B-Side Guys

Gidi Farhi wrote “Hey Yaldati” (“Hey, My Child” in Hebrew) for his ten-year-old daughter after leaving home but maintaining close contact, which explains the dual emotional current running through the track. It’s simultaneously celebration and elegy, watching a child “פוסעת בשביל בין שיחי שושנים / בשמלה עשויה ציוץ ציפורים” (walking the path between rose bushes / in a dress made of birdsong) while acknowledging “עוד עורג אל הבית כשהכל היה טוב” (still yearning for home when everything was good). Nishad Pandey, Farhi’s collaborator in Berlin’s free-improvisation scene, heard the song in Farhi’s living room and improvised what became the final flamenco guitar work. The arrangement feels like two separate emotional states occupying the same space: joy at witnessing growth, grief for what’s been lost.

The flamenco framework makes perfect sense for this particular kind of longing. Farhi plays guitars, double bass, and vocals, while Pandey’s guitar sketches weave around the melody with the spontaneity that comes from years of improvisation work together. “אלף נרות על עוגת יום הולדת” (a thousand candles on a birthday cake) creates impossible imagery that somehow captures paternal hyperbole better than literal description. The line that follows hits harder: those thousand candles “מחווירים מול עוצמת הכאב שפולח” (pale compared to the intensity of the pain that splits), acknowledging that beauty and loss aren’t separate experiences but intertwined ones.

Released in 2022 as the title track of their album, “Hey Yaldati” documents Farhi’s poetic journey watching his daughter grow gracefully through years of separation. The song describes her “שוחה בביקיני באגם של זהב” (swimming in a bikini in a lake of gold), romantic imagery that manages to stay sweet rather than saccharine because it’s grounded in specific absence. Between the lines about rose-bush paths and dresses made of birdsong lives the reality of being physically distant from someone you’re trying to remain close to. Pandey’s flamenco flourishes don’t resolve the tension; they amplify it, turning fatherhood into something that sounds like yearning set to Spanish guitar, which is probably accurate.