“We just finished a mix for a new song, and we are preparing with full vigor for the performance at the Oud Festival, so between intensive studio work and rehearsals there are quite busy days,” says Rif Cohen, who on November 6 (9:00 p.m.) will launch the show and her new album “Hole in the Heart” at the Khan Theater in Jerusalem. The show will be held as part of the International Oud Festival in Jerusalem, which will take place November 3-12, under the artistic direction of Efi Baniya and produced by the Confederation House. “I will perform with new songs from a new and fourth album, most of them in Hebrew with one song in Palestinian Arabic,” she She says. “The subject is separation. After I divorced in 2020 (from her husband, the fashion designer Head Minor – DP) I wrote 20 songs that deal with separation, not necessarily with divorce, but with re-searching for myself. I created a kind of story or journey in the songs, and each song represents The orderly logic of the journey, the moment of insight, through the crisis of the heart, the ability to break free and rediscover what pleasure is, buy myself a gold bracelet and not inherit it, pamper myself, come to terms with what was and move on.”
The album ends with the song “Pay for me”. “This is actually the end of the story that can also be the beginning of a story,” she says. “The album ends with going out on dates, and the message I convey in it is ‘pay for me’ in general, which is a post post feminist statement. The melody is of a song sung by Laila Murad, the old Egyptian singer. Originally the song was called ‘Slam on me’, but we decided to change it to ‘Pay on me’, it deals with behavior in the dating world, which was a very new world for me after 14 years of being in a relationship.”
Why did you choose to call the album “Hor in the heart”, a somewhat gloomy name?
“I think the issue is not the ‘hole in the heart’ itself but acceptance of the fact that there is a ‘hole in the heart’. We all have a hole in our hearts since childhood, and it will always be there. It’s just that every time people we meet along the way fill it or open it. The album’s theme song, called ‘Hole in the Heart’, deals with the heartbreak within the story. Musically, each song is influenced by a different region in the Arab countries.”
What musical areas are you influenced by these days?
“I am influenced by a lot of worlds personally, I really study music, so I like to discover the charms that different cultures have in the world of music. In this particular album I am influenced by Arab countries. There is one more Persian song, there is Greek, there is Turkish, there is an Andalusian song, a Bloody (Iraqi) song. Each song is characterized by different rhythms and sounds. The album takes the listener on a journey into the sounds of the Arab world. These mixes are something only we Israelis can do. I call it ‘Arab salad’, but of course I can only call it that in interviews in Israel because it won’t mean anything if I say it in France. The album also has the influence of the oriental music of the 90s in Israel, combined with the special pop and oriental sound of the 70s.”
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Most of the new album is in Hebrew, while Cohen is known for singing in many languages, including Moroccan Arabic, French and English. “As a mother, I speak to my children in Hebrew, more than in French or another language, and when I write to myself, I usually write in French, but I decided to record in the language that I speak because I think that the subjects on the album are more intimate, and therefore I relate to them more in Hebrew.” She says. “In general, I’ve always had a longing for the Hebrew language, and creating Arabic music in the Hebrew language is something that really appeals to me. It gives a good chill to see how the Hebrew language integrates into Arabic music, it’s quite a fulfillment in my eyes. Even in the international perspective, I think people are curious about the Hebrew language. We are not aware of that.”
Only two years have passed since your previous album Quelle Heure Est-II.
“When the corona virus came in, I launched an album and it was an opportunity to work on another album, so I skipped the phase of a world tour and entered the phase of writing the album. The whole corona I was sitting here in the living room with the guys and we were just fooling around, playing songs. During the Corona period, I developed a great thirst for live music, and this thirst is getting stronger. When there are six musicians, there are multiple and precise frequencies.”
Bland is serious
Cohen, 38, was born and raised in Tel Aviv. After quite a few years during which she performed here and around the world, mainly in France, among other things in artistic collaboration with her mother, the poet Patricia Cohen, in 2012 she released her debut album A Paris, which was an international success. “Even before my big breakthrough, I was in contact with Israeli record companies,” she says. “I would go to them with my suitcase, I was innocent and I didn’t understand that until I broke in no one would sign me. Until someone told me that I should take the initiative and make a music video for myself, do everything by myself. In 2011, my sister, who worked at a high-tech company, told me that things happen if you upload songs to YouTube. I uploaded a song, it started rolling and very quickly reached a million views. Suddenly all the record companies woke up.”
What has evolved in you as a creator in the decade that has passed since the debut album?
“I continue to grow and develop all the time. I am more aware of what is happening. When I broke into the industry I was an innocent and pure creator, and everything that happened to me happened by chance, there was no strategy behind it. I didn’t understand how the Turkish audience sees me, how the French audience sees me and how the Israeli audience sees me. In recent years, I understood exactly what was happening.”
You brought a style that was not known at the time. Do you feel like a pioneer?
“A lot of people tell me that my first album started a new wave. I experienced this personally after the death of my grandparents, immigrants from Djerba in Tunisia. I saw what remained and what did not remain, what was going to evaporate from memory and what I would be able to keep and pass on to my children. This is a mission. This cultural wave is excellent and beautiful. For several years I searched for Israeli culture, and then I realized that we are still in a kind of serious mix”.
no flies
In the last decade, Cohen toured many places in the world, not least in Turkey and France, and participated in a variety of projects.
Aren’t you afraid to perform in Turkey these days?
“I had a private bodyguard at my shows in Turkey, but I do my mission, do what needs to be done, even if it’s dangerous. I don’t feel that I need to be afraid, but what is very surprising in Turkey is that precisely from a political point of view they are the most enlightened I have met. There are many women with burkas who come to my concerts, they know that I am Jewish and Israeli and still come to my concerts. It doesn’t matter to them because they love my music. In France, for example, they know that I am Israeli and Jewish and some raise an eyebrow about it. I don’t blame them and I don’t get into politics, but in Turkey it doesn’t exist. In Turkey, politics and music are separated. There is no doubt that music can affect everything and politics too, but I make music and that is what is important to me. I don’t feel like I represent anything other than music.”
About five months ago, Cohen shot a music video for a new song, Bye Dubai, in which she combined Arabic and English. “It’s quite a subversive song,” she says. “He talks about the fact that we arrived in Dubai and were not impressed. Michael Liani who wrote the lyrics of the song and I noticed that there is not even a fly in Dubai, there is nothing alive there and it is suspicious. Or they sprayed the whole place or something else. Dubai has a detached atmosphere. This shows in my eyes that the rich world has reached a bad place, because if there is money – then why not produce life, nature, plants, and make a better world full of animals? It was a world without animals, very plastic. In the lobby of the luxurious hotel we were in, we took a book out of the library, and then we discovered that it was only the outer cardboard, meaning it was just a simulation of a book. For me, this is the symbolism of the emptiness in the place.”
How often do you go to perform abroad in this post-corona period?
“In the last ten months I performed in France, Turkey and India. There are periods that are more intense and there are periods that are less.”
Cohen, a mother of two, usually takes her children to some of her performances. “They were with me at ‘Indingv’, they were with me at performances at the Israel Museum,” she says. “They love it. I prepare them mentally and psychologically for the fact that mom works, for the fact that sometimes I’m disconnected and can’t give them the attention they’re used to. They often long to go on stage and many times I give it to them. I had to go to the Women’s Day ceremony in the Israeli Knesset and I was stuck without a babysitter. I got a stomach ache and a complex: ‘You’re crazy, how do you do it? Maybe you live in the illusion that you can do it, but you don’t, you have children.’ There’s always that inner voice that tells me I’m crazy to think I can do my job with two kids. Then I said: ‘Wait, I’m a woman, I have two children and they invite me to sing on Women’s Day.’ So I decided to bring them with me, put them on stage and sing with them. That was part of the message. Many women told me it was a genius idea.”
What is your musical fantasy?
“My dream is to make an acoustic album from my room, not to leave the house and record. to record something here in my house with a piano”.