Nono in the Walla studio!/Walla system, Niv Aharonson
"We have always won/ this is how we are/ a knock on the door/ this time we lost"
wrote and sang the musician Naomi Aharoni Gal, better known as Nono, in "Abba Boa", one of the most chilling and beautiful Israeli songs released since the outbreak of the war in Gaza. The new song was dedicated to the memory of Major General Yonatan Ditch Mahrish, a soldier in the 6623 patrol battalion, who fell in battle in the southern Gaza Strip in December. At the first candle of Hanukkah - his light went out. He left behind his wife, Moran, and their little son, Ari.
The family Ditch has known Nuno since childhood. "Yonathan was the brother of a very good childhood friend of mine, Kelly," she says in an interview with Walla! Culture. "We visited each other every day, and of course we knew the brothers. Jonathan was always there at home with his smile, his energy and the laughs with him. He really was a role model for Kelly and me. He was the first to start going to the Sea Scouts and following him we also went sailing. He surfed and following him we also started surfing. He was always there. When he was in high school and I was in the fourth grade, Jonathan met Moran, and they immediately fell in love. It didn't take long until Jonathan and Moran decided they were getting married."
"A few months before the wedding, Moran was diagnosed with severe cancer. Jonathan decided that not only was he marrying her, he brought the wedding ahead of time before she entered intensive care. It was the first wedding I've been to in my life, and one of the most exciting weddings. This is where Jonathan and Moran's first battle with cancer began Moran's life was in real danger. And they won. It was the first time they won," she says. "Later on," says Nonno, "it took Jonathan and Moran a long time to have a child. They embarked on a whole journey, and after many years they succeeded and gave birth to their son Ari. This was the second time they won." But one day, in October, came the moment that changed the lives of all of us.
"The obituary and this whole story got under my skin. It didn't leave me." Nono/Adir Pima
"On the seventh of October, Jonathan, Moran and Ari were on a family vacation abroad. As soon as the war broke out, it was clear to Jonathan that he was returning to Israel, trying to get any possible flight and returning to his team, to fight. He told the family: I must return to my team, they will die without me. He was the hero and spirit of his team. He had a never ending smile. In the tragic end, Jonathan is killed. In the story of Jonathan and Moran, after so many struggles to choose to live, here they lost," she says.
"At the funeral, in Moran's obituary, she described it in these words. Her words and this whole story got under my skin. It didn't leave me. It broke my heart. I came home from the funeral, and without thinking, trying or intending, this song came out of me. There are songs that you write and you have to think about where we will go this time, what the words are and what the direction is. This song is one of those rare songs that just came out, within a few minutes the song was already there. At first I was a little worried about how the Dietsch family would receive the song, because I wrote about such a personal topic for them, but I played it to the family members. They were very, very excited, and even before we thought of releasing the song, I sang it at 30 in memory of Yonatan."
It is interesting that precisely during Purim, you distance yourself the most from the "disguise" of the character Nono, and release a song that is so bare and different. Although you still use the nickname Nono and there is in the song Some elements that remind us of Nuno, for example in the rhyme, but he is completely different from the light and funny character - and crushes also because of the authenticity.
"I feel that in the end, everything I do, even when I make happy, dancing music and with humor, I write myself. The jumping songs are also experiences from my life and I put in them the people I met, the insecurity, the joy and the sadness and everything. Anyone who pays attention will see that this is very much me. What happened on the Seventh of October and during the war is that I suffered a seizure, changed and connected to other sides of me. That's why I come out with songs like this because I feel that my duty as an artist is to give what I really feel and to stay true to myself and with my nerves exposed and not disconnected. Beyond the fact that it was disconnected from what is happening in the country to now release uplifting and jumping songs, it was also disconnected for me because I experienced this tragedy together with everyone. I realized that I don't want and don't need to define if it's far from the character. I'm actually interested in you saying that my writing is in the DNA of the song and somewhere it's felt that it's the same artist - but from a very different angle."
On the seventh of October, Nono was with her family in Turkey, on a trip that started on the top of the world and ended with the most difficult feelings possible. "It was fantastic. That Saturday, October 7, early in the morning, we were on a hot air balloon in Turkey, because you have to go up on hot air balloons when the air is cold. We were in some kind of heaven. It's a place where there are lots of hot air balloons floating in the sky together with our ball And also crazy nature. We are in some kind of dream. Then we landed on the ground," she says. "The landing from the hot air balloon was quite scary, it felt a bit like a crash. At that very moment my mother and my brother received messages that there were missiles over Tel Aviv. Then we realized that it was more than that. It felt like we first left the earth in one lifetime and then landed in a lifetime Otherwise. We landed from heaven - to hell."
At the beginning of the war, she released the song "When the Sun Is Again", which she originally wrote for her father when he was ill with the desire to give him hope and encourage him, and produced it with Matan Agozi and Yonatan Drucker (who also produced "Aba Bua"). "Unfortunately, my father never saw the sun again, but the song stayed with my family and united us. When we were crushed like everyone else by the situation, my mother told me that she thought this song could be appropriate now, and as he embraced us as a family he could embrace more people who would listen to him The song came out of the conversation with my mother."
Following the war and after the songs you released that are far from your character, will you consider giving up the character completely and releasing things under your name, Naomi?
"No, because I feel that Nono is simply my conduit to being what I want to be. I decided that I put aside these definitions of where is Nono and where is Naomi and I simply give myself the freedom. Because I have control over what I will spend. Beyond For that, I still really like to lift and laugh. I know it's still a part of me. And it will come back when I feel ready."
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"Nono is simply my conduit to be what I want to be." Naomi Aharoni-Gal/photo: Eran Levy, make-up: Adir Pima, styling: Omer Yahav, hair: Oral Atton
How do you sing "Living the Dream" when everything is shit?
"When I performed in front of soldiers or in front of evacuees, people really wanted to break down. These were the craziest and most deceiving performances. People wanted to dance, shout and let loose. At first I didn't know if it was appropriate or not and very quickly the answer was clear - yes. These are songs that come from love. I don't know if there is a place for it now, but unequivocally it was very appropriate, despite everything."
What memorable moment did you have from your performances or meetings with evacuated soldiers?
"In general, it's a really interesting experience to be an artist in Israel, when we see everything with our own eyes. Everyone knows that there are evacuees, that they live in hotels and that the soldiers are in bases, but as an artist, doing a tour and meeting the people up close is an influential thing. I enter a stunning hotel with evacuees, and see There's a basket of vegetables in the middle of the lobby and children's drawings on a board in the corridors. You see parts of a kibbutz that are united in a hotel lobby. It's a crazy experience to see it and realize that people were literally displaced from their homes. It was surreal."
In addition to her performances in front of soldiers and evacuees, Nono also held a concert tour under the name "Sevab Hibukim", the last performance of which will take place on April 12 in Gray Modi'in. "A round of hugs is my desire to meet the people and see the audience. We called it a 'round of hugs' because we felt that at this time a hug is exactly the right energy. Something good, optimistic, that contains both humor and pain," she says. "And this is what these performances look like. They are a little the same - and a little different. We all wear white, in my opinion it makes it festive and beautiful, and we also come to be happy, to dance and break down and break the place but also to hug."
"When I appeared in front of soldiers or in front of evacuees, people really wanted to fall apart." Nono/photo: Eran Levy, make-up: Adir Pima, styling: Omer Yahav, hair: Oral Atton
There are also things that have changed from end to end. Following the war, Nono shelved the second album she recorded, after releasing two singles from it. "This is an album that I worked on for a long time. I was the producer of the song ``Cute Boy'' and of the album that I released. I was in the craziness of my life and then I traveled with the producer Ilai (Eshad - Shab) to Greece and wrote almost all the songs. Many of them dealt with my career, what I went through this year, how I managed to succeed so quickly and all my feelings. And after the oath in October, all these issues did not interest me anymore. I moved away from it because it belongs to the previous world. It's on hold for now."
What do you think pop will look like after the war? Will it deal with more serious issues, or will it be more escapist?
"Why do you have to choose one answer - when all the answers are correct? I think it will be a combination of everything. The country is like a person, one body that experiences a process of grief, which has several stages. We are now still at war and it's crazy, and now everything that happens in music is songs with one degree or another of pain and connection. Now there is no pure escapism from what I see. Pop has already undergone a change. I wish our nature would be to be happy at the end and we would also need this release, which I think will be in the next stage. You never know when it will happen."
Recently, Nonno says, she rented an apartment a few meters from her home in Tel Aviv to focus on writing. "Changes place, changes frequency, changes luck," she says, "I shut myself away to search and find what now turns me on And what now excites me. I am now after two weeks of a writing retreat that I did with myself. Every song I wrote has a different vibe and a different side, some dancing, some calm, some big and some small. I really think that in the end if I decide for myself if there will be songs like I did or if I try to imitate who I was, I will hurt myself. I just want to look ahead and look for what excites me now. There is everything from everything, both humor and pain."
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"Pop has already undergone a change." Nono/Gil Rubinstein
As first published by the writer of these lines, Nono will be the creator of the music for the comedic drama "Kafot" of the Kameri that will be released later this year. The play was written by Shir Reuven and Gigit Fischer, and is about two girls who are good friends, who think that all their deepest wishes and desires will come true if they travel to Poland. Although the show was announced at a press conference three years ago on October 7, Shir Reuven and Gigit Fisher tell us that the show is relevant to these difficult days of the Gaza war "because of the preoccupation with the conflict between the youth and the Holocaust, which creates tension that we are forced to live again and again, between life and death The question of whether and how it is permissible to live and rejoice in the face of the horrors that have happened and continue to happen, and that in the end life is stronger than death, and that one must live, and one must choose life."
"This is one of the projects that excites me the most and that I enjoy doing and writing the most," says Nono. "I've always had a love for musicals and I never knew how and whether I would realize it, so the phone call that the song writers Reuven and Gigit Fischer made to me with the offer to compose the songs was one of the most exciting phone calls for me."
"Humor and pain are ultimately two sides of the same coin and they can live together." Nono/Reot Bidar Nachshon
"A song and a Gothic song are comedies, and even I, the composer, have humor in the songs. You can understand that in the end it is something that is very humorous, but of course the painful issues are embodied in it, because it is already clear that everything is together. I think that humor and pain are ultimately two sides of the same coin and they can To live together. In the end, the ambition of humans is to go back to living and choosing life. We see that people continue to laugh. When I sat in Yonatan's shiva, we got drunk and laughed and reminisced. It's all together," she adds.
You've talked before about being an anxious person. Humor is one of the best tools in dealing with anxiety.
"Unequivocally. My psychologist told me when I'm at the height of the anxiety attack - to try to laugh at the situation. It's the most difficult moment, when you feel like you're dying, and he told me to try to laugh at the situation and try to see its absurdity. It's some kind of medicine. Another good friend who was with me in the Sea Scouts, whose name was Omri Belkin, was killed on the seventh of October. Amri was a crazy and funny man, and fittingly his brother organized a birthday party for him after his death, which was an evening of stand-up comedians and tomatoes. Stand-up comedians laugh and throw tomatoes at them. It was an evening of laughter and tears. At first It sounds like a strange idea, why bring stand-up artists to the birthday event of a person who was killed, but it managed to be such an accurate evening. It's magic. It's a secret of humans, humor, it protects and liberates and can be suitable even in times of pain."
Beat the anxieties with humor. Nono/Photography and makeup: Adir Pima, styling: Omer Yahav, hair: Oral Atton
In view of the difficult moments due to what is happening in the country, did you have a desire to move abroad?
"These are always thoughts that are there, due to the fact that we are independent people who want to believe that we have the option of choosing where to live. I know that my desire is to stay here, this is my home, this is my people, this is my language, I write in Hebrew, I am connected to this place, I grew up there. If a situation turns out to be so difficult that we have to move from here, it will be a huge tragedy. Of course I don't want to go there in any way, but it's a scary place, there's a lot of fear here. In conversations with my psychologist I ask him: what can I do with all this fear? So he tells me: you should join the group of so-called stupid people who suppress it. So either you move abroad and don't be afraid or you say: I choose not to think all the time about all the potential options, and she called it like 'not being the smart one who thinks about anxieties' but deciding to be a little dumb. Supposedly this is less wise but the more correct thing is to repress , because everything is so scary. But of course my heart is here."
What about writing songs for other artists? There is talk that you might write to Gidi Gov. This is true?
"Writing for other artists is completely something I love and do. At the beginning of my journey I thought I would make sad songs with a guitar and write pop songs for other artists. That's what I thought I would be. The fact that I'm at the front surprised me as well. Regarding Gidi Gov, first of all when I was little I said he was the singer And my favorite singer. But I can't say more than that."
"The subject of beauty is another way for me to create." Nono/screenshot, Eran Levy; Instagram screen nunu.grl
Last week, the fashion, gossip and networking sections were abuzz with a photo on your Instagram, in which your hairstyle appeared to have been changed from brunette and long to red and short, a block that drew comparisons to Madonna and the Orange Girl. How great was their disappointment when they discovered that it was only a wig.
"It was really fun. My beauty team, who are amazing people, walk the path with me. The subject of beauty is another way for me to create. It's another expanded side of art for me. We always create and upload full of ideas for music videos and this time we said, come on, we have time , let's make a day just for fun, let's go crazy, without thinking and without defining our ideas. This is one of the looks that came out and I'm glad it sparked interest."
And yet, unlike other pop stars, you're not really in the gossip sections, nor in the PR game, the noise and the yellow excrement. So, for example, you don't know who your partner is. I guess it's by choice.
"I'm not looking for it. It has a lot to do with who I am in life. I'm not a person who talks too much or looks for the dramas. What drives me in everything I do and in all my projects is the art. This is the most important thing to me. I also feel that it is my shield and what always reconnects me to this profession and revives me. The one that I end up creating. I feel that I reveal everything through my songs and words."
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