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Dimona brings the soul

I’m an avid fan of Sound Opinions – the world’s only rock and roll talk show – hosted by the rock critics from the Chicago Sun Times and Chicago Tribune. Their show runs the gamut – they cover the latest pop trends, industry news, desert island discs, interview current artists and dissect the classics. It’s a rock and roll geek’s perfect hour of radio. I’m a few weeks behind and the show I listened to today on my way to Jerusalem was a gem. They interviewed the founders of the Numero Group, a Chicago-based label who hunt down and reissue obscure albums that never got the audience they deserved. They focused primarily on soul and I was seriously digging the interview as well as the music. There was something about the feel of the tunes that matched the gloomy weather as well as my gloomy mood. I was in the zone. I was feeling it. And then BAM, my ears perk up when they mention “Soul Messages from Dimona,” an obscure compilation that was released in the late seventies. The Black Hebrews, a group of African-Americans who moved en masse to Israel in the seventies, have been supporting their community in Dimona for years with profits from their music. I must have been at least a dozen weddings where members of their community have performed and have seen other performances elsewhere but I had absolutely no idea that this album existed. It’s something special. It’s an incredible amalgamation of funk, soul, gospel, and a smidgen of psychedelia. The music blogosphere has universally praised it and the always biting and not too generous pitchforkmedia gave it a very rare high rating. This is a *must buy* for all fans of soul and an interesting part of Israeli history. And here I thought I knew everything about this country.

The Radiohead – Israel connection

Radiohead is known for being one of the most innovative bands on the planet. Dudu Tessa is not. However, Tessa is a well known genre-jumping Israeli singer-songwriter. Tess grew up in the Hatikvah neighborhood of Tel Aviv and put his out first album when he was just thirteen years old and has released four more albums. So what does Tessa have to do with Radiohead you ask? His first single, “Ezei Yom” (What a Day), features Jonny Greenwood, mostly known for his work as Radiohead’s guitarist and keyboard player. According to Ynet (Hebrew link), Greenwood visits Israel quite often, which makes sense since his wife is Israeli and he met Tessa through family friends.

You can listen to the resulting song in the YouTube video I embedded below.

Radiohead’s relationship with Israel actually has quite an interesting back story. In 1993, several months after the band released their first single with minimal success, the song “Creep” made quite a splash on the charts in Israel due to well respected DJ Yoav Kutner’s incessant playing of the single (which was introduced to him by a local representative of EMI). And the rest is history. Radiohead was rushed to Israel to keep the buzz going and actually ended up playing their first gig outside of the UK in Tel Aviv. Weeks later they garnished some buzz on a few midmarket California stations and then career making radio station KROQ played it and they’ve snowballed into one of the world’s most popular, innovative and influential bands.

Good story, eh?

Rocket rockumentary

35-year-old filmmaker Laura Bialis moved from Los Angeles to Sderot just over a year ago. Her latest documentary, Sderot: Rock in the Red Zone, set for distribution in 2009, is currently in post-production, but given the latest developments in the south, we wouldn’t be surprised if some newer footage crept in to the final cut as well. As Bialis puts it on the movie’s website, “This is a story about what its like to live through a never-ending war. Not just to survive, but to keep living.”

Bialis has been blogging since the current Gaza war has begun, with her words lending a personal face to her project’s subject matter, as well as the way the movie is shaping up:

I used to have a crew, but my two usual shooters are afraid to come to Sderot right now. So I’m on my own, except for my husband, who has become my assistant cameraperson because he won’t let me out of his sight. We’ve made a pact to try to stay together as much as possible so we don’t worry about each other….

When I first came to Sderot I didn’t run to the shelter. The threat seemed so random. It seemed almost impossible that you were going to be hurt. The fear of Qassams is something that takes a while. It grows on you. Because now, I know too many people with near misses.

A lover of history, Bialis founded and heads the Foundation for Documentary Projects, which serves as an umbrella for her various projects, which have in the past focused on the Holocaust and Soviet Refusenik culture. Along the way, she has garnered awards from the Vermont International Film Festival and the Anti-Defamation League.

Sderot: Rock in the Red Zone (check out the heart-wrenchingly poignant trailer here) does what it can to convey what life is like in a sleepy development town which has absorbed thousands of terrorist rocket attacks over the past several years, but the movie accomplishes this feat in an unconventional manner, by focusing on Sderot’s status as a musical hotbed.

Acts like Sfatayim, Teapacks and Knessiat Hasechel, all huge Israeli pop bands, all hail from the town, where loads of up-and-comers are enjoying an artistic renaissance, largely through the hub of Sderock, an incubator/rehearsal space that’s also a performance stage – and also an underground bomb shelter. Sderot: Rock in the Red Zone tells the story of life in Sderot through the eyes of the town’s vibrant music scene and that scene’s key players.

For more details on Sderot’s rock scene and full profile of Bialis please read this story at ISRAEL21c.

Nostalgia Sunday

I had almost forgotten Tango, Israel’s quintessential Eighties spiky-hair band. Almost until I was driving home last night and – as usual – a DJ saved my life with this smooth oldie but goodie, Al Taazvi et Tel Aviv (Don’t Leave Tel Aviv).

Tango, headed by bass player and lead singer Micky Shaviv and drummer Jean Paul Zimbris, had a sophisticated smooth synth-jazz sound that proudly stood up to its counterparts abroad (think Sade, Level 42 or Simply Red – and of course, they were heavily influenced by Steely Dan). In 1985, Tango was named Best Band of the Year. By 1987, they were no more.

Now residing in the “where are they now?” file, I had to do a bit of research to find out, indeed where they are now. But first, another great Tango hit: Shir Le’Or Yareach (Moonlight Song).

And so: Shaviv is married to the wonderfully original singer Mika Karni; he collaborates with her and produces her music. Zimbris has worked as a session musician and producer for the last two decades; he also teaches production and sound design at Record, a school for digital media.

I leave you now with Eynayim Yerukot (Green Eyes) – another one by Tang?. Enjoy.

That annoying kid on the bus

Public transportation anywhere is a mixed bag. Sure, you get from point A to point B on a low budget and without having to park. But in exchange, you have to deal with limited schedules, often slower routes and sharing close quarters with fellow commuters. This last drawback can be especially infuriating in Israel, where the local culture is too “warm” to stick to reasonable personal space buffer zones and bombastic characters often have little regard for maintaining standards of a quiet, pleasant ride for all.

Led by Nati “Fanati” Hassid, up-and-coming Jerusalem rap crew The Bakery has released “Just Another Bus Ride” (available as an mp3 download or for browser-based streaming), an amusing indictment of inconsiderate bus riders that is slated to be an integral part of the ensemble’s upcoming mixtape It Tastes Better in Hebrew.

Over an old-school-style sparse arrangement, Hassid paints a colorful group portrait of strangers on a bus: the greasy ars teen, the one with protruding chest hair, the one checking out all the girls, etc. But his main beef is against the unnecessary playing of music that always seems to emanate from the cell phone of some inconsiderate young person who apparently has not heard of headphones. “Catch the phone and throw it out the window,” goes the refrain, which rhymes in Hebrew.

It’s nice to see that sometimes the local talent agrees with the gripes of those of us who didn’t grow up here.

Image courtesy of sailorwind from Flickr under a Creative Commons license.

Nostalgia Sunday

Israeli band Ha-Click never gained a great following among the young Americans in Israel during the early 80s. Certainly, if you were into peace, love, understanding, Arik Einstein, David Broza, Yehudit Ravitz, Matti Caspi and any number of other Israeli soft rockers, something like Ha-Click (known in English as The Clique), fronted by a black-lipsticked, spiky-haired Dani Dothan, was not going to hold any appeal.

On one hand, if you were into Punk and New Wave, Ha-Click and the Tel Aviv underground scene (clubs like Ha-Penguin on Allenby and Ha-Madregot on Dizengoff), were pretty tame compared to what was going on in New York and London at the time. On the other hand, these were people clawing at an entrenched culture establishment dominated by government-funded institutions, and creating an alternative art and music scene where none existed on a sleepy street of upholstery shops in central Tel Aviv. If it weren’t for Dothan, his brother Uri and a handful of other pioneers, there wouldn’t be Sheinkin Street today.

Inspired by New York’s SoHo district, the brothers Dothan moved into a dumpy apartment and set up an art gallery-cafe downstairs called Sheink-in. My friend Yael was one of the many young lovelies who served Nescafe and “botz” coffee there for a week or two. She can’t remember if she got paid or not, but money was not the point. The point was to be there. Other young artists were moving in all around the neighborhood; a small theater opened up, a plastics shop/gallery, an anarchist bookstore, a used record store; and on Purim the street was closed to traffic and the Adloyada parade – a Tel Aviv tradition from the 30s to the 60s – was revived by performance artists.

As Sheinkin gained in popularity, changes began to take place: Sheink-in closed down and Dothan opened up Tat-Rama, a high-level art gallery that also published a very large format, glossy magazine. Cafe Tamar – which still sells instant coffee and greasy cheesetoast under the watchful eye of proprietress and living legend Sarah Stern – became the hottest place in town to see and be seen. Sculptor Israel Hadany was commissioned to create a sculpture-fountain in the park at the lower end of the street. Tat-Rama closed down and a fast food delivery company moved in. The bookstore shut down and Cafe Cazze opened up, bringing in good coffee – finally! The Hadany fountain was paved over and replaced by a kiddie park. Hanging out at Cafe Tamar became cliche after Bananarama wannabees Mango sang a song about it. The Tel Aviv municipality gave the neighborhood a name – “Lev Tel Aviv”, the heart of Tel Aviv – and real estate prices inveitably started to rise.

I interviewed Dani Dothan about 15 years ago after he published a novel (a very good one, actually) about Jerusalem bohemians of the 1920s. He was resigned to the fact that Sheinkin had become, in his words, “a street of boutiques and restaurants”. It wasn’t exactly his vision, but he was certainly aware that it was due in part to his efforts. (He also explained to me that the difference between a “Sheinkiner” and a “Sheinkinist” was that of between buying and renting). He’s a very busy man and continues to stay on the cutting edge of Israeli popular culture: he wrote singer Dana International’s song “Diva“, which won the 1998 Eurovision, he directed Milkshake, a controversial cable talk show starring the irrepressible Zofit Grant (Mrs. Avraham Grant, as she’s known to UK football fans), and co-directed documentaries “The Ashkenazim“, and “The Blue Lamb“.

The Clique only reunited twice, in 1988 and 2004. Drummer Jean Jacques Goldberg passed away in 2006, so there’s not likely to be any more and in any case, reunion tours are pathetic, (sorry Johnny, but it’s true). A clip does occasionally show up on TV and that’s nice to watch, like this one of their big hit “Incubator” – and please note the prescient use of plastic sheeting, a decade before the first Gulf War made it part of our national consciouness.

What is a Fish Snake?

Looks like the trend is bigger than I initially thought. YNET has revealed that Hadag Nachash (Fish Snake in English), arguably the most well known Israeli musical export, will be working on material in English for their new album as they aim for international stardom. It is not clear whether they will just be incorporating some English into their Hebrew material or record their material completely in English. Just because you could, does not mean that you should. I just don’t see this working.

Here is a video of their hit Hinei Ani Ba (featured in You Don’t Mess with the Zohan) which is about their struggle between living in Jerusalem and their love for Tel Aviv.

Afro-beat redemption

Some Israeli bands can jam when they want to – especially those steeped in the growing “party music” scene – but most aren’t known for their meandering, free-form improvisations.

Aharit Hayamim, on the other hand, could very well be the closest thing Israel has to a proper hippie jam band . When Aharit Hayamim hits the stage, they throw everything at you: Afro rhythms, folk-rock motifs, reggae grooves, Rebbe Nachman teachings and swirling psychedelic textures. More of a redemption-themed collective than a rock act, Aharit Hayamim has been on the scene for about five years now, playing impromptu shows in open-air markets, wooded hilltops and traditional concert venues, while hosting its own eponymous festival in Gush Etzion every fall.

The band’s name comes from the Biblical term for the dawn of the messianic age, which, according to traditional Jewish teachings, comes only after some serious birth pains. Of course, the music has the power to heal – and not only for Jews in the homeland. Aharit Hayamim has recently partnered up with the Dar Fur Stars, a vocals and percussion ensemble consisting of 12 Sudanese who arrived in Israel in recent months, following arduous journeys across Egypt, smuggled to the Philadelphi Route by Egyptian Bedouin.

While the current genocide in Darfur threatens to wipe out an entire population, Aharit Hayamim is doing its part to preserve the Fur culture’s language and chants. The two acts joined forces earlier this year for a series of open jam sessions, rehearsals and fundraiser concerts in Tel Aviv.

While response from the general public has been modest, some donations from American Jewish communities have been made to the cause, resulting in the purchase of some djembe hand drums for the Dar Fur Stars. Now leaders from the bands are getting organized for an international concert tour and a recording session, hopefully to take place in the coming weeks.

“It’s not just music that sounds good to the ears,” says Aharit Hayamim manager Moshe Cornfeld. “It helps do something.”

When Berry comes to town…

Seeing 50-year-old Israeli rocker Berry Sakharof in concert is always a treat, even though it usually means squeezing into tight spaces that are packed elbow-to-elbow with teenagers.

One of the godfathers of the Israeli musical export scene, Sakharof started his professional career in Holland with Minimal Compact, an industrial post-glam new wave act he founded with garage punk Rami Fortis. Since the mid-90s, Sakharof has involved himself in a number of musical directions, scoring soundtracks, reuniting here and there with Fortis, and exploring the verses of 11th-century Andalusian Rabbi Solomon ibn Gvirol and the ideas of 20th-century French philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas. But most of Sakharof’s projects have more or less surrounded his canon of six classic studio albums, some of which were co-arranged by the rhythm-forging sample master Rea Mochiach.

Sakharof creates soundscapes that are ambitious and challenging to the listener but at the same time energetic and infectious. Sakharof gets respect for his rhythms, his Middle Eastern picking and his overall headiness, but he’s primarily a purveyor of guitar rock that’s just plain good – his songs have something to offer everyone from sing-along melody lovers to snobby hipsters.

This past Thursday, Sakharof and band returned for yet another blistering two-hour show at Jerusalem’s Yellow Submarine club. Like all Israeli entertainers, Sakharof works hard to make a living, which means that fans have the opportunity to catch him live a few times a year without having to bust out the binoculars. The relaxed showman made some jokes about how Jerusalemites are prone to disrespect towards his home of Tel Aviv, gave away a few guitar picks, and even broke into his patented Turkish cha-cha step more than once.

The Submarine staff had some problems with the sound system (Mochiach threw a tantrum from behind his drum kit at one point), but for the most part, the band was tight and properly vicious, from recent edgy jams like “New Wind” to revamped catalogue favorites like “Sampson” (a Dr. Dre-like synth whine replaced the studio version’s whistling high parts) and “I Don’t Love Her” (somehow transported to Kingston). The 1994 anthem “How Yossi” became a springboard for free-form wall-of-noise jams that evoked Crazy Horse. By the time the band hit the last encore for the night, the sparse Fortis-Sakharof hit “No End to Childhood,” the sweaty room was bouncing agelessly.

Spreading Israel through song

A fellow Harry left a comment on a music post I wrote about Rockfour and the trend of some Israeli artists writing and performing in Hebrew.

He said:

Why push Israeli artists that sing in English? I’d rather give props to the musicians who still sing in Hebrew. This trend is bad for Israeli Culture. There’s something terrible about hearing Aviv Geffen and Ivri Lider singing in English. It does not have the same power as hearing them sing in Hebrew. I’m worried that in the future, more and more Israeli Musicians will sing in English because they see everyone else doing it and their dream is to be big in England and America. Things didn’t quite work out that way for Monica Sex. I am afraid for the day when every Heyehudim song will be in English. In the future, the only thing left in Hebrew will be those Mizrahi singers like Eyal Golan. I mean this in the nicest possible way. I really am scared for the future of Israeli Rock.

You can find my initial response here but I wanted to elaborate a bit as to why I see nothing wrong with Israeli music in English. First of all, the amount of music being created in English is so small, so minute and on such a small scale that your average joe (Israel Israeli) probably has absolutely no idea that a scene even exists. The effect that it has on the cultural landscape is pretty much non-existent. Sure, Aviv Gefen put out a couple of English albums with prog-god Steven Wilson (Blackfield) and Ivri Leder is currently working on an English album, but both artists have not even remotely abandoned their Hebrew music. Leder actually just released a new Hebrew single on his website just a couple of days ago (to download, click on the scrolling Hebrew text at the very top of the page).

I think there is a dire need for American youth to connect with Israel on some level. I firmly believe one of the strongest ways that youth can connect with Israel is through commonalities. And I believe music is powerful enough to be that commonality. An American teenager who loves pop punk isn’t going to connect with an Israeli pop-punk band such as Sheygetz who performs their music is in Hebrew, though if he/she happened to hear Useless ID, whose music is in English, he/she might connect with the music and in turn, connect with Israel. Israeli music in English exists in all genres – metal, hip hop, rock, pop and dance. It is certainly a cliché, but music connects people and does indeed break down borders and opens minds. As mentioned in a previous post, Oleh! Records (a music company I co-founded), mission is to do just that. Conveniently enough, you can read more about Oleh! Records at ISRAEL21c.com

 

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  Israel is often seen as a place of conflict and strife. In reality there is much more: there's business and research; art and culture; community and family. At ISRAELITY, Israelis blog their daily thoughts, experiences and insights. It's the real Israel, not the media's Israel. It's people living ordinary lives in an extraordinary place.

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