Re: Israeli Music Today

[Ari Davidow <ari...>]

At 02:21 AM 7/30/99 -0300, you wrote:
>Has anyone know the Breira Hativit group? I think they have a original and
>creative "jewish-israeli" sound. Their sound is a mix of ashkenazi, mizrachi
>and israeli with some drops of pop music. They present a very interesting
>direction to the Israeli music. 

They're a very exciting group. Their original album 20 years ago, with 
songs set to blind Israeli poet Erez Biton's poetry, along with a number
of reworked traditional songs, was amazing. There was one song, set to a
poem about how God parcels out his gifts--to the rich he gives money; to
the poor he gives children. To older Mizrachiim, the song was taken literally 
and they loved it; younger folks saw the irony and were equally appreciative. 
That was the last time the group was really on the edge politically, but 
musically they have opened up a lot of doors to traditional musicians. The 
follow up live album, "Waiting for Samson," may have been their best. After 
that, as personnel turned over, it became really one person's band, and a 
one-dimensional, very popular, relatively traditional North African Jewish 
music band for a while.

Recently, they have been touring with an Israeli singer, David ?, who has an 
amazing, amazing voice and gives them a vocal dimension that breaks what can be 
a driving, almost headache inducing heaviness, on some numbers. He has also 
extended the range of their material. Perhaps Simon or Mayer can break in with 
the name of the album I'm thinking of and recommend it. 

We saw them live at Brandeis last year. It was amazing how much they had 
changed, and how much they were still the same from the days when they would 
play at Pargod, down on Bezalel St. just a hair towards Mahane Yehuda in 
Central Jerusalem, 20 years ago, leading Erez onto stage to read a few poems at 
the end of each set.

ari


Ari Davidow
ari (at) ivritype(dot)com
list owner, jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org
the klezmer shack: http://www.klezmershack.com/

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