Ofra Haza – Im Nin’alu

A 17th-century Hebrew poem reached No.1 across Europe because two London DJs borrowed its opening for a hip-hop remix, and the singer found out afterward.

In the fall of 1987, a British dance record carried a voice most of its listeners could not place. Coldcut’s “Seven Minutes of Madness” remix of Eric B. & Rakim’s “Paid in Full” was built around a woman singing in Hebrew, lifted from the unaccompanied opening of a 1984 album of Yemenite Jewish songs, and it became a Top 15 hit in Britain, West Germany and the Netherlands. The voice belonged to Ofra Haza. The song was “Im Nin’alu,” a setting of words by a 17th-century rabbi, and within a year Haza’s own dance version of it stood at No.1 across much of Europe.

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The words are far older than any of the records. Shalom Shabazi, the most celebrated poet of Yemen’s Jewish community, wrote a poem whose title means “if the gates are locked,” built on the promise that heaven’s gates stay open even when the doors of the powerful are shut. Haza grew up in the Hatikva neighborhood of Tel Aviv, the child of Yemenite parents, and learned the community’s songs at home, from her mother Shoshana above all. She first sang “Im Nin’alu” with the Shechunat Hatikva Workshop Theatre on Israeli television in 1978. By 1983 she was a national star who had finished second for Israel at the Eurovision Song Contest in Munich.

That made the record she cut the following year a gamble. Yemenite Songs, recorded in August and September 1984 with producers Bezalel Aloni and Benny Nagari, set the traditional songs of her childhood against Middle Eastern percussion and classical instruments. It traveled slowly: an Israeli release in November 1984, then European and American editions over the next three years, including a 1985 12-inch that carried the original “Im Nin’alu” with its a cappella opening intact. That opening is what reached London’s clubs. Coldcut’s Jonathan More had been playing the Haza record and found that, slowed down, it locked onto a funk drum break he already used. By one account, Haza’s only complaint about the finished remix was that nobody had told her.

No.1 in seven countries, No.27 in Holland

Haza answered the sample with a remix of her own. Izhar Ashdot, who had worked on her Yemenite material, rebuilt “Im Nin’alu” for the dance floor, added a verse in English, and subtitled the result Played in Full. The single arrived in April 1988, and NME made it Single of the Week. West Germany put it at No.1 for most of the summer, and it also topped the charts in Finland, Greece, Norway, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland, along with the European Hot 100. Britain took it to No.15. In the United States, Billboard’s club chart ranked it No.15 and its modern rock chart No.18.

The Netherlands was the exception, which is what makes this Countdown clip unusual. Veronica’s pop show, on the air from 1976 to 1993, booked Haza in 1988, the year her record conquered the continent around it. Dutch buyers held back. The Top 40 peaked the single at No.27 and kept it listed for only four weeks, and the Single Top 100 ranked it No.29, one of its weakest showings anywhere in Europe. The official Countdown channel titles the upload simply “Countdown, 1988,” a record of Haza making her case in the one country that never fully took the song.

The rest of the world kept returning to it. Teldec released Shaday, the album built around the remix, in West Germany on July 18, 1988, and Sire brought it to America that November. Public Enemy sampled the same a cappella opening in 1991 for “Can’t Truss It,” and Haza re-recorded the song in 1997. She died on February 23, 2000. In 2019, when Eurovision came to Tel Aviv, the contest opened with “Im Nin’alu.” Shabazi’s poem promises that one set of gates stays open when the others are shut. Haza’s route onto Europe’s pop charts ran through a door she had never knocked on, opened by two DJs in London who had not asked.