The Hit Man

There are artists who create hit songs, and then there are artists who create a nation’s musical memory. Uzi Hitman belonged firmly to the latter category. When he died suddenly of a heart attack in 2004 at just 52 years old, Israel didn’t just lose a musician – it lost one of the architects of the country’s collective consciousness.

Hitman, who composed as well as wrote lyrics, and was also a singer, actor and television personality, possessed a rare gift: the ability to write songs that felt timeless from the moment they were released. His compositions had an “instant classic” quality – people assumed they had always existed, that they’d known them their whole lives.

Instant classics

In 1976, Hitman composed a new melody for Adon Olam, a Jewish prayer recited since the XV century. Many Israelis assume it’s an ancient folk tune, not something written by a guy in his twenties. Or take Nolad'ti LaShalom (“I Was Born for Peace”), which he wrote and composed in the late 1970s when his son Ido was born. Israel was in the midst of historic peace negotiations with Egypt – the first Arab nation to make peace with the Jewish state. Performed by the band Sexta, the song captured a moment of cautious hope, expressing a generation’s yearning for an end to conflict. Today, it remains one of Israel’s most beloved peace anthems.

This quality – instant permanence – defined Hitman’s work across wildly different genres. He wrote children’s songs, pop hits, Hasidic and Mizrahi music. In the early 1980s, he hosted Parpar Nehmad, a beloved children’s show, while simultaneously writing serious music about war and peace. He released solo albums but is remembered mainly as a songwriter for others.

East and west

Another thing that set Hitman apart was his willingness to cross musical boundaries. While Israeli radio largely ignored Mizrahi music – pop music influenced by the Middle Eastern sounds brought over by Jewish immigrants from Arab countries – Hitman worked with both mainstream pop stars like Avi Toledano and Mizrahi singers like Zohar Argov, Shimi Tavori and Haim Moshe. He composed, wrote lyrics, and arranged for a vast array of artists, helping legitimize musical traditions that the establishment initially dismissed.

Critics and music historians struggle to define Hitman’s style because his range was so vast. He wrote Eretz Yisrael songs (the folk tradition celebrating the Israeli landscape and pioneering spirit), Mediterranean ballads, pop hits, children’s classics, Hassidic music, and even Hebrew translations of Greek songs. He collaborated with artists across every conceivable genre.

Perhaps the only accurate way to describe his style is simply as “Israeli” – a musical approach that embraced the full complexity and diversity of the country itself, refusing to choose between tradition and modernity, East and West, sacred and secular, solemn and playful.

For more, see BAC’s series for kids, “Art Workshops Inspired by the Songs of Uzi Hitman.”

Main Photo: Young Uzi Hitman\  By IPPA photographer
(This file is available from Dan Hadani collection of the National Library of Israel)\ Wikipedia