Israel hosts musical melting pot
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, Entertainment, General, Israeliness, Life, Music
The international musicians of The Bridge Project.
But it was no joke for Ittai Shaked, Andy Bussuttil and Umit Ceyhan who make up The Bridge Project - based in cyberspace but coming down for landing this week in Israel.
All three musicians have a day gig at the successful Israeli startup Waves, which was profiled in ISRAEL21c a few years ago. Violinist Shaked is a quality assurance manager for the Grammy Award-winning company that develops audio mixing software for the digital age for sound engineers and producers. And Bussutil, a multi-talented musician who runs his own recording studio in Australia, and Ceyhan, the Turkish Muslim who currently lives in France and teaches sonic and cinematic arts at the University of Toulouse, are part of Shaked’s team testing the company’s new products.
When, over a year ago, Shaked posted a message to his more than 100 testers around the world asking if anyone wanted to get together virtually and create some music, Bussutil and Ceyhan responded. Thus began ongoing file sharing and music creation between the three, with each adding his own instruments and ideas onto the previous take of their world music combining everything from Middle Eastern sounds to klezmer and Balkan beats.
The chemistry between us was amazing – we found out we shared and loved the same kind of music, more or less, with different spices,” Shaked told me. “And all three of us play instruments that combine together very nicely. At some point, I realized that what we’re doing here is making an album.”
The result is Three Waves Under the Bridge, the fruits of their online efforts, and the arrival in Israel of Bussutil and Ceyhan this week to meet Shaked and each other face to face and perform a series of live shows around the country.
Three Waves Under the Bridge, mixed by Shaked and mastered by Bussuttil, is a reflective world music mosaic brimming with musical ideas, and featuring a genre-hopping range of instruments – North African percussion like bongos and darbukas, strings ranging from violin, viola and cello to clarinet and sax, and traditional Turkish instruments like the duduk, kopuz and saz.
The music is only part of their accomplishments. As Bussuttil said, “Our efforts were an attempt to unify people rather than divide them. And we hoped to demonstrate that people from different backgrounds can create more than conflict, we can create things of beauty as well.”
If you’re in the country, you can catch the Bridge Project on May 14 at the Tmuna Theater in Tel Aviv. Other shows on the mini-tour, supported by the Foreign Ministry and the Australian Embassy in Israel, include The Jame Club in Acre on May 17, The Jazz Club in Mitzpe Ramon on May 18, and Hemdat Yamin in the Galilee on May 19.
But anyone can enjoy their music here.
Foto Friday – Yigal Pardo’s Dog (and Cat) Days
Filed under: A New Reality, education, Environment, Foto Friday, General, Life, Picture of the Week, Profiles, Sports, Travel
Photographer Yigal Pardo loves animals and has successfully parlayed that affection into a career.
Pardo studied photography at Hadassah College, Jerusalem, then worked in New York for a year, returning to Israel to open his pet photography business.
Pardo works with Israel’s pet food manufacturers, ad agencies, breeders, animal-related publications, professional and non-profit organizations as well as pet-lovers, shooting commercial studio work and portraits, and photographing animals in the great outdoors.
One organization that has benefited from his talents is Shaar HaGai Kennels, breeders of Israel’s national dog, the Canaan.
Pardo has documented kennel owner Myrna Shiboleth on her treks to seeks out new desert and Bedouin bloodlines so as to retain the natural characteristics of this “semi-feral” breed.
A previous post reported on Shaar HaGai’s current woes: the kennel — and with it its Canaan breeding program — is under threat of closure by the Israel Lands Administration (ILA). Shiboleth, a world champion dog breeder, dog show judge and the world authority on Canaan Dogs, is lobbying for public support via on an online petition. (50,000 signatures are needed and she’s up to 39,855, so if you support this cause, please sign and share the link).
Far from the wild, Pardo also photographs dog shows for the Israeli Kennel Club.
And cat shows, too!
A cat-owner himself, Pardo has stated that although his specialty is dogs, it is from cats that he’s learned the most about photographing animals.
“It is the dog’s nature to please his owner. When the owner brings them to a photographer, from the dog’s perspective, the photographer is an ally… The cat is not interested at all to please humans… but fortunately, he is also very curious and we can take advantage of this curiosity when we take the pictures.”
Great photos of animals of all kinds can be found on Yigal Pardo’s page at PetNet.co.il.
B&B owner, antiquities authority battle over ancient tomb
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, Crime, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Religion
Mitch Pilcer in front of the grave he discovered. (Arieh O'Sullivan)
That doesn’t likely happen too often in most parts of the world, but it did in Israel, to Mitch Pilcer, who owns picturesque bed-and-breakfast country establishment in the Galilee village of Tzippori, the home of early rabbinic sages.
Pilcer’s 2009 discovery of Rabbi Yehoshua Ben Levi’s grave, whose commentaries appear in the Talmud and legend has it was a close friend of Elijah the Prophet, has sparked an ongoing struggle with the Israel Antiquities Authority who have been demanding that Pilcer allow them to excavate the tomb.
According to a report by The Media Line, the IAA won a court order, and late 2009 it conducted a dig on the property and confiscated the headstone door, which had been inscribed in plainly legible Hebrew: “This is the burial place of Rabbi Yehoshua Ben Levi Hakapar.”
Later the IAA filed charges against Pilcer for carrying out an illegal excavation, damaging an ancient site and possession of antiquities. Pilcer’s trial began at the Nazareth Magistrate’s court last week where he pleaded not guilty. He has also made formal demands to have the stone returned to its original site.
Full disclosure here is that Pilcer is an old friend, and I’m on his side of this battle over the ownership of the stone and the site. Read the full story about his battle with the ‘Man’ here.
Israeli unity in numbers
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Israeliness, Life, Politics
When I opened up my browser at 6:30 a.m. this morning and saw one Israeli news site with the headline ‘Elections off, Kadima joins national unity government,’ I assumed that the site had been hacked by pranksters.
So I switched to another favorite web source of news and, damn, it had basically the same headline. Could this be? How could a nation that at midnight was 95% of the way heading to early elections with the Knesset about to dissolve itself have veered so drastically in a few hours in which most sane people are fast asleep? Welcome to Israeli politics.
Whether the largest national unity government in the short history of the country is good for us or not, I’ll leave to the political pundits. But the whos, whys and hows behind the dramatic turnaround that caught everyone – including the nation’s usually plugged in media – totally off guard will be the subject of speculation and dissection for weeks to come.
Most people, whether they admire or disdain him, are calling this Bibi Netanyahu’s master stroke, strengthening his government and creating a national consensus for everything from changing the Tal Law to planning to cope with the Iranian threat. And it’s not a bad deal for Kadima either, which was on its way to the dust bins of history – with one leader, Tzippi Livni out the door, and its new figurehead, Shaul Mofaz fighting to create a persona for himself.
Now he’s a vice premier, and Kadima is in the government, even though he had repeatedly stated Kadima would never join a Likud-led government and has been widely quoted as calling Netanyahu a “liar.”
But that’s all politics, he told today’s joint press conference with Netanyahu where they announced the deal, and as opposition leader, he was required to criticize the leadership.
Fair enough. Regardless of the cynicism of self-serving interests surrounding the decision, it’s maybe time to let this government see what it can do, and determine if Bibi and Mofaz are just spouting more politics or are serious about working together to better the country at a critical time in its history.
I’m willing to give them a chance, but I’m a little scared about going to sleep tonight and waking up to find another unbelievable headline in the morning.
Let the Israeli party ad campaigns begin
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, Entertainment, Israeliness, Life, Politics, tv
Early elections seem to be a done deal, with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu announcing Sunday night at a Likud convention the plan to dissolve the Knesset and establish the election date of September 4.
Early elections seem to be a done deal, with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu announcing Sunday night at a Likud convention the plan to dissolve the Knesset and establish the election date of September 4.
Nobody really knows why virtually every party is clamoring for new elections over a year ahead of their scheduled appearance. But it’s clear why Bibi is agreeing – his Likud party stands to be the big winner according to all the recent polls.
With tour operators bemoaning the likelihood that Israelis are going to cancel late summer travel plans in order to be here for the elections, and the nation bracing for another symbiotic coalition of strange bedfellows, there’s not a lot to be optimistic about.
Luckily we have the campaign ads to look forward to. A truly entertaining exercise that wastes millions of shekels that could be better put to severely lacking social services, the party ads offer some unique ‘only in Israel’ moments that reveal a juicy cross-section of Israeli society.
You want to know what makes Israelis such a ornery, loveable bunch? Watch some campaign ads. Here’s a small sampling from 2007 – from Yisrael Beyteinu, Meretz and the defunt Shinui party.
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