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20 years since Shlomi Shaban's debut album

Shlomi Shaban underwent an exciting transformation, but we must not forget that he was once a bit of a douchebag

At the age of 15, I saw the submissive female characters from Shlomi Shaban's debut album as something to be likened to, and it hurt me in relationships.

But a chronological progression in Shaban's albums reveals less cynicism, more compassion and more recognition of women as human beings, for all that that implies.

Fourth and final part of the project

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• Shlomi Shaban

Ofir Sagarsky

Tuesday, 01 December 2020, 00:00

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Shlomi Shaban performs "Daniela" in a live performance in 2000 (Director: Yael Badrashi)

Does a feminist love Shlomi Shaban?

If you ask me, the answer is first and foremost "yes".

Only then, in a long burrow into the beginning of the present millennium, does the proud pedestal become a "yes, but it is complex."

Quite a bit of criticism has been directed at Shaban over the years from feminist circles, and the esteemed musician is aware of it, responds, accepts and defends at times.

As someone who adored him in her youth and enjoys listening to him to this day, I identify with the ambivalence he experienced that Ben himself faced in the face of criticism.

Not only because Shaban has undergone a significant process since the release of his first album, but also because that album, "Shlomi Shaban", released in 2000, still holds a warm place in my heart.

He made me laugh, encouraged me, intrigued me intellectually and broadened my musical horizons.

In fact, I do not have such a right to come to terms with the arguments, because I myself have not been exposed to the problematics of the old texts until recently.

It happened last August, with the appearance of a video that stopped my heavenly scrolling flow on Facebook.

His name is "Daniel.H", a cover by the musician Adi Shaham for "Daniela", a song by Shlomi Shaban from his first album.

Part one of the project to mark 20 years since the release of Shaban's debut album - Interview with the musician

Part two of the project - Shaban tells the stories behind the songs

Part three of the project - Analysis of the album from a twenty year perspective

More on Walla!

NEWS

Reflections on Death, Anxiety about Abandonment and Dylan McKay: Shlomi Shaban Reveals the Stories of the First Album

To the full article

I enjoy listening to him to this day.

Shlomi Shaban (Photo: Reuven Castro)

"Daniel heard what that play radio

radio play what Daniel heard

recently enjoyed electro

especially those, what do you call them ...

he can not remember, it's not that he did not know

I was lying to him. And it's not fun

," Daniel wants I groan like TV

on TV moan like Daniel expects to

come "Home with a face of 'I'm in a Crash'

Come now, on the carpet, in the coffee corner

I did not finish

now he is napping."

This reaction to the creation of the star of my youth caught me unprepared. something sounds weird. it can not be abated it was originally. I hurry to Google to restore the song, and indeed, almost identical words - but they are diverted man and woman.

"everyone thinks as football,

I think of a song by the Grateful Dead.

Exactly on Garcia's solo

she asks Shard.

I go for it, like a suicide.

Daniela says I'm a kid, but that does not matter.

If it does not bother, why talk?

She says neighborhood is a crucial issue.

I grab her close and tell her,

"I deserve so much more!"

She's crying now.

It's comforting.

But she has a body a bit like a guitar

and panties from Hamashbir.

Her father left when she was four.

I have no idea what that explains.

She turns on the radio, dances and Sarah

grabs her head with both hands and says,

"What a song! What a song!"

And now she's opening a door to

get high from the air.

She says that as she grows,

she does not tolerate the city.

I'm silent about it.

This is the price".

More on Walla!

NEWS

As time passes as if nothing

To the full article

The female version of the song:

Cool and sophisticated

I listen to the original song again.

The last houses are already closing on my neck especially cool fingers from the not-so-distant past.

In the more distant past, ages 14-15, I had yet to have traumas from men, and I absorbed the words straight into my clean and open heart, as a drawing of a legitimate relationship between a man and a woman.

I know, art is not meant to educate;

It is a parallel dimension, it is a demilitarized zone, it is a refuge for the hidden desires of the soul, and some are despicable and repulsive.

But what if in practice art does educate?

Me, sometime at the age of 15-16, she was undoubtedly educated.

The sweeping fondness for sitting in my bohemian-intellectual environment only confirmed the admiration I had acquired for him, and promised that I would copy her into similar male characters in my personal life.

Sarcastic men, bitter, mentally conflicted, preoccupied with despair and as a result indifferent to the feelings of others, especially if that other is a woman.

From the age of 27, I wonder why I received these messages calmly.

My unfortunate answer to myself is that Shaban represented for me an image of Haifa for me for his messages.

How cool and sophisticated it sounds to me then as he ventes his frustration over a young woman's faceless cliché with Dedi Issues.

How supreme he was portrayed before, compared to her, the idiot.

My adolescent personality, longing for approval, immediately fell for this trick, and I longed to meet it, to impress it.

Or at least men like him.

The original song -

Torah figure

He sounds so witty and clever to me that even if he says something terrible, he must be saying it self-consciously or meaning something deeper.

His wondrous musical talent automatically gave him the “quality” slot in my head, and the witty bites and Tel Aviv references represented for me a culture I so wanted to be a part of.

It chills me, because it is precisely such types who are the ones who directly and personally crushed me in the later years of my life.

Because ironically, songs that come down to Daniela-type girls create danialas: young women who turn a blind eye to familiar, valued, and experienced men.

By virtue of all this, those same men will tower over them at any given moment, both in front of you and behind your back, in a song they will post later.

And yet, in a distorted way, you will feel lucky to have appeared in their song.

They give themselves such self-importance that makes you feel lucky for every drop of attitude on their part.

Daniela does everything she can to win this treatment, and the effort is evident on her.

She tries to impress the speaker with a conversation about music - his area of ​​practice - but forgets the band's name.

Then, she tries to share with the speaker an emotional insight, but her language is slurred.

Her clumsy attempt to reach out to him, to communicate with him, is ridiculed by him.

Every crime is that she's blackmailed, but that's enough for him to make her cry and enjoy it.

In the world of "Daniela" the punishment is justified and reasonable, because Daniela is not a real and round person, she is a function;

A Torah figure of a vulnerable and young woman who can be used as a punching bag without fear of consequences.

I say "Torah character" because it's not just this song: Daniela's character is repeated in the songs of Shaban's first album in a variety of variations, including "Puritan slut" and "Yaela".

Impressive, funny and touching.

Shaban (Photo: Reuven Castro)

And all this I say, still, with a deep appreciation for the butt.

Not only because of his later albums, but also because of that first album, which is still impressive, funny and touching, and even more impressive when remembered written by a young man only 24 years old.

Unlike Arik Berman, for example, there was already a degree of self-criticism in Shaban's first album.

Both exhibited male narcissism, but that Ben was able to mock himself for this trait.

Thus, in "Vision of Dylan Kelly and Rise 90210" he put himself in line with Dylan McCain, Jesse James and Johnny Depp, in the clear knowledge that he was perhaps only equal in size to them.

"We Moved North" from the album "City" which came out seven years later already speaks in terms of "we".

IKEA, from the album "Exercise in Awakening" (2014), already presents a complex relationship between a man and a woman, on its positive and negative sides.

"I do not want to go to IKEA," he sings from the bottom of his heart, and it's not only funny but also deeply empathetic.

There is no more selfish nervous discharge here but only a frightened and authentic call from commitment, from sunset, from the bourgeoisie.

He admits that "there is something disturbing about this comfort", and should have talked about it first - "but now it is too late / it is no longer possible / and we are already on our way to IKEA".

This daily helplessness is heartbreaking.

Unlike previous songs, the speaker in Shaban's later songs is trained in conversation with himself, but not always through her mediation out.

The primal fear he finds within manages to grope his way out only in a childish, disjointed, helpless sentence.

This time, the joke at his expense.

In a song named after the album, "Exercise in Awakening," half of the stage is already vacated to the voice of Hava Alberstein, on the standard of giving answers to the speaker's questions, questions of a former fighter carrying a post-trauma, apparently.

In this song like other songs from the same album, it reveals to us that Ben has his weaknesses.

He is no longer the emotionally blocked artist that girls look down on, but a human figure in which women and men can identify themselves.

There, in touching this pin at the core of human experience, lies in my eyes the true greatness of art.

That a 2013 son may lose his brilliance, but gain something much bigger - he produces songs that are worth discussing from the bottom of his heart.

No more "Eric", but works that go with the listener for years to come.

It is difficult to critique the messages written twenty years ago, a period that is proving today to be repulsive towards women as a whole.

It is also known that Shaban now sees some of his first songs in a different way.

In an interview with Amit Salonim published here last weekend, the author said that he had refrained from performing "Puritan slut" for many years, and today he is careful in his performance not to say the word "slut".

It also turns out that he gave his blessing to the same cover of Adi Shaham, and understood where it came from.

In the same interview, Ben still defends some of his songs mentioned above.

"'Yaela', 'Daniela' and 'Talia' are a kind of girls' ideas. Girls I imagined and thought about what it would be like to live with them," he explains.

On a personal level, it probably makes these songs less douchy than "Puritan Whore," based on a real woman.

At the public level, for the listeners, there is really no big difference between them.

On the other hand, an artist who defends his work cannot be blamed.

Especially when alongside the problematic messages, there is still a lot of grace in it.

Either way, chronological progress on Shaban's albums reveals less cynicism, more compassion and more recognition of women as human beings, for all that that implies.

Art is not meant to educate, but it does it anyway, and complex, layered art, the art of all its characters - educates for compassion.

That a son walks the path of compassion, and the process is beautiful, and even more beautiful when one remembers where it started.

Even if it hurts a little.

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