home
(a
version of this was published in Air Canada’s journal, Enroute, in
October, 1999)
I
am sitting in my car in the middle of an endless traffic jam. These are becoming more and more
frequent lately in Tel Aviv, Israel’s most European city. I’m on my way south to Jaffa for an
urgent business appointment – or at least I’m trying to drive south. The
exotic Mediterranean is on my right, the tall western hotels that block the sea
breeze from the city are on my left, and a sea of automobiles are honking all
around me. There’s not a policeman
in sight. I call up to say I’ll be
late and turn on the radio to find out what’d going on. I’m drawn into a steady stream of
Israeli and upbeat Arabic songs, exactly right for this sudden break from the
world of commerce.
As
a rock groupie, I’m usually attracted to the more raunchy type of Israeli
songs, those influenced by British and American rock groups but with a
distinctly literary bent in their lyrics,
I’m drawn to their blackness, their sophisticated wisdom, their Russian
depression,. There is something
insatiable about the desires and hungers in rock music that speaks to me. As a poet, I’m also drawn to the more
formal, literary, poetic music that has pretty much dominated the airwaves for
years – songs about the landscape, war, love, sadness. Many people even know a large number of
classic Hebrew poems by heart because they’ve been set to music.
A
song like Because, written by Yacov Gilad and sung by Yehuda Poliker,
combines all of the elements I enjoy in Israeli music. It utilizes a heavy rock beat to
illustrate the anger felt by second generation Holocaust survivors, and it does
so with the poignancy of the finest poetry: “…because of the memories / we too are victims / because
there never was a place to hide / because there never was anywhere else/
because of the shadows / because of the darkness / because of the pull of
gravity… “
As
a child of survivors myself, I was left breathless the first time I heard this
song. It seemed to speak to so
much of my own experience in this society. And its Greek
sound added just a touch of uniqueness and exoticism to the original sound of
Poliker and Gilad.
But
here in my car, stuck in traffic, that Middle Eastern sound is central and not
strange and exotic. It is a new
Tel Aviv that one hears on the radio: the joyous sound of Arabic dance. My ex-husband used to tell me about how
would feel compelled to leave home when his father listen to Arabic music on
the radio. He would sit on the
stairs in the hall holding his ears, not because of the political implications
but because the atonality hurt his ears.
It’s certainly an acquired taste in sound, and I’m sure his experience
was not unusual.
Things have changed, however, around here in the past few years. First, people whose cultural background is Arabic have become much prouder of the culture. And Israeli culture has become much more eclectic, capitalizing on the varied backgrounds of a wide range of immigrants. While the two army channels seem to broadcast American and English rock music at least half the time, the other music channels are beginning to favour a Middle Eastern sound. Hebrew music with Moroccan, Greek and Spanish sounds has become a major genre, and Arabic songs sung in Arabic, either by the classical Egyptian singers or by Israelis, are becoming popular as well. Even rock music is taking on a Middle Eastern flavour, complete with electrified bazoukis or ouds (Greek and Arab guitars). Singers like Egyptian icons Oum Khultoum and Farid Al Atrash now serve as inspiration to Israeli musicians of all stripes. Israelis are not “afraid” of neighboring cultures anymore. So while belly dancing is becoming taboo in Arabic countries (except for Russian and German dancers performing for tourists), it is becoming more popular in Tel Aviv.
It is not surprising that I have begun bouncing around in my car, swinging my shoulders to the syncopated beat of a darbuka (a resounding Arab drum), while an oud marks the outwardlu aimless melody.
Even though I was born in London, England, on the last night of the Blitz to Lithuanian parents, and grew up in Rochester, New York, I have now lived here for over 28 years and I’ve totally succumbed to the magic of the Mediterranean. The Greek sound has filled the air here for many years, ever since the Jews of Salonika arrived on these shores in the 1920s. And Arabic music is part of the culture of half of this country, comprised of both Jews from Arab countries as well as Arabs.
The popularity of this heavily accented, stylized music seems like a reaction against encroaching industrialization, Westernization and yuppie alienation. We have always had songs that conjure up surf and sun, Turkish coffee and beautiful bodies, but today’s music is even more in tune with our hedonistic lifestyle. It suits Tel Aviv, built on the site of a Philistine city, with its countless coffee houses and defiantly beautiful people anxiously seeking pleasure and fulfilment.
By the time the traffic starts moving again (we never find out why it has stopped, but it was probably some kind of terrorist bomb scare), I am exhausted, as if I’d spent the afternoon dancing. That’s when I remember that there are other, more political reasons why Arabic music has been getting more airplay. It has to do with the peace so many Israelis are longing for and with the joint efforts of musicians from many nations. Then I remember why there has been more Hebrew music as well on the radio. During the past three years, the arts were hit hard by the recession, and one of the ways of offsetting this loss of income was by placing new government quotas on the percentage of Hebrew music. It is only a gesture. The arts in countries like ours are greatly restrained by economics because of a painfully demanding hierarchy of needs. No wonder so much of this Hebrew and Arabic music – the sound of the new Middle East – is united by themes of sadness, loss and grief.