Yardena Arazi

Biography

Yardena Arazi was born on Kibbutz Kabri and grew up in Haifa. Arazi is the daughter of Jewish immigrants from France and Germany. She joined the Beit Rothschild group at 16 and became its lead vocalist. She did her military service in the Nahal entertainment troupe. Arazi is married to engineer Nathan Tomer, with whom she has a daughter, Alona.

Musical and television career

In the 1970s, Yardena Arazi was a member of the female vocal trio Chocolate, Menta, Mastik along with Leah Lupatin and Rutie Holzman. The group represented Israel in the 1976 Eurovision Song Contest with the song Emor Shalom ("Say Hello"), placing sixth. After the Eurovision competition, they began an international tour that included Brazil, Sweden, Germany, The Netherlands and Belgium; releasing several singles in English, French and German and appeared in many TV shows all over Europe. Arazi left the band in 1978.

In 1979, the Israel Broadcasting Authority (IBA) asked Arazi to co-host the Eurovision Song Contest in Jerusalem with news anchor Daniel Peer. Her hosting received positive reviews across Europe and she participated in TV shows in the Netherlands (with Milk & Honey) and Belgium (with Mike Burstyn). Arazi was signed to a recording contract with record label Ariola Records and released a mini-album with songs written by Bernd Meinunger. During this period she met Natan Tomer and decided to return to Israel.

During the 1980s Arazi was one of the most successful singers in Israel, being named as the top female singer of the year five times and as the top female singer of the decade; releasing 10 gold and platinum albums. She kept performing around the world including Australia, Poland (with Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and Zubin Mehta), Turkey, Los Angeles and Egypt.

Arazi took part at the Israeli's Eurovision domestic competition (Kdam) three times as a singer (1982, 1983, 1985) and as a co-host (1987). In 1988, she was selected internally by IBA to sing the Israeli entry for Eurovision and during a special TV show in which she presented four news songs, the entry was chosen. Eventually, she went to Dublin with the song Ben Adam ("Human Being"), which came in seventh. Arazi has always been highly superstitious and consults an astrologer on all matters in her life. The astrologer told her the song performed 9th would win the competition in Dublin, Ireland. Israel had drawn 9th in the running order, so Arazi agreed to represent Israel. However, when Cyprus withdrew from the contest, Israel's position shifted to 8th. The 9th song did win the competition; with the Swiss triumphing from that position.

In 1989 Arazi recorded the album Desert Fantasy than included 10 Hebrew versions of Arabic songs originally written and sung by Farid al-Atrash, Fairuz, Abdul Halim, Samira Said and others. The album was also released in the US and Japan and was hugely successful all around the middle east.

Since 1997 Arazi has focused on her career as a TV host. For 9 years she co-hosted the channel 2 morning magazine Cafe Telad, and later on she hosted at Channel 1 (Shir Hashishim), Channel 2 (Malcot Hashabat), GLZ radio station etc.

At 2008 Arazi was named the most popular Israeli singer of all time at the 60th Independence Day celebration.