The respected music magazine “Rolling Stone” published at the beginning of the week the ranking of the 200 greatest singers of all time, and Ofra Haza, the beloved Israeli singer, reached the respectable 186th place, and even received the title “Madonna of the Middle East” from the magazine. Bezalel Aloni, the legendary producer, creator and manager of the acclaimed singer, spoke with Iris Kol on 103FM and responded to the surprising and exciting choice.
“From the first hearing until hearing it today, she always moved me with her voice,” he noted, and said: “From the day she knocked on the door, in our small apartment in Yad Eliyahu, and asked to join the theater workshop. She was in the seventh grade, I think.”
“In real time, I didn’t know, she didn’t know, we are in the frame, recording songs, trying to do this and that. It wasn’t easy at the beginning.”
On the moment he heard about her selection to the privileged list: “I had an excitement that I have no words to define, Ofra has not been with us for 23 years, she ended her life in a tragic way.”
Do you think she was appreciated in Israel like abroad?
“No. It’s a local problem, of local professionals. It wasn’t easy, it was a long career.”
If they had done this ranking in Israel, would she have entered the top ten?
“Everything came from outside of Israel, there was a career here, there were many female singers, but Ofra was a unique color. Over the years, her fans, entertainment reporters writing ‘fans’, kept multiplying, without public relations. What we did brought her a lot of loving people.”
He told about the process of working together, which did not go so smoothly: “In real time we don’t know what is happening, we are in the frame, recording songs, various interviews in all kinds of places. It was not easy, at the beginning no one was waiting.”