Rita 'tiftah halon'' is my favorite Rita album, and was released in 1999. It's her 5th album and its title means 'open the window'.
Excluding a best-off released in 2015, Tiftah halon is the only 2CD release, proposing 10 songs on each disc.
This blog entry is only about the first cd, and immediately after that, I'll post an entry for the second cd.
All songs are in Hebrew, except for 2 songs (1 on each CD, toward the end), which are in Persian and the most rhythmic of them all.
CD 2 also has a hidden, short bonus track. After listening to it for 100's & 100's of times, I discovered new sounds that I'd never noticed... Which tells that you that no matter how well you think you know a song or an album, you might find something new about it.
This is also true about some of the lyrics, which are often very poetic and use interesting imagery.
If you want to listen, the entire album's on this playlist, on her official youtube channel. Best of course is to get the cd and support the artist.
The back cover indicates the titles only in Hebrew, so I'll translate them before I continue.
CD1 :
1 Open the window
2 The first letter
3 A happy ending (it can be also translated as a good ending)
4 Time
5 Sun crown
6 Your secret
7 Don't go now
8 Concertina Palestine
9 The apple of my eye (the full title include the persian title that I cannot translate, more or less transcribed as Padat Bagram. The second part in Hebrew means the apple of my eye)
10 A man with a cello
The first song with eponymous title open the window makes me think of the woman in the story asking her significant other to open the window because she recalls her childhood memories and insecurities, and needs to be reassured in his arms, as the song ends. It might also carry some allusions to anxiety, where she describes she got afraid from the outside world and the smells the wind brought, and afraid of herself. These lyrics aren't precisely about anxiety, but they sure imply it to me in Hebrew. The first and last 30-40 seconds of this song are quite mellow, but the rest is marked by very rhythmic drum beats that I love immensely and which makes me feel like dancing. However, I think this song would be even better if it remained mellower.
The first letter, for the second song, describes a woman who cannot forget a difficult past, no matter how hard she tries, and narrated as if she wrote a letter to her ex. There are images of shadows sees as soon as candles are lit, very much like that darkness hid under a rug from the third song. I love the nostalgic and always mellow melody of this song.
The third song seems to indicate only a love song. However, there are quite a few allusions to the narrator's feelings that relationships she sees as she walks in the streets are only about habit and obligation, and that she hopes she's granted to continue the romance she had never imagined possible before... She hopes for a "movies with safe endings with easy plots" because she cannot imagine what she'd go through if her lover left.
I love how she describes that street vendors offer happiness in a locked box which has a very costly fragrance and how after she peeled the plaster off and hid the resulting darkness under a rug are such metaphors to things we don't want to see in romantic relationships are felt better hidden, more pleasant this way. Although drums came back for this song, the overall rhythm remains
Time, the fourth song, is a lot more evocative of the narrator's mental health, describing depression and possibly even a mental breakdown. The song is a duet, constructed between a man (the singer is Rita's husband of that time. They divorced a few years later, and this song is quite possibly an early indicator of their upcoming breakup) ; and the woman. Each sing in turn, and then in concert, passing from a question of "you're more distant and I don't know why" to her replies "I need time to hide away" to his saying she's been quite hurtful lately, and her needs for space, time to think and concentrate on herself. It's a very powerful song, and a rare one in Israeli culture to discuss such heavy topics in such clear ways, not using metaphors but direct words. One of the best melodies of this album is on this song, starting with an introduction that mixes, in my mind, the roll of time with a bustling city with its noises. The rest of the song mixes keyboard programming and drums in a more radio-friendly aspect.
In Sun crown, the singer addresses her mother, the one with the sun crown, who used to comb her hair with Violets (yes the flowers) and who was hiding her pain behind smiles. The singer often discussed the role her mother had in her life, as she sang in the kitchen but never pursued a singer's career due to the cultural impropriety in Iran, and I think this song relates to Rita telling her mother that she knows she's in pain, and cannot hide behind those smiles. The narration continues with saying that this is how mothers were born to be - as in, mothers were born to hide their pain and sadness, and how "you are with me" mother. It's a very touching, somewhat cryptic song and maybe I read quite differently between the lines that intended...
Just like the first letter, this song remains mellow from start to end, with a very nostalgic quality.
The narration of the next song your secret is all about meeting a man during a hot summer day, when he was walking in torn linen, with secrets, again with metaphors of pain hidden under appearances, this time of his innocent, child-like face and sad body language, and how the narrator gathered him as an orphan, shipwreck survivor and as they make tender, passionate love, they have a child (fruit of love, in the lyrics), but as he still carries his secret pain, still back in his inner storm, how can they live without love?
The rhythms of this song make it sound like a happy one, but it's actually quite melancholic and an interesting choice to use counter-beats to the topic at hand.
Maybe the seventh song continues the story, as she asks the man "don't go now" or else she's lose her mind if he turned his back to her and left... But, he does leave after their summer and winter, and now it's already the following fall. He took his cloths and she wonders if the figure she sees from the window isn't familiar... Letting the ending of this song open to interpretation, does he come back towards her, or does she see his back going away ? Despite upbeat drums, the overall sad melody of the entire song suggests the latter ending...
Despite very cryptic and surreal lyrics, initially composed by Caetano Veloso and translated to Hebrew, Concertina Palestine, constructed as a series of rhymes, is about the unrecognizable country in the attempts for a peace process between Israel and Palestine, and how blood stains the song (or every song ?) at each act of violence... This is a very ironic song, full of surrealism such as Napoleon eating shakshuka (an egg dish), with a little tahini, or tigers drinking from a tangerine, or camels flying over the city Dimona...
The melody here is my least favorite, but I understand that it's needed to emphasis the ridiculousness of the entire situation. I think this is my least favorite Rita song, especially on this album.
Then, we hit the rhythms of the Persian sang "Padat bagram" that I cannot translate and which I tend to listen to on repeat mode.
We finish this first CD with the tenth song, describing, I think, a co-dependant relationship where the man with a cello was on the brink of drowning, but dived safely, and as the narrator tried to cling to his jacket, they almost drowned together... But, I could be mistaken in my understanding of this song, as it continues into a very tender-less man, asking her to contend with what he does give her, but there are also lyrics about them being brothers (so maybe it's not about Rita herself, but the composer's story, or a mix, as she does describe she has nowhere to go and asks that she can lean and stay with him - because otherwise she'd be homeless like those they meet along the way, and that there is a high unemployment ratio, about which they have to laugh when they watch the evening news where politicians promis jobs for everyone...
Instruments on the CD :
Acoustic guitar, Bass, Bassoon, Clarinet, Contrabass, Cümbüs, Darbuka, Drums, Electric Guitar, Flute, Keyboard, Oboe, Percussion, Piano, Strings.
(Cümbüs is a sort of baglama)
Thus ends the first CD. Read the second part here.
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