If you ask Alma Zohar, it was her extraordinary childhood that made her write a children’s book. “I had a clearly unconventional childhood,” she says.
“My parents are people who have not grown up. Never in my childhood have I seen a person get up in the morning and go to work. My parents worked playing, painting and singing. That’s how I grew up. It was a rich, colorful house full of animals, music, musical instruments, books and records. I fell not far from the tree in the end. If you walk into my house today, it’s not that different from the house I grew up in, a house of art and creation. I did not become a hitmaker. It seems to me that in the end they did the job. “
When she was a child, Zohar’s parents – the painter and artist Israel Zohar and her mother Orna, who was a psychoanalyst and literature teacher – divorced. “My parents were pretty pioneers in the field,” she says. “It was only when I got to middle school and other parents got divorced that I was relieved. “My parents were free and liberal and quite exceptional in the landscape, because even though they divorced, they remained good friends and never argued.”
How did this affect you?
“Like all the divorced children I waited for them to reunite and it did not happen. They were one front and did not try to compete with each other for my and my brothers’ attention. They always talked nicely about each other. In my childhood I was ashamed of them because I wanted ordinary parents. The things that used to seem like a crazy leak to me in childhood seem to me today like the most adorable thing in the world.
“When I was a girl, Bob Dylan came on tour in Israel and I went with my parents to all his performances here. I remember a scene from the show at Be’er Sheva Stadium, where they danced and raved. I tried to stand aside and not be associated with these two people dancing like crazy. Today I was willing to give everything for To go with my parents to Dylan’s show and dance with them. “
When she was 5, her mother remarried to songwriter, singer, composer and journalist Yankele Rotblit. “I do not remember reality so much before my mother’s acquaintance with Yankele, but only through stories I recounted and pictures,” she says. “This was the reality I grew up in: I had a father and a mother, and a stepfather and a stepmother, and lots of siblings. There were sad parts in childhood, but also happy and cool things. We did not grow up in an atmosphere of depression or a sense of misery. “
What was it like growing up in such an artistic home?
“The decisive musical influence came from Yankele’s side, and I certainly followed him. I saw as a child the movie ‘Hair’ in a videotape that was worn by most viewers, and my dream was to be in Woodstock. I grew up on the music of then and not of my time. Compared to Yankele, my father was a handyman and would build and fix everything in the house. He taught me to be a carpenter. He would let me work with saws and hammers. To this day, I know plumbing and electricity and can replace fuses at home. ”
What girl were you?
“Alas, boy first of all. I was a Tom Boy like that. Climbs trees, breaks arms and legs, makes only problems, is surrounded by four dogs I collected on the street. Hit Re. Not a good girl who excels in school and makes her parents happy. But it shocked the living spirit of the house. I had the role of being loved and funny and the naughty middle girl, so they showed me forgiveness. “
These days Zohar is closing a circle with her childhood by publishing the children’s book “The Color Box” (Dov Publishing), which she created with her father who lives in London, believing in the content writing and her father on the illustrations. “The book is about parenting, with the book’s protagonist being the father and not the girl,” she says. “I get very exciting responses. “Parents are actually more of a target audience for a book than children.”
How is the collaboration with your father formed?
“About five years ago I suggested to my father to create together a book that would present my special childhood and be based on my true stories without any invented detail, but my father was not so cooperative with this matter. He made me one painting because I insisted and then he said to me: ‘It’s not good, I am a painter and not an illustrator.’ “
So how did this happen anyway?
“The corona in the UK was tough at times and there was a lot of concern for my father. At the same time he is also losing his sight. I wanted to lighten his heart a bit and tried to convince him to take advantage of the time at home to work on the book, but he again refused and said it would not work. So I posted on Facebook the one painting he drew. There were a lot of comments and I got an offer from a book publisher. I sent for Dad and left him no choice, so he started working. “
The work of the two, especially during the Corona period, was mostly through the zoom. “Dad was so pissed off that he sat and drew what he wanted, even before I even wrote content. In some cases I had to make up a story based on the drawings he had already drawn. He was very undisciplined (laughs). “
The book made you close the circle with the girl Alma?
“In a sense safe. It is a process of therapy in front of my father, in front of my mother, in front of myself, in front of life. This is the most intimate thing I’ve ever had. “I’m not a person of revealing interviews, and I took out a lot of private things there, and also, yes, I gave the girl that I was somewhere.”
I learned to wear makeup
Zohar broke into the public consciousness in 2008 with the successful debut album “Divrei”, which reached platinum status with the hits “Indian Love Song”, “Ego Trip”, “With the Back” and “Know”. “I dealt with this success very badly, I was in battle shock,” she recalls. “I am not the person who would be willing to talk like that. It did not seem to be coming. I did not come with a background of a military band or studies in grenade, but it suddenly landed on me. I did not even know how to put on makeup, I was a shockist.
“It took me a long time to figure out what they wanted from me. I was not born in TV studios, suddenly one day I became Singer of the Year. The scene I remember from that period is that friends took me to Super-Pharm and taught me to wear makeup. I remember the older Russian saleswoman 30 is learning to apply mascara for the first time in her life. ”
In the years that have passed, she has released four more albums (“Thirty-Three”, “Love Bread”, “Wonder” and “Crazy Life”), and today she spends most of her time creating for children. “I have no time left for the adult world because I am so busy in the world of children,” she says. The need to create a children’s album (‘Wonder’, 2015) was born when I was at home after the birth, and all I wanted was to go to the studio and sing with my friends, talk to people. So I created a children’s album. I did not think I would become the little container, and it happened. Now I am in love with this world. “
Why?
“First of all children are real. They sit captivated and listen with their mouths open. I’m been on the road for six years with a children’s album show ‘Wonder’, and to this day I stay hugged until the last child. It’s a reward you do not get from performing in front of adults. It is something else and no less exciting. “
The color box (Photo: Illustration – Israel Zohar)Waiting for the wind
One of the moving passages in the new book is a passage in which the protagonist talks to her father about her longing for her mother who is gone. Zohar herself lost her mother in 1998, when she died of an illness. “My mother was a very special woman,” she says. “She had a great deal of kindness. She cared about humans. She always said, ‘Never pass a person by without asking if he needs anything.’
“She would stop next to any older or homeless person and ask if he needed anything. When my first album came out, there were people who would come to shows to tell me things about my mother and how she saved their lives. She taught me not to say yikes about “People.” That’s something I carry with me. She was always at eye level with everyone. “
Regarding the section in question in the book, she says: “This is the thing we worked on the most, it has gone through a lot of incarnations. At first Dad drew Mom as she was in reality and erased, drew another drawing of her in her youth and erased, then he drew her as an angel, and it felt right to us. In my childhood I was similar to my father physically, and over the years I become less like him and more like her. He always tells me that he sees my mother with expressions, laughter and speech. “
As for music, what are you doing these days?
“I’m not doing anything right now. I’m waiting for a strong wind to blow in me. I work a lot and perform a lot, but I have not written a song since 2018. I need a great hunger for creation to come. I have the luxury to afford it. There are lots of other channels I am busy with, and the world of children fills me. The world has changed, and I do not want to be disconnected. I want to talk to reality and not become the one who puts out archaic folk albums all my life, and does not notice that it is irrelevant. If I have something I feel is right and corresponds with reality, then I will do Paul Power. Now I look at it and say, ‘Wow, maybe I’m a dinosaur.’
You are not only a musician, you are also a social activist, playing. Do you need diversity?
“Yes, everything that is fun for me, feels right and true to me – I do. I do not limit myself to anything. I might as well have a career in politics. I’m not limited to this place that I’m just a singer. I’m a creative person, and tomorrow I can do a dance show. Unreasonable, but I do not deny myself anything. In that sense, I do only what I want and it’s a lot in life. “
Would you really get into politics?
“No, it does not seem fun to me (laughs).”
How was your corona period?
“It was the first time I had not formed a firm opinion about my life. I did not understand what was happening, I did not know what to do. In my personal career I enjoyed prosperity: I went through people’s homes, had dinner with them, sat with their children, met my grandparents and the dog. I love this intimacy. Perfect for my character. ”
The book can be purchased on the “Dov Publishing” website.