Ortit Shimoni‘s sweeping ballads and quiet anthems have for more than two decades helped innumerable listeners feel less alone. While her sound is often broadly placed under the banner of folk music, she just as equally draws from soul, Motown, rock, and protest traditions. “I’ve kept it simple, always about the songwriting first”, she says. “If I can write, sing, and accompany myself on an instrument, and find a place where people want to gather to hear it, that is always enough”.
Orit’s most recent album, ‘Winnipeg’, released in 2024, was nominated for Best Solo Artist at the Canadian Folk Music Awards, and this summer, while her fourteenth album is taking shape, she’s gone back on the road, accompanying visionary songcrafter Dan Bern, where her songs as unflinching and warm as ever.
Orit Shimoni’s new single, ‘Over’, has been stripped back to the most essential elements, and yet it is still more than capable of speaking to the human soul.
Set to an acoustic melody, Shimoni’s tranquil vocals manage to take the human condition and break it down into a series of poignant refrains, which linger long after the song has ended.
Shimoni found herself increasingly unsettled and apprehensive about humanity’s darker impulses, and the divsivness and viciousness that was emerging in the news, and everyday life. Nonetheless, she couldn’t help but notice how people were coming together in beautifully creative ways, and she was struck by the realisation, that it has always been like this. “The good and the bad and the ugly, and the very beautiful” are not going anywhere, because they are the very essence of what makes people human. And while there is a quiet comfort in knowing that all of the hostility and all of the benevolence have always been there, “over and over”, ‘Over’ is also an admission of fatigue: “Is there even any reason for us to still be watching, keeping score”, while also serving as a plea for something to change.
The music video for ‘Over’ has its genesis in Orit’s pre-music life as an educator. years ago she asked her students to cut out and wear paper plate masks, and that memory of the uniform group moving through the classroom stayed with her for years to come. In the music video for ‘Over’, a group of human archetypes emerge from their homes, onto the snowy streets, gathering together around a fire. The hand-painted expressions on their paper plate masks – dismay, bewilderment, compassion, hope, and so on – illustrate just how much we are all the same, we all experience the same emotions and fears. Featuring guest vocals from American guitarist, singer, songwriter, novelist, and painter, Dan Bern, the remastered track offers listeners a glimpse of the magic to come on the dynamic duo’s upcoming Canadian tour this summer.
You can find out more about Orit Shimoni and her music online on her official website, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Watch the moving music video for ‘Over’ below.
