By Shaanan Street | 15/10/2009
One of the striking features of contemporary Israeli indie is that it isn't in Hebrew. Or, to be more precise, that it's also in Hebrew. Many artists record and distribute songs in English, but many songs are also in Russian, Amharic, Spanish, French, and Arabic. Shaanan Street takes a look at the leading fringe artists right now
When I attempt to understand the meaning of what happens in Israeli music and its directions, and when I try to identify future trends in it, I look far to the side, to the fringe. There, among the not yet successful composers and performers, or those who have been somewhat successful, but still aren't signed on any contract with anyone, it's easy to identify the spark of absolute sincerity. Looking at this unfinished material it's easier to search for additional layers.
I almost never have a chance any more to see my favorite underground bands in live performances. I could blame this on my being a busy person and the father of two (who has the strength to go to a performance when he has to change diapers in the middle of the night, or drive to the kindergarten at 8 a.m.?), but the truth is that as the years pass I've become a relatively pampered music consumer, especially when it comes to sound. Unfortunately, in the Israeli reality, "fringe" performances, even if they're artistically fascinating, and even of commercial potential, are shunted into venues that are nowhere near par, technically, and with apathetic or unskilled stage crews.
Any intelligent person knows that everything and everyone that will excite the local music enthusiasts tomorrow and the day after are simmering away at the perimeter of the music industry. Notwithstanding this, there is hardly any normal place where they can be heard like they should, and it seems at times that nobody has internalized the importance of fringe creations for the centers of music activity and the industry. Obviously, I don't expect the concert centers to be set aside for indie performers once every other week - even though in the world there are not a few quality clubs (and even festivals) that are known mainly because the next thing will always be discovered in them. The economic basis for such clubs might be lacking in Israel, and of course, establishment support will never be channeled to artists who are outside (or even anti) the establishment. But it seems that the reasons for the problem in Israel run deeper, along with the ingrained and stupid derision for anyone who doesn't "deliver the goods," right away, and mainly, the nonrecognition of the importance of fringe artists as those who go, not only alongside everyone else, but in front of them. True, in many cases the groups break up before reaching their peak and realizing their potential, and it is true that this is almost always a phase in the artists' lives, but this phase is deep and fascinating, and it influences the artist's entire work, and therefore all our lives, as well.
And a last word on this: you might have smiled when I claimed that the artists who will excite us tomorrow are here now, in the fringe. Some of you could have thought to yourselves: "What do you mean, in the fringe? Whoever will excite the Israeli mainstream tomorrow is here right now, in the auditions for A Star Is Born 6" (or maybe, we're already in 7?). I want to say, that when I say "excite," I mean "excite." I'm speaking about those who will tear apart your heart and devour your ears, without additives or food coloring. This doesn't have to be connected to commercial success - certainly not in the first stage - but I am convinced that every one of you can look back and recall some song that slapped you in the face the first time you heard it. The people who will write songs like that tomorrow are already here today, in the fringe bands, not in the auditions.
Perhaps because I'm a member of one of the successful groups in Israel, almost every week I'm mailed disks by young artists, and I listen to them all. It takes time, sometimes even half a year, but in the end I listen to everything. Of course there's a lot of chaff. At times I feel like the adventurers who went in search of gold in the western United States. I sift the sand and sift it again, and every once in a while, finally, I come across a lump of gold. Raw, unprocessed, but it can't be mistaken. Gold.
In Any Language You Want
One of the striking features of contemporary Israeli indie is that it isn't in Hebrew. Or, to be more precise, that it's also in Hebrew. Many artists record and distribute songs in English, but many songs are also in Russian, Amharic, Spanish, French, and Arabic.
While in the past Hebrew music comprised about ninety percent of Israeli music - with random sorties westward and, mainly, eastward - the situation today is completely different. The rapper Segol 59 (Purple 59) produces hip hop evenings in Jerusalem called "Corner Prophets," and encourages the participants to take a microphone and sing about whatever they want, in whatever language they want. On a good evening you can hear a Palestinian rapper protesting in his own language against occupation and repression, and immediately following him a rapper, an ultra-Orthodox yeshivah (Talmud academy) student who sings in English and Aramaic (the language of the Talmud) about his experiences in the Promised Land. Next on the stage is a Tel Aviv woman rapper with feminist messages, and after her, a pair of foreign worker rappers will sing in French something that sounds like a love song. The Hip Hop Sulha line, that was born in New York and visited Tel Aviv in July, offers a similar menu, albeit a bit sharper and more polished.
This ramified multilingual activity attests to our being a much more heterogeneous society than what we were accustomed to think and what the radio channels tell us. Not long ago I came across a 1fifteen year old drummer whose parents had immigrated from Cuba, and a twenty year old singer whose parents had come from the Congo. I don't know what their political views are, but, believe me - this multiculturalism is only beneficial for Israeli music. So then will an Israeli hit in Spanish or in Russian keep playing Galgelatz (an IDF radio channel featuring pop music) in only a few years? Yes. Israeli songs in English are already aired from time to time on Galgelatz (and every day on 88 FM), and Idan Raichel (an Israeli singer/producer) opened the door to whatever is said and sung in Amharic. If we add to these data the fact that excellent songs are written every day in Israel in many languages, we reach the conclusion that a big Israeli hit in a language spoken mainly by immigrants is just a question of time.
And if I've begun to prophesy (and act like a fool, since, as the saying goes, prophecy is now the province of fools), then let me say something more: I believe that an Israeli international music star is just a matter of time. Within something like ten years there will be some musical talent: a singer, either male or female, or a group, far, far above all their colleagues in their land of birth. Things like these aren't happening today, but more and more Israeli acts, of every size and level, do some crossover outside of Israel (something that, I'm happy to say, is happening with Hadag Nahash, as well), and, actually, they're paving the way for that unknown star who will burst forth within a decade. This might be someone who's already a star in Israel, like Aviv Gefen, Ivri Leder, or Idan Raichel. It's more likely that this will be a singer or group from the indie scene who've written in English from the first day they appeared, and already clocked many hours on the stages of small clubs in Europe and the United States. It's most logical, however, that the future star will be someone who's nine or ten now, and already writes and records songs that are not bad at all in English on his home computer. We'll wait and see.
The Dismantling and Composition of Words in Hebrew
An interesting aspect of this Babel of languages is the use that musicians who are not native Hebrew speakers make of the latter. When a person writes and sings in a language in which he was not born and raised, this almost always creates the fascinating encounter between the new language and the old thought. For instance, there are some rhymes that work only in a Russian or Arabic accent. Oftentimes the poet's initial limitation becomes a lyrical and poetical advantage. The biggest winner from these strange encounters is obviously the Hebrew language, that metamorphoses, develops, and extends, to adapt itself to the mouths and ears of everyone who uses its services.
Take, for example, the following text of the Jerusalem Sadyle group, that's taken from the song "Hatzi Hatzi": "Half of now is a moment, half of a moment is a second [sheniyah], half of sheniyah, that's ah! There's no word [milah] like that blad! Half of half [hatzi] is hah, half of hah is ah, half of this ah - ah, now shut your mouth!" In this short passage, we find rhyming of Hebrew and Russian {"sheniyah ... milah ... bla(d)"). Alongside the dismantling and composition of words in Hebrew, we have here a sort of desperate yearning to thoroughly understand the language and to discover its sources - an attempt that fails totally, and leads, in the end of the passage, to frustration and rage.
Groups that are active in two or more languages can use this multitude of languages in a more conscious manner. Two weeks ago, I was at a performance of the DAM group from Lod. During the performance, one of the singers asked the audience (in Arabic): "Who speaks Arabic?", and dozens of hands were raised. After that he asked (in Hebrew): "And who speaks Hebrew here?" Only a few fingers were raised. "You're up the creek," laughed Tamer Nafar, the leader of the group, "Now you are the repressed minority, and tonite we will do songs only in Arabic. In a democracy the majority decides, right?" Incidentally, in the end the members of DAM were considerate of the Hebrew speakers who came to see them, and they nevertheless performed one song in Hebrew... In the performance by the Los Caparos band, all the songs, with a single exception, are in Russian, and the only song sung in Hebrew has more than a smidgen of sarcasm directed against veteran Israelis. The latest disk of the "Parvarim Refugeez" (Suburb Refugees) is almost entirely in English. The few passages in Hebrew deal with especially relevant topics, such as harsh criticism directed against the Israeli music industry as a whole, and especially against the rapper Subliminal.
In all the last three examples we see that the use of Hebrew is pinpoint and intelligent. A sort of surgical use for a single specific purpose. Almost needless to say, such a situation would have been inconceivable until only a few years ago.
A Seriously Strange and Fascinating Integration
After I wrote about the disadvantages of the lack of serious relating to indie artists, and to the fascinating metamorphoses that the Hebrew language is undergoing right now as it is sucked and chewed in the mouths of many performers who live in our midst, it's time to relate to content.
As could probably be expected. many indie songs have a chord of solitude and being an outsider. Love, sex, drugs, and alcohol, too, are present in many of the indie works that I've heard. But what usually most interests me is hearing how the "conventional" Israeli reality is portrayed in the eyes and songs of fringe artists.
The "Parvarim Refugeez" use an interesting technique in their latest disk, Rapperrarium. Many of the songs on the disk, in terms of their text, are in every respect gangsta rap songs.The songs are sung in American English, and mainly draw their inspiration from works that appear in the United States. Notwithstanding this, all the place names in the songs are local.
Thus, for example, the song "Crack Money" contains the words: "smuggling the cash into the Lebanon border," and the song "After Kikar Party" contains many examples of an American fringe scene atmosphere within the Israeli reality. For example: "To my homies in Shlav Alef [Phase A] Makabim even in the mother fuckin' bitch ass medoragim [stepped housing]." The combination of the clearly American-gangster atmosphere with such Israeli place names creates a seriously strange and fascinating integration of the realistic and the fantastic. It's hard to imagine that the good kids from Maccabim-Reut, the sons and daughters of career army people, so it seems, would be involved in the smuggling of crack, but if they were engaged in this, they would undoubtedly have done their smuggling over the Lebanese border. Or, to the contrary, this disk sounds so sharp and convincing that we could almost believe that its personnel spend all their time turning over money from drugs and pimping; but then they dedicate some song to all the gangsters in the Building Stage A neighborhood in Maccabim, and consciously mock themselves, the listeners, and, actually, the entire world around them.
In the song "Hatzi Hatzi" by the Sadyle group that I quoted above, the singer refers to his life in Jerusalem: "In the capital city [I] feel not bad, not bad-and-a-half, great people, but sometimes it explodes, I have nothing to fear, because I've already passed half, I have nothing to lose, because, actually, I'm lost." That is, from the singer's perspective, the horror of terrorist attacks is more or less offset by the quality of the population, but neither the terrorist attacks (whose existence, tragically, sometimes aids many Jerusalemites to feel a type of shared fate, a sort of strange type of civilian "camaraderie of arms") nor the people (who are "great") can prevent the narrator from feeling lost. The solution, by the way, comes in the refrain: "It's cold in the street, expensive in the apartment, but inside - fire!" The only person who can save him will be he himself.
A few weeks ago I listened for the first time to a short disk entitled First Gear by the young Jerusalem rapper Vulcan. Like the other groups mentioned here, Vulcan, too, is in a sort of interim situation. He already is past the stage in which he sends homemade songs in the mail, his disk is distributed properly, and he even already has a small core of fans, but nothing is final. Without a correct infrastructure that will accept and foster young, fascinating artists like Vulcan, and without reasonable economic possibilities outside the mainstream, Vulcan is liable to vanish without a trace. In any event, Vulcan succeeded in producing an excellent disk with sincere songs that shake up the listener.
An excellent example of "things that current culture reveals to us about ourselves that we don't know yet" can be found in the song by Vulcan entitled "Nimas" (Fed Up): "Anger says that it's simply fed up, anger says that it's simply fed up, I flow with the anger [...] fed up! [...] The racism here - how much racism is here! More than anyplace else where I've been! A people that's suffered from racism its entire life - sabras against Ethiopians and Russians, and what not? Also Arabs and Philipinos, yeah, is there anyone good enough? Being stupid is not where you come from, it's who you are, and it's not difficult to find shared things, including language, but what is even easier is prejudice - in the name of love? Come and give me a blow job blad! The race doesn't matter, there are people, and there's the shit, blad! This annoys me in all kinds of ways, blad! I take a deep breath, and this is still blad! I can't explain it, and it seems to me that there isn't any need, either, because whoever doesn't already understand won't understand. I'll say what I feel like. Nothing matters [...] finish, start new life? No problem! I've got th' background to seize the moment, and there's something bad in me that will make someone feel a bit good, let me! Otherwise, there will be a volcano here! It's time! Fed up [...] anger says that it's simply fed up [...] I flow with the anger [...] fed up!"
Shaanan Street is the soloist of the Hadag Nahash group
translated by Ed Levin
