"When the sun rises, la la la, it rises because of it, la la la." Think for a second. What sound does this song play in your head? If no vote comes up to you, you're too young. If it's Shayka Levy's voice, then you're probably a fan of the pale tracker, and if it comes up in the deep and warm voice of Cohen's handfuls, you're one of the rare ones who really remembers the era of hidden giants.
Hofni Cohen passed away this week. He was a great singer, eulogized by him, one of the pioneers of Mizrahi music in Israel. There is no doubt that at times Hofni was the best candidate to be the face of the Eastern music revolution, but the reality was far more complex, complicated and convoluted. In order to understand Hofni's story, one must understand the long and frustrating history of integration of immigrants from Islamic countries into Israeli culture.
The young State of Israel was a place of unification of Jewish exiles in order to create an Israeli people from them. Years away, the "melting pot" process is perceived as an attempt to erase the identity of the new world in order to create a new Israeli out of thin air. But in real time, the melting pot is perceived as a solution to the unique problem of the State of Israel. Similar to immigrant countries such as the United States, for example, immigrants in Israel came from different cultures. But unlike other immigrant countries, here all immigrants held the ethos that despite cultural differences, we are all Jews. As a result, it was understood that there was a need to fuse the differences between the cultures of the different communities, in order to create a new alloy from them that would contain all parts of the original but would be something completely new.
Contrary to popular belief today, those who left Islamic countries cooperated. During the first three decades of the State of Israel, there were several attempts to introduce Eastern cultures into the cultural mainstream. The leading group in introducing Eastern culture within the renewed Israeli culture was Yemenite immigrants.
Bracha Tzafira and Shoshana Damari created a model of Israeli Mizrahi that contained something of the sound and rhythm of the community, but created it in the context of what was perceived as elite culture - European culture. Tzipira, who married Nahum Nardi, taught Nardi the rhythms and scales of the Levant, but directed him to write this music only for concert instruments of a European orchestra. Shoshana Damari needed the stamp of approval in Alterman's lyrics and Wilensky's melodies and orchestration to sing the aliyah from Yemen and the little donkey Bilaam.
Although this was the least that was obtained out of an enormous cultural abundance that was rejected, even a little it is a sign for immigrants from Islamic cultural countries that it is possible to be an Israeli of both, a little Mizrahi and a lot European.
Until the late 70s, those who wanted to emphasize their Orientalism more clearly were doomed to the trenches of oblivion. The possibility that they marked Zefira and Damari – almost East wrapped up in much more than West – seemed to be the best route to enter Israeli culture and go far. This role was placed on the shoulders of the second generation of new immigrants. A generation of immigrant children whose parents immigrated to Israel in the middle of their lives, while they were born or raised from an early age in the State of Israel, hybrid creatures of the Israeli culture that was formed outside and the culture of exile that was preserved at home.
Yigal Bashan (Bashari), Ofra Haza and Gali Atari infused something of Yemenite culture into Israeliness at different levels of assimilation and success. By the way, Yigal Bashan's Western hits overshadowed and hid the daring attempts he made in his forgotten album - "Colors", which presented a brilliant combination of ancient East and modern West.
Into this world emerged Hofni Cohen, Shlomo Cohen's eldest son, Suleiman the Great, who was born in Israel and part of the "fire gang" composed of veterans of the Palmach's Arab department. Suleiman was known for his strong voice and cheers, as the person who created the model of the singer of the comazitzim around the campfire. In 46, Crown Prince Hofni was born, who would later be known as Suleiman the Little. From an early age, Hofni was attached to family celebrations and public singing, and so already in his youth he was marked as someone who could be the figure who would break through Yemenite and Mizrahi culture to the heart of the Israeli mainstream as an equal among equals.
In '76, Hofni competed in the Eastern Song and Chorus Festival with the song "Daughter of Time" ("When the Sun Rises, La La La"). His curly-haired figure and strong voice, curling with a slight smile at the end of the note, made the song very popular. Cohen's path to center stage seemed paved. But the music that enveloped Cohen's songs at the time was far from what was brewing under the cultural radar. In those very same years, the new voices of Yemenite musicians began to emerge from the Yemenite vineyard and the Hatikva neighborhood - the sounds of the vineyard, the sounds of oud and ahuva uzeri. Like Nissim Seroussi before him and Avner Gadassi, who worked alongside him, Hofni Peretz as the head of the wave of artists who integrate the wall of mainstream Israeli culture, only to discover that in the meantime the entire city has already been breached by members of "Mizrahi music."
While Hofni insisted on the vision of combining East and West as new Israeli music, the formula of Ben Mosh and Moshe Meshomer (Greece + Yemen + Hebrew songs = oriental music) became the winning and groundbreaking formula of black magic.
At the same time, Hofni's younger brother, Yizhar, also worked his way into the mainstream through interesting and surprising combinations of here and there. Later, young Cohen took all the doz foa with "Avnibi." Hofni's support for his younger brother, who was catapulted to world fame, only testifies to the family's strength.
In '84, when Eastern music bursts out of Tel Aviv's central bus station and takes over the rest of the country, Hofni was invited to participate in "Kasah." The film attempted to mark the phenomenon of Mizrahi music as a new social revolution, and as a point of conflict between the different cultures in Israel. But what the filmmakers wanted did not fit with the aspirations and musical vision of the filmmakers at the time. Leah and exhausted from struggles, Avihu Medina wrote the theme song for the film. Everything was ready for the great protest song of the generation - the name, the film and the main star - Hofni. But instead of fanning the flames of chaos, Medina put in the mouths of Hofni and Dekelon a proposal for a long-term Israeli merger, but with a saner life: "All worry remove from your heart, and prevent pain from your head, it's not too bad a little to frolick, for a girl to fall in love, and to sing in an evening voice."
The film featured the best stars of the Mizrahi singer of the time, Zohar Argov, Haim Moshe, Jackie McKaiten and Dekelon. But the one who got the most screen time was Chofni, who was cast in the lead role. Life and death in the hands of the creator, and the role that Chufni was given to play was rife with clichés about Mizrahim and Mizrahi singers. Today the film is considered a cult film, as it presents the spectacular phenomenon of Eastern music in real time. But the good part of the film is the music clips. The rest of the film consists of the repetitive forms of a clichéd and ridiculous Mizrahi character versus extreme and ridiculous Ashkenazi characters. In many ways, the film "Kassah" distorted Hofni's character and blurred his artistic work as a creator and singer who sought to connect the Israeli extremes.
It's easy to imagine how much frustration Chofni experienced with the unexpected twist in his life's plot. After the film, Hofni invested his time and talent in the area of his love - football. He performed the national team song "El, El, Israel" and was the announcer of the national team's games for years. This week Hofni passed away, with all the hits of the period being Israeli combinations of East and West. The integrated path that Hufni began to follow back in the 70s has become the main music in Israel in the long run.
And one can only hope that, like many pioneers before him, Hofni knew how much the pop stars of the era owed him a lot, and hope that he loved the work itself, even if others were inducted into the Hall of Fame in his place.
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