Nurit Galron – Song In The Middle Of The Night
From Nurit Galron – נתן זך
Released on CBS, 1981, Israel

When one is writing about music from a country, a culture or sung in a language he does not know, one must always keep in mind that what one takes for something exotic or obscure might be, in reality, tightly rooted in a country’s culture.This is especially true when it comes to Pop music (as opposed to experimental or avant-garde music, in this case).

At least, this is something I thought when I first heard this song from Nurit Galron : at first, there was something « oriental », quite seductive in the music that seemed to appeal to me. Then, getting an overview, I realized that this feeling was mostly due to the fact that she was singing in Hebrew…

In fact, what appealed to me was the cinematic quality of this song  – which title we did not properly traduce yet (help please!) – and it probably echoes a culture of highly emotionally-filled love themes that you may find in any country, as if these cinematic codes have been shared by all the film industries over the world (even if one may argue that it all comes from Hollywood). Nurit Galron‘s song, in its arrangements definitely has a lot in common with music from Piero Piccioni  to Joe Hisaichi, the first names that popped in my mind. And just like the music from these two composers, it speaks straight to our hearts.

Nurit Galron is not even one of those obscure pop star wanabe who released a single record before reasonably opting for another career (we, of course, love this kind of profile), she has had an over thirty-year long career in the music industry, and even if we lack information in English (most of what we can find about her is in Hebrew) it seems like it has been quite a succesful one. That being said, this song stands out as a true tearjerker even if we don’t get a word she’s singing.

If any reader can help us by providing information about her, feel free to contact us, your help would be deeply appreciated.

Massive thank to Yoav Sa’ar for sending the following info :

« Nurit Galron was a big name here during the 1970s and 1980s (my mom got this cd). This album is her 2nd all the songs were written by Natan Zach who is one of Israel biggest poets. From a quick look in wiki it says that the title Songs in the Middle of the Night comes from the fact that they made all of the songs during night time. Nathan Zach says its his favourite time to write and the lyrics of the song are about a man, how wakes up in the middle of the night and his room feels strange and dark, he is sad and he smokes a cigarette and walks thru the dark room all night smoking until from all of his sadness and pain a song was made. So I guess he’s writing about himself and the process of writing this song. Another fact about this album and song it was composed by Yoni Rechter who is a famous composer and artist. »