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.

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Indie rock discovery: Jenny & Gilad

Jacob’s Ladder is my favorite weekend of the year. Located at the picturesque Kibbutz Nof Ginosar, on the banks of the Sea of Galilee, the festival is billed as “a unique bluegrass, folk, country, blues, Irish and world music extravaganza.” It is in equal parts a chance to catch up with old friends in a laid back atmosphere that encourages camping and potlucks, and an opportunity to hear music by both world class performers and emerging bands who may just be the next big thing.

Jacob’s Ladder began as an “Anglo Festival,” started by Menachem and Yehudit Vinegrad who made aliyah in 1967 and missed the folk scene from back home. The festival has evolved considerably, growing from 700 attendees at the first gathering to well over 3,000 today.

The demographics have grown too. The once Anglo majority has been displaced by Israelis – I heard far more Hebrew than English – including a large contingent of teenagers and twenty-somethings (many the children and even grandchildren of Anglos) who grew up at Jacob’s Ladder over the years.

I may be reading into it, but the younger population also seems to have influenced the music – high energy rock and roll and world music is much more prevalent than in years past; even the Irish/Scottish Bodhran Band rocks out…with bagpipes. The presence of Shmemel, an Israeli ensemble combining wailing electric guitars, a full brass section (saxophone, trombone and trumpet – think Blood Sweat and Tears or early Chicago) with rap, funk and the occasional klezmer, had the outdoor dance floor packed.

All that is good news for me: I love the festival but have never been a big bluegrass or country music fan. So my personal music discoveries included a number of unsung indie rockers who I’d like to see gain more exposure.

My top pick: a singer-songwriting duo who go by the simple name of Jenny & Gilad. write their own music in English and Hebrew and perform with lovely harmonies. The overflow audience went wild like hardcore fans, especially impressive given that the two don’t even have a CD out (“we’re working on it,” they pleaded).

Also on my list of show favorites were Omri Vitis – an Israeli with a voice reminiscent of Gordon Lightfoot who has spent the last 12 years in the U.K. and belts out folk-tinged rock influenced by Native American tribal beats; the bespectacled Erez Singer whose happy clappy upbeat pop songs sound like another Israeli who croons in English, Shy Nobleman; and The Love Birds whose lead singer Efrat Kolberg occasionally channels the Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde.

Here’s a clip of Erez Singer:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Another element to the evolution of Jacob’s Ladder is the number of religious people who spend Shabbat listening to electrified music. A minyan set up overlooking the water was attended by more than 50 people. You could hear the sounds of the Friday evening kiddush being said all over the campgrounds.

Pulling off a festival of this size and complexity takes the full time attention of the Vinegrads – I’ve written about the “business” of Jacob’s Ladder previously – but it pays off and attendees respond in kind: you can leave your chairs and blankets on the main lawn and no one will steal them, smoking is now prohibited at the concerts; and after the show, everyone pitches in to clean up, leaving the kibbutz nearly as clean as it was beforehand.

But maybe the best part: after the final performance Saturday afternoon, our friends have a tradition – we all head to the beach, pull our plastic chairs into the shallow part of the lake, and dip our toes as the coolness water mitigates a hot and sometimes muggy day.

I can’t wait until next year.

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Ahinoam Nini

However in the week since the event, a Facebook group calling for the boycott of Nini has gained more than 3,500 members, who apparently think that such events provide moral equivalency between the deaths of Israelis and Palestinians. Nini dismissed such claims, writing on her Facebook page that “I am just shocked by this stupid and ugly distortion. I sang at an alternative ceremony, at which Jews and Arabs remember and cry together for their loved ones who were lost in the ongoing war between us.”

Neshama Carlebach, the Jewish spiritual singer and daughter of the late Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, also stirred some feathers with her reworked version of Israel’s national anthem, ‘Hatikva’, recorded for Israel’s 64th Independence Day, and performed on Sunday at The Jerusalem Post Conference in New York.

The song, suggested by the Jewish paper The Forward, contains some new lyrics aimed at allowing both Jews and Arabs to relate to the words. Rather than singing “A Jewish soul still yearns” in the anthem, Carlebach sings, “An Israeli soul still yearns,” and instead of “An eye still gazes toward Zion,” she sings “An eye still gazes toward our country.”

Some attendees to the conference apparently were offended by the changed lyrics, and whether due to the late hour or in protest, Carlebach’s show with the Green Pastures Baptist Choir was sparsely attended.

Who said music soothes the savage beast? Here’s Carlebach’s reworked version of the anthem.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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It’s getting to be that time of year again – where the national holidays come fast and furious. Holocaust Remembrance Day just passed and this week we have Memorial Day and Independence Day right on top of each other as Israel prepares to celebrate its 64th birthday.

While there’s no shortage of subjects to be worried, fearful, skeptical or angry about, I would say that overall, the country’s in pretty good shape. But if the Iranian threat, the political situation, the social welfare crisis and the glut of TV reality shows are getting you down, take a couple minutes and check out this clip that ISRAEL21c’s Nicky Blackburn and Viva Sara Press have put together.

In addition to providing some surprising information about just what Israel has achieved in the past 63 years, it will undoubtedly raise your morale and have you whistling a happy tune going into the coming eventful week. Happy Independence Day Israel! We’re proud of you.

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T-shirts, according to a lengthy Wikipedia entry, are a form of personal expression. Fortunately, for those who have difficulty in expressing themselves, (or perhaps, in forming coherent thoughts), since the 1950s there have been manufacturers willing to fill the echoing gap and Israel has long been a part of that trend (check out my Entebbe Raid tee from 1976). Over the past few years, however, there has been an explosion in underground manufacturers using the t-shirt as a canvas to post artistic, social and/or political commentary and/or humor.

Their messages aren’t everyone’s cup of tea (or is that tee?) and the humor of today’s Israeli youth might not be accessible to all. For example, last year I did not get why a picture of a jihadist Smurf caused gales of laughter among the 12 year-old set, and you have to know who Uza the duck from Educational TV is to understand the Rambo-like image of “Uza and Uzi”. Similarly, you must be familiar with the wandering boy Marco from the children’s cartoon series The Heart to understand why he’s searching Google for “mother”.

This year, Passover was the theme for the T:Market’s promotional photo shoot, with matza anad gefilte fish playing an important part of the styling.

Photo by Ben Palhov

This karate chopping matza-mauling cutie sports a top by TwentyFourSeven…
Photo by Ben Palhov

Fashion house Chop Shop offers more conventional wares in an unconventional setting…

Haifa-based GhosTown were selling off their Winter 2012 collection, featuring designs by Broken Fingaz Crew…

Hand to Hand, based in Paris and Tel Aviv, offer a glimpse into their screen-printing process and, if you visit their Facebook page, into the ink drawing process as well.

Gelada Studio express their Russian origins with a nod and wink to Soviet realism…
Photo by Ben Palhov

And judging from the many Press & TV clips on their Facebook page, their Socialist-styled themes have resonated with the Israeli celebrity set!

There are another 30-odd exhibitors at the T:Market, which continues running through the weekend, with a full exhibitor list available at Dice Marketing. If you can, get on over there and if not, check out the T:Market page on Facebook.

I’m posting early as today (Thursday) is the eve of Passover’s second holiday. Chag Sameach to all!

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An annual Hit Parade, based on the weekly ones, has been broadcast on Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, since 1963. There are actually two annual Hit Parades, one on Galei Zahal (GLZ), the army radio network and the other on the Israel Broadcast Authority (IBA). GLZ decided to split the charts into Hebrew-language songs and international songs in 1967; IBA followed suit two years later. IBA pop station Reshet Gimel began operations in 1973 and took over the hit parade responsibilities for the network.

So there were two hit parades, both based on the tastes of teenage girls with time on their hands (and postage stamps) and 30-year old DJs — the two groups that traditionally call the shots in pop music. But despite the demographics, these do not a real hit parade make because real charts reflect record sales. And in a country where the two main record companies, Hed Arzi and CBS, essentially had no competition (until Helicon came along in 1985), such information was not made public.

I’m not sure why but like so many other things in Israel, probably it wasn’t out of meanness but more likely out of lethargy (it’s very hot here), ignorance (What, record companies in America tell people about their business? Why?) and because no one ever got around to thinking of it (reserve duty, Jewish holidays, wars, food shopping, etc.).

Enter Lahiton. Founded and edited by Uri Aloni and David Paz as a bi-weekly magazine in September 1969, a year later, Lahiton became a weekly, presenting a kind of journalism previously unknown in Israel: news and gossip about music and performers, record reviews, lyrics, pictures, full-color posters that decorated the walls of children and teens across the country, and charts — not only Israeli but foreign ones, too.

Lahiton also initiated a Gold Record award whose first winners were Shlomo Artzi, Dorit Reuveni and Igal Bashan. Following Lahiton’s lead, Israel’s record companies also began awarding Gold Records to artists with albums selling over 20,000 copies, thus tacitly releasing sales information.

In 1976, Lahiton merged with movie magazine Olam HaKolnoa and began reporting on movies stars as well as singers. The magazine’s popularity began to wane in the early to mid-Eighties as its editors moved on to found new magazines and as Israelis became exposed to more sophisticated fare like Melody Maker, Rolling Stone and Billboard.

Lahiton folded in 1990. The archive is not online although some kind souls have taken to scanning and posting select pages, including some scans of the Hit Parade page.

Recently, a Facebook page launched, dedicated to all things Lahiton, with a very active community of people interested in sharing pictures and comments, with some also wondering where the old Hit Parades are at.

In fact, the IBA website has a search engine accessing all annual Hebrew-language Hit Parades dating back to 1969.

An extensive interview (in Hebrew) with Lahiton founding editors Aloni and Paz by pop culture researcher Eli Eshed can be found here.

For those interested in buying or selling vintage copies of Lahiton — or just looking at some really cool cover art — look no further than the BookSefer site with prices ranging from NIS 160 (Michael Jackson in his “Bad” phase) down to NIS 70 (Izhar Cohen in his Michael Jackson in his “Bad” phase).

And of course, there is an online alternative to take the place of the write-in postcard vote: Charts.co.il, which provides the latest chart information — of the many, many charts now available to us — and gives users the chance to rate their favorites, just like the old days.

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Kathleen Reiter, the winner of The Voice.

The 23-year-old Reiter is the daughter of Israelis who moved to Quebec before she was born. Deciding to make aliya last summer, the amateur singer auditioned for the maiden voyage of the show, which was popularized in the US last year.

The Israeli version turned out to be hugely popular and helped elevate the mentors – Shlomi Shabat, Aviv Gefen, Sarit Hadad and Rami Kleinstein – to even more of household names than they were before, and it exposed some seriously talented young singing sensations out there among the Israeli public.
“I don’t know what the future holds, but I know that this is an amazing opportunity for me and a great start to what will hopefully be a great life here in Israel,” Reiter said a week after her televised debut in January.

What happened afterwards may turn out to be one of the great aliya stories in Israeli history.

Here’s a clip of Reiter’s first single, which she sang last night at the finals – “Shout to You”.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Two Elvis impersonators at the Elvis Inn at Neve Ilan - will they scare away the Elvis fans on the Holy Land Tour?

The brainchild of a Toronto/Nashville-based tour organization called Israel Theme Tours, the 10-day Elvis tour caters to the fans who love the King’s gospel music persona. For just under $4,000, they can join three US singers who accompanied Elvis on tour and in the studio in the late 1960s – Joe Moscheo and Terry Blackwood of the Elvis Imperials, and Bill Baize – as they visit the Christian sites of Israel – Nazareth, Jerusalem, the Dead Sea, a cruise on the Sea of Galilee and the option of being baptized in the Jordan River.

According to Israel Theme Tours co-founder Joe Amaral, the tour is being limited to 100 people in order to enable access to the stars, who will be performing in a boat on the Kinneret, and will likely break into impromptu performances and hold evening jam and gab sessions throughout the tour.

But for some, the highlight of the tour might be a stop at the Elvis Inn, near Neve Ilan outside of Jerusalem, to experience the kitschy but heartfelt Israeli restaurant/ shrine to the King, complete with a larger-than-life statue in its parking lot. On Elvis’s birthday, they usually have an Elvis impersonator contest, so it would be nice to have the Israeli and the American Elvises get to meet face to face.

They can discuss whether Elvis was a Christian, or really Jewish, as the 1998 book Schmelvis: Searching for the King’s Jewish Roots, claims. It cites the facts that his maternal great grandmother, Nancy Burdine, was Jewish, he always wore a chai (the Hebrew word meaning “life”) pendant; he put a Star of David on his mother’s headstone; and his tremolo vocal style may have been influenced by his upstairs Memphis neighbor, Rabbi Alfred Fruchter, singing cantorial music when Presley was a teen.

They can even have a Jewish Elvis vs. Christian Elvis singdown. Can’t wait.

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Peter Buck and Robyn Hitchcock on the left

In 1995, I got fired from a job. It was the first job I’d had in Israel and the first time I’d ever been fired from anything. Suffice it to say I was pretty despondent on that day.

REM saved me.

The night after I was laid off, my favorite rock band REM was playing in Tel Aviv. I had decided not to go – the tickets were too expensive – but after getting canned, I decided I needed something to cheer me up and take my mind off of the fact I was newly in Israel with two kids, a wife in ulpan and no foreseeable income. I went with my good friend Eliot who was also a massive REM fan.

REM has since broken up (a real shame because, after 10 years of producing mediocre records, they finally roared back into relevance with Collapse Into Now). But the band was back in Israel, in a way, this past weekend in the form of Robyn Hitchcock. I got a chance to catch them with my still good friend Eliot, and made possible by Israelity colleague and buddy David Brinn.

Robyn Hitchcock has been around for ages – in the late 1970s he headed up a proto-punk band called The Soft Boys. He had a number of college radio hits in the early 1980s with a band he called The Egyptians.

Now here’s the REM connection: in the last few years, he’s put together an occasional recording and touring band with REM guitarist Peter Buck. Calling themselves The Venus 3, they more often than not sound scarily similar to REM.

Buck is the master behind REM’s jangly pop bright guitar sound that was the band’s staple coda in its early years. That was ever present in The Venus 3’s original songs, and it happily bled into versions the band performed of early Hitchcock material too.

Hitchcock is no Michael Stipe – I’ve never liked the former’s voice that much – but his lyrics are keen, the music catchy and he has a quirky troubadour-like stage presence.

I wasn’t commiserating over any particular setback Saturday night when we went to see The Venus 3 Tel Aviv’s Barby Club. That  made the show pure pleasure rather than the compulsory catharsis of 17 years ago.

This was Hitchcock’s second time in Israel in less than six months. He played an acoustic set late last year at Tel Aviv’s Ozen Bar. This time out he was fully electric.

Hitchcock has a pre-rock star connection to Israel too: he spent time on a kibbutz in 1971.  Come back and visit soon, Mr. Hitchcock – and don’t wait another 40 years.

Eliot wrote a great review of the show for The Jerusalem Post.

Here’s a short video clip I made of the show.

Here’s a link to a full-length 1985 REM concert that showcases Peter Buck’s jangly guitar at its creative heights.

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Avraham Terifa

Avraham Terifa is in the eighth grade but he looks like he’s only nine-years-old. A tiny dynamo of a boy, he stands before an audience of several hundred at Jerusalem’s Mishkenot She’ananim concert hall and begins to play his violin. All around the room you can hear jaws start to drop as the music that emerges from his diminutive frame suggests someone twice as big and three times as old.

Avraham is just one of 30 children from the Ethiopian community in Jerusalem who is studying at the Jerusalem Conservatory Hassadna, a unique institution whose mission is to provide music instruction to children between the ages of 3 and 18, “regardless of physical or mental ability, socio-economic level, ethnicity or religious affiliation.”

Avraham is part of a program called “From Risk to Opportunity” which grants full scholarships to children of Ethiopian descent who, more often than not, come from very difficult home environments, rife with poverty and sometimes even abuse. Many of the children are referred to the program by social workers at Jerusalem’s Municipal Welfare Department.

The program was founded by Ruth Mason and Bob Trachtenberg, who have been active in supporting the Ethiopian immigrant community and were disturbed when they realized that, at a friend’s daughter’s dance recital, there were no Ethiopian children represented. Ruth says she thought “what if there are Ethiopian kids with musical talent? Can they develop it? The vast majority of their parents don’t have money for that.”

They established the “From Risk to Opportunity” in 2005 which, in addition to the scholarship, covers rental of a musical instrument, transportation costs and home tutoring.

Meron Moola

Avraham wasn’t the only Ethiopian-Israeli musician to perform at the concert held last week to celebrate the program’s success. Ronit Taklo was equally impressive. Even smaller than Avraham, one might expect this 10-year-old girl to be intimidated by the grand piano in front of her, but her confidence was stirring and the audience was once again riveted. The same for Meron Moola who belted out (in English) the lyrics to “When You Believe” from the animated film “The Prince of Egypt.”

While the music performed was primarily Western classics (Brahms, Mozart and the like) along with that Steven Schwartz movie pop tune, there were also two traditional Ethiopian numbers sung (and danced) by Molokon Patego, a guest performer.

The evening had two celebrities in attendance. Former Supreme Court president Dorit Beinisch’s husband is on the Conservatory’s board and some of the program’s participants played at the swearing in ceremony of the new chief justice. Beinisch presented the children with certificates of appreciation. Belaynesh Zevadia, the Israeli ambassador designate to Ethiopia (and the first Ethiopian-Israeli to become an ambassador) was also in the audience.

The “From Risk to Opportunity” program is exemplary in another way: It does not segregate the children into a separate track for disadvantaged youth as too frequently happens with the Ethiopian community elsewhere in Israel. Rather, the young musicians are fully integrated into the Conservatory’s mainstream program, which provides instructions for 550 talented young people.

The results show: three students have been accepted to the Jerusalem Music Academy High School – the first Ethiopian-Israeli students to be accepted to the prestigious school’s music track.

As for Avraham, he is one of them. His fiddling days, it seems, are just beginning.

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