you get started in this process?

"More than a decade ago I created the collaborations of the Andalusian Orchestra Ashdod with bodies such as 'Beit Avi Chai' on projects such as 'My Friend, Forgot?' Kaplan, Micha Sheetrit, Kobe Oz, they were all my students.

"We also developed shows with all these artists, who wanted to go to universities. As a result, some of the singers released their own poetry albums. David D'Or, for example, released 'Singing Many,' an album half of which was recorded with me. Micah Sheetrit recorded with me and Haim Roz. The names of the three of us. "

On stage, at the Piyut concert // Photo: Muhammad Elcom

Do you recognize the tendency to sing poetry with the approach of artists to religion in recent years?

"It's an egg and a chicken. Some artists were looking for identity, and at the same time fiddling with poems also began to approach religion. Some came to poets from searching for quality texts. At that time, there was talk of profiteering of texts. Sarit Haddad issued 'Yalla for you home Mutti' and "You are a cannon," and a lot of people wondered what those texts were. There were also artists who got a ride on the theme of the piyyutim - and released poetry albums that everyone did. "

For those unfamiliar with the genre, what is Piot's definition?

"Piyut is a poem whose origin comes most often from medieval poetry, and is related to prayer. There are also poems of sand that express longing for the Land of Israel or speak of the golden age in Spain, but also express an affinity for Gd, who created everything. Each poet then had his own style. There are poems written in Hebrew as a Western translation, on an Arabic melody that was popular, and there are poems that combine Hebrew and Arabic, in a rhyme that sounds uniform. "

How many piyyutim exist?

"In all, there are thousands. There are also poems written in the last century, for example by the poet Rabbi David Buzaglo. In my opinion, there are poets today, too. Micah Sheetrit is a poet writer for me, and Meir Ariel's poem 'Moda I' is a poem."

Would you also like to sing Omar Adam's "Thank Me"?

"No, it doesn't interest me on a personal level. I can enjoy a song sung by a singer, but I don't care to sing it. I come from the poetry world, and texts speak to me. These are texts with depth and other thought, rather than superficiality. , But I can't stand in Mediterranean music the repetitive ritual of words used and recycled two hundred times.

"Most of the music that is now called 'Oriental' is not Oriental at all. Do a pop or dance song with a bit of a curl, and call it Eastern. Get the singer out and get a pop song from abroad. Real Eastern is Arabic, Andalusian, Turkish music. "

It sounds like you're less connected to music called "Mediterranean".

"I really appreciate the serving abilities of singers like Yishai Levy and Ofer Levy, but I collaborate very little with Mediterranean singers and prefer to connect with rock artists who are far from me, to integrate with them. I am more interested in singing with Yarmi Kaplan than with Moshe Peretz, because if I'm going to bring Moshe Peretz to sing Piyut, what did I do about it?

"I love edges. That's why I'm now working on a year-long performance of all the world's greatest poets, singing Shmulik Krauss and Yankle Rotblit's 'Seeing Far Transparent'. It's another song I think is a modern poem."

Elmalih was born and raised in Kiryat Shmona. "Menachem Horowitz would pray with us in the Moroccan synagogue on Fridays," he recalls, "we were the children of the Katyusha generation of the early 1980s. We were so used to them that we were no longer running for shelter and indifference. We heard the Katyusha whistle. "They continue to play basketball or soccer, and see the Katyusha passing over us. Then you see news on TV and laugh that they tell us we ran to shelters."

And when you see the plight of the residents of the Gaza Strip today?

"It reminds me of my childhood. The indifference of the people of the center today reminds me of sitting in a pub in Ramat Gan after the army, when there is a shooting in the north, and I tell myself that it is not the same country. I was angry with myself that I was enjoying, but later I was angry with my parents who stayed In Kiryat Shmona and did not move to the center.

"I see Kiryat Shmona today and feel that something there is stuck. As if people had a vested interest in the place being stuck at a closed point in time, that no one from outside could change it."

He grows, he says, in a traditional home, with no dome on his head. "After Friday's Kiddush singing around the table, and then television. The house was always musical, with Sami Almagribi and Piots David Bozglo, and alongside them Yoram Gaon in Saturday songs, Zohar Argov and Tzvika Pick, and foreigners. For example, I'm a huge fan of Dire Straits and really I am the second of four brothers: Yaron, the eldest, who is a bus driver, Assaf, who runs a bank branch, and Maayan - who runs a clothing store. "

Kippah began to wear regular clothing only when he was discharged from his service in the army rabbinical band. "At the time of the band I put in and dropped. I don't know if I went through a strengthening process, but I felt more complete. Before that, I told myself I wasn't religious.

"Even today I'm not living a standard religious life. I'm traditional. Doing kiddush and going to a synagogue on Shabbat, but not beyond that. I don't make assumptions either, I always want to go up as a cantor. I'm looking for my quiet. It's like an entertainer asking him to tell A joke when he doesn't want it the most. I eat kosher, but I have no problem drinking something where it doesn't have kosher. "

His father, the late Reuben, was an investment advisor, and later a deputy director at the Bank Hapoalim branch in Kiryat Shmona. "Everyone in the city knew him as the 'redhead'. He was a bright Moroccan, with green eyes, who immigrated to Israel at the age of 15. Before working at the bank, he would dance folk, until he broke his leg. My mother, Shoshana, DIDA, immigrated from Morocco as a baby and worked at the mythical textile factory 'Hero'. She is also an amazing painter, artist in the soul. "

Your parents pushed you to the Feet Career?

"They didn't push, but they supported and supported. When I didn't want to study - they didn't make it. They made sure I learned piano too, and I studied classical music at the Ramat Gan Conservatory when I moved in after the army."

Singing began when she accompanied his older brother in Torah study, in preparation for his bar mitzvah ceremony. "I was 11 and a half. On Saturday at Bar Mitzvah, my brother read the blessing, but refused to read the Haftarah. Caught cold feet. My father raised me in his place, and I read the Haftarah, which I learned from the very fact that I accompanied him in lessons. I don't remember much, but later My father said that in those moments the synagogue was silent, everyone was listening.

He studied with the late Nissan Nissan Shushan, and in a short time became the wonder boy of the Piyyutim. "At the age of 12, I started performing with professional pythons in all kinds of places in the country. At the age of 15, I knew all the poetry by heart, which is unmatched. Only 80-70-year-old Pietans know this. There are about 600 piyutim in the poetry, divided according to the weekly affair. Each poem has its own rhythm, and is sung in a chameleon, that is, on a certain musical scale. They passed by heart from generation to generation, and I learned them all. "

Stunning.

"At the same time, I learned a whole poetry style called 'folk', which was popular with joys, and the Algerian style. I mean, poets who came to Morocco from Algeria. At the age of 15, I was already considered a world expert. I would sit with the biggest poets in the country, like Meir Atia Z "To and from Luke, and I would receive kings' respect from them, because they valued my knowledge, even though I was only a teenager.

"Because of poetry, I lost a lot of school, but at my school they understood the situation. I made sure to complete material and went to all the tests. At the same time, I lived a normal life of a teenager. I would play soccer with my friends, for example."

He later initiated one of the projects he says he is most proud of. "I took some veteran pythons, some of them no longer alive today, and put them at my expense into a recording studio, to record everything they can remember. I currently have 40 anthology of request poetry albums, of which I have released ten albums, released today, in a magnificent enclosure. I'll take the following out online.

"It is important to me that it should also reach the National Library of Jerusalem, because there is also a documentary element of an entire culture, which began in Morocco and Safed and has reached our present day."

With his wife, singer Naama Tov Elmalih, at their wedding. "She comes from the songs of the Land of Israel" // Photo: Yossi Zeliger

In 1996, Elmalih began performing with the Andalusian Orchestra, at a time when the piyyut was considered a negligible niche. "We were 60 people on stage, coming to cultural events in cities like Ashdod and Ashkelon, and performing in front of 20 and something in the audience. There was no awareness then. We couldn't dream of performing with Dan Shilon as the Philharmonic Orchestra, for example.

"We had to educate the audience that Oriental music should not be at weddings or nightclubs, with cracking and arak, but at a respectable concert. Slowly, in the long run, we gained our audience. In two or three years the halls began to fill up. Tickets for the show. "

How involved were you in the Andalusian Orchestra?

"I was involved in struggles for her public budget, which lasted for years. There was only one such orchestra in the entire country, but it was treated as one of many. Only when politics changed did the proper money start to flow. Meir Sheetrit gave her as Minister of the Interior a special status. With Miri Regev, who gave her the status of a national orchestra. "

Elmalih's flagship project in recent years is the "World Piyyut Festival", which will be held this month (January 18-16) for the ninth time. "Every year I take a hotel and fill it with an audience that comes to hear piyyutim. People from all over the world come and hear. Once upon a time, piyyut would only come to hear older adults of a certain age, today relatively young people, 40, also come.

"This year, we closed a hotel in the Dead Sea, 600 rooms, more than a thousand people. It's an event that lasts an entire weekend, Thursday through Wednesday, and includes concerts by the finest Poitans in Israel and around the world that will sing the authentic Piyyut music in a way that is now very difficult to find. You will be accompanied by an orchestra with great musicians, some in the jazz and ethnic music fields. My emphasis is to connect old and young Pythians and give everyone a stage.

"There will also be a guest performance by Itzik Light and a Moroccan performance led by Eric Mishali. On Saturday's prayers, a thousand people arrive, with 20-15 of the world's leading poets on stage, singing Unplugged without amplification. After prayer, everyone eats together. A great experience. "NIS 1.2 million, and the financial risk is on me. I also recruited sponsors, usually financiers who want to dedicate a show at a festival in memory of someone their loved ones, or businessmen who want to be named as sponsors."

Elmalih's recorded flagship project is "Israeli Piyut", which connects Israeli poets and artists to modern performance of traditional piyyut. "Every few months, we release a single with a recital. We started with Micha Sheetrit and Wolf Profit in Ashkelon, then a recital with Haim Oriel. Two weeks ago, we co-authored" Creator Meadow "with Ze'ev Nehama from Anthix, His recording. The next one will be with Berry Sakharof and Yarmi Kaplan. I would love to sing with Yehuda Poliker as well. The idea is to put out a song every few months and finally put on a show with everyone. "

Is there any chance that any of this will get into the Gallegz Playlist?

"I believe so, even though I don't build on it and I won't be disappointed if I don't."

How do you teach musicians to perform an ancient song that has no recording anywhere?

"I sing it to them from memory, from what I have left in the box in my head. I have no other way."

We meet at Elmalih's private home in Hod Hasharon. The family entered it on Rosh Hashanah. His wife, Naama Tov Elmalih, is a singer who was a soloist in the IDF Orchestra, the daughter of Yossi Tov, the orchestra's mythical commander. "I first saw her 11 years ago at the IDF Alumni Orchestra in Petah Tikva. She sang most of the songs on stage "And I sat in the audience," Lior recalls, "she comes from the songs of Eretz Yisrael and classical music. Today she helps me with career management, and occasionally appears in all kinds of ensembles. I am 45 and feel younger than my age. Naama is 35, and both of us are the adult. ".

The couple has three children: Geffen, a first-grader, Emery, 3 and a half, and Shia, two years old. "We got married eight years ago. Marriage and children changed all my thinking. Until then, I saw a world, I experienced, I experienced, I had many relationships with women. The family completely embarrassed me, and I opened up a lot of protections that I had put on myself over the years. Can be hurt by anything because I grew thick skin. Suddenly I rediscovered my sensitivity. "

How do you indulge yourself?

"I'm a freak of good food and good restaurants, but lately I've been trying to reduce the amount. I smoke Cuban cigars, and occasionally love to drink alcohol, enjoy it without exaggerating. I don't touch drugs. I smoked something someone else wheeled. I really like sports. Hapoel Kiryat Shmona and Betar Jerusalem. Become my father, who sympathized with Hapoel Tel Aviv. "

You prefer to manage yourself alone.

"For the past two or three years, my wife and I have been running our own careers and occasionally assisting with production offices, depending on the projects. Even when working with emergencies, I ended up doing the bulk of the work. I appear in a variety of shows that I produce myself, like to characterize them by topics, like To focus on a certain medieval poet. I also sang one of the late Joe Amar's poems, and I produced the Andalusian shows in his honor throughout his life. "

Ashkenazi Chabad melodies Do you also perform?

"Yes, occasionally. In my style."

He is still performing around the world, in Jewish communities and festivals. "I sit in a business class on an airplane and say to myself, 'Look where you came from because you learned as a child poet in a small room in a Moroccan synagogue in Kiryat Shmona.'

“In the past I used to perform overseas dozens of times a year. Since I have a family, I continue, but concentrate more on the country. Once every four years I have been artistic director of the Moroccan Jewish Week in France, in collaboration with the UNESCO and the Moroccan Embassy in Paris. The performances take place in the UNESCO building in Paris, with orchestras from Morocco and singers from Israel and abroad. "

Have you encountered anti-Israeli protests in your performances abroad?

"Yes. At a show for the Jewish community in Stockholm, Sweden, they protested outside the hall with signs. There were police, and undercover police also protected us. I caught one of them taking out a garbage can. When I showed up two years ago in a Paris community center, a specific alert was fired. .

"In Turkey, I was scheduled to appear in June 2011 in the Blue Mosque square in Istanbul. The mayor there received a threatening letter from the Islamic Territory IHH, with my name, 'Elmalih,' written on him in Arabic. He forwarded it to the Israeli ambassador, who called me and told me Me home. Within half an hour there were two security guards accompanying me to the airport, and the concert was canceled. In all these cases I was not afraid, but I was afraid. "

After all these years, is there a crowd going after you? Fans recognize you on the street?

"Yes, there are. My songs are not played on Galgaltz and I do not broadcast on TV, but I have an audience that has been with me for years, and there is also a lot of social networking audience. I feel the affection on the ground. If we walk down the street or go into a cafe - recognize me."

Last year, Elmalih participated in the fourth season of the '80s comic series, in the role of blind poet Michael Amar. "It was a refreshing experience for me," he says. "An intriguing, fun, good experience that I loved. I'm glad I experimented with the game, which left me feeling more. I recently filmed a film by director Haim Buzaglo with a wolf. I embody myself there , "Lior Elmalih Haypet, who teaches people to Fayette. I'd love to play more in the future."

Many artists in Israel lack financial stability.

"I'm fine. Not rich, but living fine. I see singers, some rockists I worked with, who are hard at work. Over the years, they lived hand-to-mouth and spent the money they had. It's also a lifestyle thing. Some singers have lived dumb lives and done drugs And waste everything they have earned. There are also some in the genre of poems who do celebrations, rave - and then go on stage to sing prayers.

How are you with politics?

"I'm against denying entire publics, like they were trying to do, for example, the ultra-Orthodox public. Even when I'm told 'just not' about something, say 'just not Netanyahu,' it bothers me. I think the other denial damages our social fabric, and it wasn't like that Once, I'm in favor of having a real discourse. "

How about a burning issue like women's poetry?

"I am the only feutenant to sing with singers. I performed with Zahava Ben, Miri Messika and Moroccan singer Francois Atlan. Every Moroccan singer who came to Israel sang with me. Once upon a time there was no public discussion. On the other hand, neither did anyone in the haredim performances sing. That the crowd is in the separation.

"I was criticized for singing with women. For every festival I produced, I brought a singer singing songs. Last year, for example, I brought Nasrin Qadri, who was just converting. Then I was criticized on social networks, and there were a few phones. In fact, at the event itself, there were more than a thousand people in the audience Only a few people came out of the courtroom when a woman sang. I agree with my decisions. I don't depend on the ultra-Orthodox public and make a living from it. " √

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"When I appeared before the Jewish community in Sweden, undercover police protected us. I caught one of them taking out a garbage can. In Paris, a terrorist attack was alerted and snipers were fired. In Turkey, a terrorist organization sent a threatening letter with my name, written in Arabic."

On stage, at the Piyut concert. "Suddenly I rediscovered my sensitivity" Photo: Mohamed Elcom

Miri Mesika. "I sang with her"

"I'm not rich, but live fine. I see singers, some rockists I worked with, who are hard-pressed. Some singers have done drugs and squandered everything they have earned. Even in the poetry genre, there are those who do celebrations, go wild - and then come up to sing prayers."

"I don't care to sing a song by Omar Adam. I come from the world of poetry, and these are texts with depth and other thought, and not superficiality. I can't stand in the medieval music the repetitive ritual of words used and recycled two hundred times."

But in a respectable concert. In a long process, we gained the audience. The halls began to fill. After a decade you could no longer get a ticket "" I am the only feutenant to sing with singers. I performed with Zehava Ben, Miri Messika. Every Moroccan singer who came to Israel sang with me. There used to be no public discussion about it. And on the other hand, neither did anyone disturb the performances of ultra-Orthodox women or the audience in separation "