It was at the end of January ’79. Two months before her 14th birthday, an unknown girl named Gigit Shuval took the stage of the Singer and Chorus Festival and sang the song “Seven Reeds” with which she finished in seventh place. Alongside her, local stars such as Hadva Amarni, Ricky Gal, Zvika Pick, Sherri, the band “Sexta” competed in the same festival ” and the band “Milk and Honey”.
“I came to this festival completely by accident,” says Shovel, now 57, from her place of residence in Boston. “My mother, the songwriter Sara Shovel, was asked to compose the words to the tunes of five songs, sent by Sergio Pinchas. He was a new immigrant from Romania at the time, and was trying to screw up in the Israeli music industry. My mother wanted to play what she had written for him, so she offered me to record the songs, without any thought that it would put me on the stage of the festival. After investigating the question of whether it was possible to share such a young performer in the festival, I came up with the song, and with it the course of my life was determined. It was enough for me I enjoyed the moment.”
Shovel was born in Holon. Her father, Nissim, who in his early childhood was saved from the Holocaust, was a musician and worked at the “Voice of Israel”. He died at the age of 45 from hemophilia. Her mother, Sarah, wrote many hymns in the 1970s and 1980s, the most famous of which is the hit “Human Heart”, which she composed with the composer Yosef Hadar for Esnat Paz. she tells “Because my parents were involved in the field, I knew the people who work. Of them, I especially remember the conductor of the festival, Yitzhak Graziani – of Bulgarian origin like my father – as a funny and cute man.”
How did you deal with the publicity after the festival?
“Suddenly I found myself as the star of the day at the school where I studied. The kids there, who saw me on TV, didn’t know how to eat the matter, and from all sides came at me with a request for an autograph. ‘Calm down’, I told them. “I am one of you.”
anything can happen
After her military service as a solo singer, Shuval decided to get off the stage. The one who prevented her from taking the step was Itzik Bacher, a singer who lived for many years in the United States. “Before you make a final decision, you should meet someone,” he told her.
“I climbed the stairs to Itzik’s apartment, and when he opened the door for me, I saw a guy playing the piano, with his back to me,” she recalls. “I don’t know how it came to me, but at that moment I felt that this was the man I would marry. I must have fallen in love with his back.” . It was Ron Droyan, a musician seven years older than her. The musical collaboration with him later turned into a relationship that ended under the canopy. One of the highlights of their joint musical activity is the album “Lila Lila”, from the songs of Mordechai Zaira.
“The story of this album began at a performance of Zaira’s songs at the Arad Festival,” she says. “I sang the ‘Shir Hodiya’ there, which Zaira wrote and composed, and at the end of the show I was called to an exciting surprise, when his widow, Sarah, approached me backstage and invited Ron and me to come to her for the production of an album of her husband’s songs. The meetings with this amazing woman were an unforgettable experience for us.”
In the last two decades she has not lived in Israel. “It happened unplanned,” she describes. “When she was 18 years old, Tothi, one of our daughters, went to study in a summer program in Berkeley, after which Shaked, our son, arrived there.
Then as a good Jewish mother I told Ron, my husband, that if half of our four children are there, we will all be with them. That’s how we went to Canada, where Ron has family, and it also suited our branching activities in the field of dubbing, which we have for the time being calmed down from.” Music for the theater.
“Ali Shlekht”, a mini-album, by the way, the last of her albums, which appeared five years ago, differs from its predecessors in that it is in English and contains songs by Jewish singers, including Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan and Carole King. Shuval, who also appears as a cantor, even released an album of prayers. A few years ago they moved from Toronto to Boston, where she studied for a master’s degree in songwriting.
Do you have plans to return to Israel?
“You never know. anything could happen. After all, I never imagined that one day I would move to live far from Israel.” D