Dana International
Yoter Ve-Yoter

YOTER VE-YOTER
Dana International

The year was 1998 when news from Birmingham made its way, causing astonishment, gossip, and almost morbid curiosity: a former transgender Israeli had triumphed at the forty-third edition of the Eurofestival.

This was Dana International, born Yaron Cohen, who became Sharon after the gender reassignment surgery. For several days, there was talk of nothing else: the world seemed to have suddenly become aware of the existence of transgender people, who could aspire to success, not just a life on the fringes of civil society. Another reason for astonishment (and prejudice) was that this transgender person was of Israeli nationality. In the Italian imagination, Israel has always been seen as the homeland of the «Chassidim», the ultra-orthodox who walk around with sidelocks, dressed in black, only capable of nodding their heads at the Wailing Wall, always ready to point the finger, to lapidate the Magdalene of the moment.

However, contrary to all this, Israel itself chose Dana International as its representative at the important music contest. The song was a fresh and innovative dance track in a contest always devoted to calmer pop music, reminiscent of the San Remo festival.
The Dana International cyclone won over the younger audience, quickly conquering the music markets worldwide.

Italy was also touched by this phenomenon, albeit to a lesser extent, due to the closure of our audience towards artists of nationalities other than American and English. Nevertheless, for the whole of summer 1998, "Diva" was heavily danced in all the clubs and broadcast repeatedly on the radio. Two moderately successful albums followed, which were poorly and inadequately promoted in Italy, and then silence.

In 2001 Dana International makes headlines again. Abandoning her discoverer and longtime collaborator, DJ Ofer Nissim, Dana embarks on a new musical venture, overhauling her style and everything she had done up to that point.
Her career was dotted with dance hits with a vaguely trash flavor, filled with shouts and winks, banal yet catchy lyrics. In short, Dana was the perfect product of a music industry aimed only at making people dance, creating "noise" with music videos and extravagant performances (the cover of the single "Maganona" [Crazy] from 1996, featuring a rooster in high heels, is memorable) and staying firmly connected to her image as a gay icon.

After the professional divorce from Nissim, Dana decides to change course. "Yoter Ye-Yoter" (More and More) is definitely the singer's most substantial album. She appears immensely grown artistically, with more mature, better crafted, and more sophisticated pieces. Enough with the screams, enough with the deafening rhythms, enough with the nonsensical nursery rhymes. Without entirely abandoning the world of dance, International, however, proves capable of branching out, fully able to explore new worlds, new sounds, and new vocal stylings.
The album opens, however, with a dance piece: «Nitzachti» [I Won]. The text of this song alone would require an entire review: autobiographical, it tells the "journey" of Dana from boy to woman, her transition, her fears, her falls, and her successes. Without victimhood but with great energy, Dana sings «I won, I won. I succeeded, fell, got up again». The piece brims with energy, conveying the artist's fighting and determined spirit.
The other 12 pieces included in the album are no less: "Ten Li-Chyot" [Let Me Live] is a song with fresh rhythm and sounds, perfect for humming in the car, but whose lyrics invite deep reflection.

New for a diva devoted to dance like Dana International, the album includes no less than four ballads: the title-track «Yoter Ve-Yoter», «Lama Katavta Li-Shir?» (Why Did You Write Me a Song?), «Hargasha Tova» (It Makes Me Feel Good), «Ve-Achrey Ha-Kol» (And After All), where the artist shows a side of herself previously unknown: the sentimental, sweet, melancholic side. But the "old" Dana, the party-goer and mischief-maker has certainly not disappeared: the piece «Ata Ha-Dj Sheli» (You Are My DJ) lets the old, energetic style of a carefree girl who says «You are my DJ and you can choose to scratch me hard or play me like a record» shinel. Also notable is the re-edition of the hit from a few years earlier, «Ad Sof Ha-Zman» (Until the End of Time).
With "Yoter Ve-Yoter" Dana International graduates as a complete artist capable not only of making her fans dance, but also think; she shows us her vulnerable and human side: she sheds the guise of a strong, "arrived" woman and becomes a common person, with her fears, her insecurities, and all her emotional limits.

Artistically, this work is light-years ahead of its predecessors. Perhaps fans of the trashy genre were a bit disappointed by this change of direction, but evidently at the age of 29 Dana felt mature enough to tackle new horizons. A truly wise decision, because with this album she elevates herself to the rank of a complete and mature artist, no longer just a queen of the nightclubs.