Hmm, they don’t look Israeli

September 13, 2010 - 3:21 PM by David

You can find them anywhere. I’m talking about Israelis. And sometimes you might not even be aware that they are Israelis.

Take the success story of the klezmer-meets-hip hop electronica of Balkan Beat Box, the traveling musical carnival that has enraptured American and European audiences with their energetic brand of mayhem.

They even won over a Lady Gaga audience this summer at the Lolapalooza festival. I wonder how many of the concert-goers knew that the trio at the front of the stage – saxophonist Ori Kaplan, drummer Tamir Muskat and rapper/percussionist/resident wild man Tomer Yosef, are tried and true Israelis, who all migrated to New York over a decade ago and met in Brooklyn?

According to Kaplan, the group’s Israeliness is an integral part of who they are and how they identify themselves.

“I very much still feel Israeli, even though I’ve been in New York for 16 years. Sometimes I fell quite submerged in the local culture, but I reconnected with the Israeli culture, especially in the last six years. We’re always jiving around in Hebrew, and we’re frequently in Israel performing,” said Kaplan.

“Everybody knows where we come from – we talk about it all the time in interviews. It’s part of who we are as a band – we’re not just an American trio playing music that’s ethnic flavored, it would be kind of weird if we were from Michigan and doing that.”

BBB was recently in Jerusalem for an end-of-summer Friday afternoon rave up in Sacher Park and will be returning during Succot to perform at the Tamar Festival at the Dead Sea with Matisyahu.

According to Kaplan, the exuberance of the Jerusalem crowd caught him and his colleagues off guard.

“It was fantastic, seeing secular Jerusalem come out – there was a spring break vibe and everybody was on fire,” he said. “I had always thought that Jerusalem was all Orthodox, and there was a heaviness there, like the atmosphere weighed 1,000 pounds. But this was so positive and fun.”

Positive and fun – those are some nice attributes to pin onto Israelis.

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