Sharan and Yaya Cohen-Ahronov were children who grew up in Jerusalem, they dreamed of having a wooden house where they could let their imagination run wild. In 2015, that dream creamed skin and sinews in the form of “Yaldi Beit Hataz”, a musical project for children, in which the best Israeli artists perform songs written by Ran, 55, and composed and musically produced by Yaya, 45.
“If you had told me seven years ago that we would be able to achieve such success and results with the project, I’m not sure I would have believed it,” says Yaya now on the occasion of the release of the fifth album in the project, which will be launched this Saturday at 12:30 in Zappa Herzliya. “We saw this venture as a broad project that started as a music album, but we thought that many things could be made of it in accordance with the multi-culture of the new world, which spans many things. It’s really gratifying and surprising to see the dimensions it has reached, and especially gratifying to see how it affects the children.”
How was the project born in the first place?
“The idea started when I became a father. I thought about this when I played my daughter CDs that I grew up on such as ‘The Sixteenth Lamb’ or Eric Einstein’s children’s songs. When I tried to find something contemporary I was not so successful. At a certain point I started playing CDs of ‘Snake Fish’ and Bob Marley for her and I saw that it worked well, so I talked to my brother Ran and asked him what he thought about such a project for children.
We tried to bring something musically invested, because I feel that those children’s albums that I grew up with influenced me and penetrated my DNA, both as a musician and as a person. We wanted this project to treat children as intelligent people. They are indeed a little shorter than us, but they still experience pain, problems and crises, and there is a lot to write about regarding their lives.”
“I was just waiting for Yaya to come up with such an idea and it happened,” says Ran, a children’s writer and educator. “I have been dealing with children for my entire adult life, both writing for children and dealing with education, but there is something about this project that has a much wider impact. For example, we wrote the song ‘Unusual Child’ about what it’s like to be a brother to an autistic child, which is a topic that touches me personally, because my son was diagnosed with autism.
To talk about this issue in a forum of educators is one thing, and to come out with a song like this on the radio, when hundreds of thousands can hear it, is a completely different story. Such a song has the ability to influence the discourse and the acceptance of the other. This is where the desire for this project was born.”
Against the odds
The connection of the two to music began in their childhood. “My childhood was very much outside, a lot of nature and I even raised a donkey,” says Ran. “At the same time, as a teenager, I played bass and was in a punk band (‘Holra’). Like any big brother, I would play Bob Marley songs to my little brother, Yaya, and lull him to sleep with music. At one point I took the guitar down and put it under the bed. Yaya pulled her out and made a career out of it.”
“Music was very significant in my life already as a child,” adds Yaya, bassist and one of the founders of the band “Snake Fish”. “I started playing at the age of 4, and my world was very much around music. From a young age this was my dream. At the age of 17 I became the bassist of the late Yitzhak Klefter and at the age of 18 I founded Hadag Nachsh with my friends. From there, music became my whole occupation and essential”.
In the first album of “Yaldi Beit Hataz”, which was awarded the status of a gold album, artists such as Avraham Tal, “Hadag Nahash”, Moki and Karolina participated. In the following albums, names such as Hanan Ben Ari, Shlomi Shaban, Marina Maximilian, Nechi Nech, Nega Erez, Mosh Ben Ari, Idan Amadi, Miri Mesika, Harel Sakat, Nasrin Kadri, Idan Raichel and more joined.
After the release of the second album, a series was produced on educational television based on the songs of the first two albums – “Children of the Wooden House”, whose sixth season is currently being broadcast. At the same time, the project also works to show children in the Meditech Theater. In addition to the six books that Ran wrote in the “Children of the Tree House” book series, the two recently also launched a new board game called “We are children of the Tree House”. Yaya, Ayala Ingdasht, Gilad Ben Lish and Alon Radei participate in the regular show of “Yaldi Beit Hataz”.
“I remember when we started the project, we went around the record companies and of course they didn’t want us because they said it was a ‘weird’ and ‘irrelevant’ project and that it had no chance of success,” says Ran. “In the end, we found someone who agreed to invest in us, Yuval Niesenbaum from the label ‘The eighth note’. We dreamed about it, but I think we realized the dream beyond anything we imagined, we dreamed smaller than we realized.”
“I really think there is something in this project that is also related to Ran’s and mine’s life path,” claims Yaya. “Maybe it came from home: to follow your heart even if it means it’s against all odds. Even when my friends and I founded ‘Snake Fish’ at the age of 18, no one believed that it would succeed and that hip-hop could work in Israel, and it became a success. So even in the project ‘Children of the Wooden House’ no one believed that it would occupy such a place in Israeli culture. Even Ran, who works in all kinds of countries in the world, sometimes works against the odds, so this is probably something that was instilled in us as children and it led us to our adulthood.”
Our story
The fifth album in the series features Ran Dankar, Eliana Tadhar, Teddy Ngosa, Ayala Ingdasht, Gayda, Daniel Zamir and Yaya himself (also as a singer). “We always had the question, ‘What do we have to innovate?’, and I feel that in this album, apart from the amazing collaborations, we are more mature, dealing as always with relevant and not necessarily easy-to-digest topics.
This time we chose topics such as depression, dealing with difficulties and why one should not be silent when it is difficult”, says Ran. “These are topics that are not usually talked about in children’s songs. Another topic we dealt with is prejudices towards different sectors and different denominations. There is something in the new album that is more mature and touches depth.”
“The topics also deal with social pressure, growing up, there is something terribly fun about this project,” adds Yaya. “We celebrate with this album 60 songs that we wrote throughout the projects, and we receive a very large response from artists to participate in the project. For example, when we wrote ‘Tano Li’, we imagined Ran Denkar singing the song, and to our delight he connected with it.
The same goes for Eliana Tadhar, the rapper Teddy Ngosa, who also wrote and composed with us, Daniel Zamir, who is a religious singer, and Gaida, who is a Druze singer. Our message was to accept and represent several sectors within the population in Israel and to emphasize that it is necessary to accept all of them, because we are all part of the puzzle of Israeliness. These songs make it possible to make a human message accessible to children.”
How do you manage to stay relevant? When you started the project, nobody knew what TikTok was, let’s say
Ran: “We are both very connected to everything that happens, also socially and news-wise, so it keeps us on the ground. We also have children of different ages, so we can have the whole range.”
Yaya: “It is customary to think of the younger generation as a ball that only experiences stupid and superficial things, and we feel that the children really connect to deep content. We receive a lot of responses from children that this project helps them deal with problems in life, and we try to bring issues that touch the lives of the children and all of us. Even if these are difficult and complex topics, we find that there are ears that want to hear it. Despite all the technological advances, the project is successful, and the episodes get a lot of views, as do the songs and performances. I’m happy about it. It is exciting”.
Ran: “When we took up the topic of the ‘wooden house’ we didn’t know if children would connect to the term ‘wooden house’ the way we connected to it as children in the 70s and 80s. It was strange and surprising to see that they did connect to it. Now we’ve released a boxed game, which is perhaps the furthest thing from TikTok, and it’s selling well. Today’s children are not superficial, but try to think how they can help and improve their own lives and the lives of others to make the world a better place. To say about today’s children that they are superficial is a lack of understanding of today’s children.”
In a way, how much does the project help you connect with your inner children?
Ran: “The project leaves us a little childish.”
Yaya: “It also meets us as parents in the face of dilemmas. The song ‘Davar’ on the new album was born when we were approached after the Corona virus to write a song for children. We wanted to write a song about talking, getting out and sharing. It speaks to every age, because everyone finds themselves in a situation of whether to tell or not. There are songs that meet me as a child, as an adult and as a father in all kinds of situations.”
What are each of you doing these days?
Ran: “At this time I am establishing safe spaces for children in Ukraine. I have established spaces in Moldova, the Czech Republic, Israel and shortly also in Ukraine and Poland. This war changed my life. I have worked for many years in developing countries and have seen crises, but I have never come across the trauma that goes through children like the one that happened in the war. In addition, we are working on a new play at the Meditech Theater.”
Yaya: “I’m performing all over the country with the solo album ‘Mouth’ that I released a few months ago, ‘Snake Fish’ are currently finishing work on a new album, and we have a lot of studio time. In addition, Ran and I have a joint lecture called ‘Bringing the change’ and we go around the country with it and tell our story. It is a great privilege for us to do what we love because we are meant to do good in this world.”