When was the last time you performed?
"Last week, and on the eve of Memorial Day and Independence Day with Tisalem in Eilat. I perform in four different formats. There's Tislem, which is something we've been doing for 42 years and it's really a great pleasure to be with these people, who are like family. I have an intimate show in which I perform with Eden Nir Besson, my guitarist for seven years, and this is a show in which I also turn out to be quite a funnyman. I have a new show with five musicians, which started with the Piano Festival, we do an evening dedicated entirely to Yankele Rotblit who is also a guest on the show, and it's abnormal fun. Last but not least, an intimate show with Yoshi Sadeh, in which we perform in people's homes.
"We started this show seven years ago, and because I suffer from separation anxiety, I always have a fear that they won't come to see me. It's something that's been nesting in me for years and pretty much affects my way of life as well. A lot of times I decide that I don't perform anymore because not enough people come to my liking, but when you perform for people there's no way they won't be home. After all, they invited you, so they will probably be home.
"I love performing, it excites me every time, and as I approach every show I get excited like it's the first show. I love meeting the audience, that adrenaline rush I need so I don't sink."
When was the last time you wrote a song?
"Never. There are maybe two or three songs that I composed, didn't write, that made it onto my albums. I have some kind of crazy creative block. I feel like writing a song the most in the world, but it just doesn't happen, an insurmountable barrier."
When was the last time you were spotted on the street?
"This morning, and the truth is that lately it's been very pleasant. It turns out that people love my singing and my voice and compliment what I do, so I have Edna for old age. It wasn't always like this. In the early years of Tislem, there was hysteria all around us, but after that there were many years of evaporation into oblivion, as if nothing. In fact, I've only been active again for the last seven years, the good seven years.
"I'm the kind of person who gets stressed out by attention. I mean, on stage I'm open, but when there's too much attention and people come to my house, it makes me nervous, and during the time of Tislem, I didn't just have that. I wanted to make music and I wanted recognition, but there's a difference between admiration and recognition. I wanted appreciation, for them to say, 'Come on, you're doing it well.' What's happening today is what I've always wanted it to be. My personality probably didn't allow it to happen sooner because I didn't have the right patience, I didn't cope. The truth is that my constant feeling between the original Tislem and my later career is one of failure.
"In the last seven years, several things have happened. We performed with the Rishon LeZion Symphony and the response was excellent, so the reinforcement gave me more daring. I began to dare to do things that had previously made me anxious. Going into the studio would make me anxious, performing would make me anxious. I slowly learned to cope, and today I really am in a very good place. I went from avoiding to doing a lot. I'm a light-bloomer, and I've reached a certain maturity."
"I began to dare to do things that had previously made me anxious." Bassan, Photo: Arik Sultan
When was the last time you were very angry?
"This month. After the passing of the late Jonathan Geffen, who is a dear and important man in the Israeli culture I grew up with. Tali Gottlieb's ugly reaction to his passing made me angry. I don't understand what this woman is made of, what her personality structure is and why she behaves this way. It provokes scum and anger and rage.
"I'm very worried about the situation in Israel, and I also go to demonstrations. There are problems here that started from the place of the state and were always swept away, so everything was swept, swept and swept away, until we reached a situation like now where one match lit everything and something deep is happening here.
"We were taught in civics class that three branches are the basic thing in Israeli democracy, and what is happening is an attempt to force a radical change that will subordinate the judicial branch to the executive and legislative branches, which are essentially the same branch because it is a majority of those elected. If such a change passes, we are done with democracy. I also feel that people are tired of being other public's loggers and water cleaners. As far as I'm concerned, pray at home – and go to work. Take care of your family, and in my free time I will make sculptures and you will learn Torah.
"At concerts, when we sing 'The Face of the Country,' written in 1990 and constantly taking on more and more frightening topical meaning, the audience gets up and shouts 'Democracy!' Somewhere I feel the ground dropping beneath my feet. Everything that was completely clear in terms of my Israeli DNA suddenly became unclear. Not the discourse, not the language. We are not one people anymore, we are done. This whole story of brothers is gone, it doesn't exist. We are tribes that have succeeded – and I say this explicitly, succeeded – in bringing us into conflict and tearing us apart. I am very worried and feel that I had a much better and safer childhood than my children, and that my grandchildren will be even worse."
When was the last time you missed it?
"I miss my mother, Yehudit, all the time. She's been gone for 47 years, and I'm going to her grave. I go there because for me it's about going back to Kiryat Gat, to my place, but my Kiryat Gat is no longer there, and I miss it too. I had the most amazing childhood in the world. People talk about development towns and abandoned people in the periphery, but in the '60s and '70s it wasn't like that. Bring us the best teachers. I had teachers who came specifically to Kiryat Gat to teach us at Rogozin High School, which was an amazing high school. People came out of it from their height and above.
"I saw the shanties people lived in when I came to Israel with my mother. We lived in a two-room apartment – another family lived in the big room, and my mother and I were in the small room. It was fine, because that's what it was. Then another aliyah came, and my mother let one family live with us until their house was ready, without taking any money from them. They gave me a bike as a gift. Clothes I would get from the neighbors. We had little but were well dressed and ate fine. As far as I'm concerned, we had everything.
"My mother passed away during my military service in the Air Force Band. She got bowel cancer, and only after she passed away did they tell me that she would come to every performance we performed at the soldier's house. Coming from Kiryat Gat by bus, seeing the performance and coming home - and I didn't know about it.
"She came to Israel at the age of 18 and studied at a nursing school in Jerusalem. Her family was destroyed, and she knew my father here. They went to Brazil, where I was born, and then he abandoned and we returned to Israel. Luckily, I had my adoptive family, which is still my family to this day. This is the family of a good friend from the neighborhood, whose mother asked his mother to look after me after she died. She keeps me safe to this day."
When was the last time you thought of your father?
"I think about him often. In 1994, I went to Brazil to meet him for the first time after he abandoned us, and I was terrified. I traveled with director Julie Schles as part of a documentary, and it was a journey where everything was extreme. The laughter was extreme, the crying was hysterical, and there was a lot of sadness and fear, along with great joy. There was a moment before we met my father that I was taking tranquilizers.
"I ended up meeting a man. Meeting him was on the one hand a great relief that I did it and I know who my father is, and on the other hand a kind of great emptiness because I could actually point to every person on the street and say, 'That's Daddy.' You feel nothing, nothing. If suppose the person came and gave me some kind of emotional stimulation, activated my emotional intelligence and we talked about things, maybe something would happen. But it was so banal, like just a man. Sad.
"Then I went two more times to meet him and all my brothers, who are the big story. My father died of cancer in 2009, and today I am in touch with my brothers and their families. I have an amazing, funny sister named Monica, and I have a brother who looks like me named Davis. I have a good relationship with everyone, and in 2019 we also went to my niece's wedding in Brazil."
"I brought clay home because my hands are itchy." Bassan with a sculpture he created, photo: Eric Sultan
When was the last time you spent time with your family?
"Last Saturday we celebrated a family birthday for our trio of boys. Of two of them I already have grandchildren and one with a pregnant woman, so in a month we will have another grandchild. One of the sons does not live in Israel, he lives in Germany and does a medical internship. I have two grandchildren from him, and it's not easy that they're far away.
"If they had asked me in retrospect if I wanted them in one fell swoop or one by one, I would have been very happy that they would have come one by one, but when you receive such a gift you don't say anything. It's not easy to raise triplets, very difficult. As a young parent you make a lot of mistakes, and today I am beginning to understand where I went wrong and try to compensate, what I will say. I think that today our relationship is excellent and of course I really like them.
"I met my wife Hagit 42 years ago. Nectar of a philosopher from Islam was a neighbor of her parents, I came to get him and it turned out that I took her. As an old couple, you learn that you listen and learn first, and you better not always be right. The secret is to be friends, that's the basic thing in a relationship, and also to learn a lesson from the bumps you overcome. It's important to take only good things forward."
"Meeting my dad was a relief, and on the other hand, an emptiness because I could basically point to every person on the street and say, 'That's Daddy.'"
When was the last time you drove?
"At the age of 24, I got into an accident. I had a brand new license. At that time, there was no accompanying parent – and I didn't have parents to accompany me anyway, and then someone stopped on the spot and I entered from behind. Trauma, matters. Since then I stopped driving, so my partner, children and everyone around me drives for me. It doesn't bother me, but it's a different story for the environment. I also travel a lot by public transportation, buses, trains, taxis, and mostly I walk."
When was the last time you thought about your age?
"I turned 67 in December, and age preoccupies me at a level that I understand the mantle is aging, even though in my personality I'm as goofy as I've always been. I always say what Alon Oleartchik once told me: 'If there were no mirrors in the world, I wouldn't know I was an adult.' I know that people don't feel well at my age, and I say thank God that I feel good and that everything is fine. I do things and I have energy, so I'm proud of myself and say, 'You've got it, like for now...' The fear is that it might happen all at once. I'm a little scared, because I don't want to be helpless, that's the only thing that really scares me."
When was the last time you started a new hobby?
"During Corona I started sculpting in clay, after climbing the walls. A good friend connected me with a sculpture teacher, Tammy Meiri, and we became good friends. At first I had frustrations and I wasn't happy. I used to crush everything.
"There were statues that I had already sculpted and we even burned them, but after they came out I broke them. I recently took a break from sculpture because there's a lot going on, events, performances, and I was in America on tour. But now I brought clay home because my hands are itchy.
"I have many jobs at home, and Hagit also studies pottery. Our dream is to open a joint studio."
"Everything that was completely clear in terms of my Israeli DNA suddenly became unclear. Not the discourse, not the language. We are not one people anymore, we are done. This whole story of brothers is gone, it doesn't exist. We are tribes that have succeeded – and I say this explicitly, succeeded – in bringing us into conflict and tearing us apart. I am very worried and feel that I had a much better and safer childhood than my children, and that my grandchildren will be even worse."
When was the last time you did something for someone?
"As a profession, I get a lot of requests to volunteer, from easy things to more serious things. I try very, very hard to respond positively as much as possible and am aware that what seems small for me and does not require effort can bring great joy to someone else, so why not? These are things I do for others and I will be praised by strangers, so what am I going to talk about myself?"
When is the first time?
When was the first time you celebrated a holiday in Israel?
"I arrived in Israel in March 1959, at the age of three and three months. We went to Kibbutz Hefetz Haim, a religious kibbutz, because my mother had a very religious cousin there who was a good friend of hers. My mother was very religious, but after the family was destroyed in the Holocaust, she came out with a question. The man she married was also a doubtful Jew, so as far as the family was concerned, it was a breakdown. When we got to my aunt, she wouldn't let us in, and my mother was standing outside on the stairs. Only after her husband came home and said to her, 'Say, are you crazy? It's Judith, what aren't you letting her in?' she exclaimed. We were there on Seder night in the kibbutz's dining room and it was a big event, but the situation itself was traumatic."
Danny Bessen // 67 years old, singer, actor and voice actor. He is married to Hagit, father of three and grandfather of four. He lives in Tel Aviv. Born in Brazil, he immigrated to Israel with his mother in 1959, when he was 3 years old. He served in the Israeli Air Force Band and broke out in 1980 as the lead singer of the band Tislem, with which he performs to this day. Over the years, he participated in films, plays and musicals and released four solo albums. He will perform on June 23 at Zappa Herzliya and July 28 at the Gray Club in Tel Aviv
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