Dance til you drop, for Israel

October 7, 2011 - 8:51 AM by David

New Yorker Yoel Silber must get his gift of gab and his confidence from his Israeli parents. The 35-year-old entertainment mogul is channeling his boundless energy and seemingly limitless supply of money into realizing a dream – the transformation of Tel Aviv into one of the electronic music capitals of the world and helping to forge a new image of the Jewish state.

That’s the modus operandi behind the upcoming first Tel Aviv Electronic Music Festival taking place at the end of Simchat Torah on October 20 at Hangar 11 – featuring 12 hours some of the world’s top DJs, including Boris, Hex Hector, Chris Liebling and local electronic faves Astral Projection.

“Every notable city and country in the world has a big electronic music event. In England there’s Queenfields, in Holland there’s Awakenings, New York has the Electric Soup Festival and Las Vegas has the Electric Daisy Carnival,” explained the self-made millionaire Silber, who attained his fortune in the 1990s as a partner in the New York City trend-setting nightclub The Sound Factory. He then parlayed that money into a business that has set him up for life – Promtix, a business which creates safe-environment upscale nights out for teenagers at some of New York’s swankiest venues.

But his big project now is the electronic music festival, which he predicts will put Tel Aviv on the map as one of the go-to destinations for club music.

“In Israel, you have some of the biggest electronic music artists in the world – Infected Mushroom, Astral Projection – but you don’t have much to show for it. For every Oman 17 [the landmark Tel Aviv dance club] there are there hundreds of New York venues of the same or better caliber. What I’m doing is going to be a game changer,” he said.

“Music fans travel from all over the world to these festivals. Once a year in a certain time frame, they’ll know that Israel is the place to be, the DJs and the record labels would know it, support it, brand it and push it,” he said, adding that the specter of terrorism and unrest is an outdated mode of thinking.

“The days of Israeli minds justifying whatever shortcomings there are by saying ‘but we have terrorism’ are gone. You know, I’m sorry dude, you can go anywhere in the world and be subject to the same things Israelis experience here. But you know what the difference is? Israel is safer than any country in the world. And people in the US who I know realize this.”

“Israelis need to stop this primitive way of thinking that this is how people perceive the country, because from my experience, it’s not. People will come here to an event like this, and then it becomes a special attraction and will spur a world wide global effort to spread the word and support it.”

It’s hard to argue with a rap like that, so even if electronic music sounds like one big droning cacophony to you, come out on October 20 with ear plugs intact to support the cause.

Check out the video trailer here.

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