Chai: Ofra Haza's Eurovision Launch Into World Music

MAY 15 1983 · 12:10

Ofra Haza · "Chai" · Israel · 1983 Placement: 2nd · Score: 136 · Language: Hebrew · Composers: Avi Toledano, Ehud Manor · Venue: Rudi-Sedlmayer-Halle · Host: Munich, Germany · Type: upset · Broadcast: color crt On April 23, 1983, at the Rudi-Sedlmayer-Halle in Munich — West Germany's first Eurovision as host since 1957, built on the site of the 1972 Olympic basketball arena — the twenty-five-year-old Israeli singer Ofra Haza performed 'Chai' for Israel. The Hebrew title translates simply as 'Alive', and the song, composed by Avi Toledano with a lyric by the poet Ehud Manor, operated on two registers at once: on its surface a declaration of personal endurance, but widely read — and clearly intended — as a statement about Jewish and Israeli survival, performed in Germany, thirty-eight years after the Holocaust. The staging was restrained. Haza wore a long white dress. Her voice, already recognisable as one of the finest Israeli pop instruments of her generation, carried the song almost without need of the orchestra. Israel finished second with 136 points, beaten by Luxembourg's Corinne Hermès and 'Si la vie est cadeau' by seven points. Context Eurovision 1983 was the twenty-eighth contest and the first hosted in West Germany since Frankfurt 1957. The Munich venue choice was politically charged and reportedly handled with some care by Bayerischer Rundfunk. Israel had participated in Eurovision since 1973 and had already won twice. Legacy 'Chai' is now often remembered as the Eurovision entry that launched Ofra Haza into a major international world-music career that would eclipse many of the contest's actual winners. Her 1984 Yemenite Songs album and subsequent late-1980s international recordings — including her widely sampled vocal on M|A|R|R|S's 'Pump Up the Volume' — gave her a post-Eurovision trajectory closer to Cesaria Evora than to typical Eurovision alumni. Mythology Ofra Haza is sometimes remembered as a Eurovision winner; she finished second to Corinne Hermès.