Spontaneous Thriller
So, have you seen that video of Oprah opening her 24th season with a ‘spontaneous dance’/'flash mob dance’ along Chicago’s Magnificent Mile? If you haven’t, 
Story is that her staff — and 20,000 people — pulled off the surprise, for Oprah, of performing a choreographed piece to the Black Eyed Peas’ “I Gotta Feeling.” And now this kind of spontaneous dance is becoming a worldwide trend, one which, natch, is making its way to Israel.
Several production companies and the City of Tel Aviv-Yafo are putting on their own spontaneous dance to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” scheduled for next Friday, October 30, at 12:30 in Dizengoff Square (the one with the Agam fountain at the middle).
If you want to participate, however, you gotta learn the dance, and by that I mean the dance steps to ‘Thriller,’ those danced by the moondancing maniac Michael Jackson. You have just one week: 
Nostalgia Sunday – Pop Star
Filed under: General, History and Culture, Music, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture
Do Israelis know from the Jackson-5? Puh-leez! This is the country whose government banned the Beatles from performing in the early Sixties on the grounds that they were a degenerate influence on the nation’s youth. But they did know Michael Jackson. In the mid-Seventies, with the advent of third radio broadcaster Reshet Gimmel, which played pop music, and pirate radio station The Voice of Peace, Israelis did become exposed to the international pop music. “Maariv LaNoar”, a weekly magazine for young people, reinvented itself as the local version of “Tiger Beat” with covers like this one:
Israelis tended (and still tend) to be exposed to Euro-pop, rather than good old American rock and soul but Michael Jackson was a massive musical crossover artist, with huge cultural influence all over the Middle East. Once “Thriller” hit, every country had their own ringleted version of Michael Jackson. Israel too*.
His Pied Piper persona already in full-swing, Michael Jackson held particular appeal for the younger set (by this I mean people who are now in their late Thirties) and in the mid Eighties you couldn’t go to any wedding or bar mitzva without the kids breaking out into song: “Triller! Tee lai lai… la lee la la la la la la la la la la la la… Triller! Tee lai lai…” and so on, ad infinitum.
But by the late Eighties, Israel’s media had fallen into lock-step with its international counterparts and stories about Jackson — whom “Spy” magazine once described as “the American version of Prince Ludwig of Bavaria” — focused on the weirdness.
And then, in 1992, speculation began that he was coming to perform in Israel. And he did in 1993.
During the past decade, new albums like “History”, regularly made the mainstream Israeli press, like this cover of Yediot Aharonot’s weekend supplement from 2002 of Jackson pulling his famous crotch-grab move. Famous but not original; the move was copped from Prince-produced Minneapolis band The Time, who doubtless stole the move from some other uncredited act.
Now Michael Jackson is dead and, as a good friend posted the other day on Facebook, in-between all the big hits, “the airwaves are filled with a whole ouevre of repetitive music that we fortunately never had to listen to.” Because our memories are not of Euro-perception post-”Bad” crap. We over-forties remember the J-5 hits, the Jacksons and, of course “Off The Wall” — little of which are being played here. Sadly, Israeli radio — whose knowledge of soul music is limited to the Blues Brothers movies parts 1 & 2 — is as usual, regurgitating only what it knows, not doing any research and depriving listeners of that truly joyous, wonderful music. Personally, I blame it on the boogie.
*Izhar Cohen, he of the Eurovision Europop mega-hit A-ba-ni-bi.
Michael Jackson mourned in Israel
Uri Geller with Michael Jackson.
The British press has been full of interviews with Uri Geller, the Israeli psychic, who called Jackson his best friend. Geller says the stress of readying for a 50-show stint in London this summer may have contributed to his untimely demise.
‘He was in good shape. I’m not a doctor, but I can only assume he was under immense stresses and pressures, and you can ask any doctor, stress is a killer.’
Uri, 62, reckons Michael should never have agreed to perform 50 shows at London’s 02 Arena this summer.
‘The pressure of these concerts, putting under huge pressures, he was a perfectionist,’ Uri tells Sky News. ‘That could have been what did it. But that’s just my opinion.
‘I think it was a mistake to target 50 shows…3, 4, 5 maybe 10 shows is enough.’
Meanwhile, in Tel Aviv, where Jackson performed in 1993 on the second leg of the Dangerous world tour, fans gathered in Dizengoff Square in an impromptu show of sorrow for the musical icon.
“We connect to Michael not just through dance and music but also on a spiritual level,” one fan told Ha’aretz. “He supported peace, he supporting accepting people without discriminating based on religion or race. He is a kind of spiritual leader that we lost, and it’s tough. It’s heartbreaking.”
The fans lit candles and comforted each other and commisserated with each other.
Neor Zuberi, a 22-year-old musician from Tel Aviv, told Ha’aretz that Jackson had influenced culture, music, dancing.
“He also supported the IDF and visited an army base when he came to Israel. The things he did and the values he upheld influenced me. He inspired me to volunteer, like running a break dancing workshop in Sderot,” he said.
Watch a clip from Jackson’s show at Hayarkon Park in 1993 here.
Subscribe
Subscribe to Israelity via email:
Social Media
Categories
- A New Reality
- Art
- Blogging
- Business
- coexistence
- Crime
- design
- education
- Entertainment
- Environment
- Food
- Foto Friday
- General
- health
- History and Culture
- Holidays
- Immigrant Moments
- Israeliness
- Life
- Medical Breakthroughs
- Movies
- Music
- News
- Nostalgia Sunday
- Picture of the Week
- Politics
- Pop Culture
- Profiles
- Religion
- Science
- Social Justice
- Sports
- Technology
- Travel
- tv
- War
The Face of Israel Today
-
About Israelity
Free newsletter
Stories from ISRAEL21c.orgPopular Posts