Nostalgia Sunday – Sing out!

January 24, 2010 - 6:29 PM by

Glee, the TV comedy about a high-school choral group, is coming to Israel and the streets are filled with billboards touting its arrival. Satellite service provider YES needn’t worry about the show’s popularity here. Israelis have a long-standing tradition of community choirs, vocal groups and other forms of “Gleekiness”.

This coming summer, for example, Israel will host the 22nd Zimriya World Assembly of Choirs.

Zimriya is a really unusual international celebration that invites choirs from all over the world to participate in concerts, workshops led by world renowned conductors, choir-to-choir sessions and informal singing into the wee hours.

But let’s go back in time, a bit, to the source of our geekiness. And by that, I mean, central and eastern Europe where the tradition of community-based choral singing was reinforced under socialism and communism as handy tool for educating the masses. Young Labor Zionists came to Palestine to establish kibbutzim and immediately set up choirs as part of collective cultural life. Some are still going strong, the most important of which is the Gevatron, today considered Israel’s national choir.

The Gevatron began in 1948 when, according to the choir’s site, “a group of singers in Kibbutz Geva performed at the dedication of a new basketball court on the kibbutz. They called themselves the ‘Gevatron’ – a combination of the name of the kibbutz with the name of the ‘Cheezbatron’, a singing troupe that performed during the War for Independence. The young group started performing for communal occasions in the kibbutz, with accordion accompaniment. They were amateurs and sang mainly verses, written by members of the kibbutz, to borrowed melodies, Russian songs for the most part.”

See what I mean about the Eastern European thing? Anyway, more information about the Gevatron is available on the site, including Bat 60, their most recent pop music coup, singing backup to rap artist Subliminal.

The Mila-Li website, which centralizes information about choirs in Israel, lists 114 choirs active in Israel today. Mila – the Israeli Organization for Choirs and Singing Groups, is now gearing up for a massive choral happening at the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) this coming weekend.

For more information about choral music from years gone by, the Zemereshet website is an absolute gem of an volunteer-run downloadable archive that includes hundreds of Hebrew songs (texts and sound files) from the early Zionist period and up to 1948. These include recordings from live sing-along performances and recent recordings of old songs, as well as valuable old commercial recordings by soloists and choruses.

There’s also a website run by songwriter Nahum Heyman and the Amuta for the Tradition of Hebrew Song (amuta is a uniquely Israeli form of non-profit organization), that has many songs for download.

Another great source of online videos is the Israeli Music History site, a labor of love compiled by lawyer Boaz Guttman. Leave aside his professional pages about forensic investigation – there are some real musical treasures to be found here if you dig around.

Israel’s choral tradition continues today, not just mired in tradition but also creating new and different forms of Gleekiness for all to enjoy. Case in point: the Voca People. Though their backstory is nerdiness incarnate — (they came from another planet and communicate with the earthlings through sound) — there’s no denying either their a capella musical prowess or the enjoyment they bring to audiences. It’s total, gleeful fun.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , • Category: Art, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Music, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture 

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