Making a global soundtrack

KATHARINE HAMER

It has only been a few years since Matisyahu burst onto the music scene – going from quirky alternative act to Billboard magazine's Reggae Star of the Year. His success paved the way for many other Jewish crossover artists, including the likes of Balkan Beat Box and Pharaoh's Daughter, both of whom are playing at Chutzpah! The Lisa Nemetz International Showcase of Jewish Performing Arts this year.

Balkan Beat Box is on the same label that launched Matisyahu – the New York nonprofit JDub. Pharaoh's Daughter's album, Haran, is the first release for Oyhoo! – best known previously for running an annual Jewish arts festival in New York City. Each is committed to introducing its performers to a "mainstream" world music audience, outside the traditional Jewish sphere of synagogues and Jewish community centres, according to Basya Schechter of Pharaoh's Daughter.

"It has given me a new opportunity to reinvent myself, by working with a stronger budget," said Schechter, in an interview with the Independent. "[It has] allowed more musical creativity, by supporting both my musical ideas and some of my promotional ideas."

One of the habits that both bands share is the melding of musical styles from around the globe. Balkan Beat Box, in particular, is like a musical bag of liquorice allsorts. Its founders, Ori Kaplan and Tamir Muskat, who grew up in Israel and now live in Brooklyn, take pieces of melody from around the Mediterranean, North Africa and Eastern Europe.

"It's really the sum of our experience," said Kaplan. "We called the new album Nu Med, for new Mediterranean. When so many elements collide inside people, it is inevitable that new breeds will come out. The melting pot is as simple as growing up watching Egyptian movies every Friday with Farid El Atrach music and going to clarinet lessons for klezmer next door with a Bulgarian teacher who also plays folk, or Tamir having his mother bring the sounds from Bucharest, which she immigrated from in her teens, or Tomer [another band member] bringing his hip hop and Yemenite tradition to the mix. It's in the food and smell and sound of where we come from.

"What gave our thing its real twist was 15 years of intense activity and development in New York and jamming with Latin culture, playing free jazz, playing with Gypsies every week in a small club in New York City; deejaying all over the world, remixing Bulgarian singers, Arabic singers, hip hop nights and East Coast beats; and touring with [Slavic-influenced New York band] Gogol Bordello for three years. Our own esthetic and perspective is very wide, simply because we have had lots of experience with many kinds of esthetics. We made the conclusions; found the thread which connects the Silk Road to Turkey and to Spain and to Cuba and to reggaeton and hip hop and electronic music. Even if it's us flying high and imagining this stuff in the studio, we took the licence to let our imaginary world be."

Schechter, too, gathered myriad musical influences through her travels to Africa and the Middle East. Coming from a poor family, she chose to wander and gain inspiration in cheaper countries like Turkey and Morocco. "I hitchhiked from city to city, to desert, to beach, to town," she said. "When I travelled, I just kept looking for musicians and music I really liked." The end result? A mix of traditional chants, electronica and Middle Eastern folk rock.

Of course, both bands' Jewish background also plays a significant role in their music and personal choices. Schechter was raised in a Chassidic household and now plays in an ensemble for Friday night services at B'nai Jeshurun in New York. Kaplan and his bandmates, meanwhile, have strong opinions on the Middle East conflict.

"It is something which hurts us," said Kaplan. "We grew up into this war. We bring Arabs and Jews together on stage. It speaks more than many politicians to the younger audience. We represent a big, growing bunch of people who are very sick of the politicians' inability to act and the terrible things committed in the name of arrogance. We hope somebody is hearing this on the Palestinian side and that hearing a BBB album in Ramallah gives hope. In Israel, we are outspoken about it and feel like we represent a silent majority who want a just peace now."

This may be part of why he feels the time was ripe for musicians like Matisyahu, with an uplifting spiritual influence.

"It's sort of a reaction," said Kaplan. "The whole world is searching for new prophets and icons. Everything is so over-recycled in the pop culture and media and the images are so saturated with the same boring gangsta messages that when Matisyahu came along, it was refreshing for kids and families and Christian youth to have a guy with a positive message."

Schechter weaves text from the Torah into her music and loves the "magic" of Jewish ritual, but her songs are very much a blend of the sacred and the germane. And, although this draws comparison with other world music bands, she denies being part of a "movement."

"I think that people may love Jewish art, culture and music," she observed, "but the 'cool factor' has to come from inside – you have to be genuinely interested to really take to heart the art you're being exposed to."

Pharaoh's Daughter plays at the Norman Rothstein Theatre on Tuesday, Feb. 26, at 7 p.m. Balkan Beat Box plays at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts on Saturday, March 1, at 8 p.m. For tickets, visit www.chutzpahfestival.com.

Katharine Hamer is a Vancouver freelance writer and editor.

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