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February 19, 2010
Israeli cultural ambassadors
The Idan Raichel Project opens the Chutzpah! festival.
CYNTHIA RAMSAY
Chutzpah! The Lisa Nemetz International Showcase of Jewish Performing Arts kicks off next month with Israeli musician Idan Raichel.
The March concert will be the third time the Idan Raichel Project has performed in Canada. “We really feel it’s home already,” Raichel said about the country. The Vancouver stop is the only Canadian one on this North American tour.
The Idan Raichel Project came into the spotlight with its eponymous CD, released in Israel in 2002. For it, Raichel – a keyboardist, composer and producer – compiled in a recording studio in his parents’ basement an eclectic mix of music from artists of various ethnicities, ages and languages. While one of the main performers in the project, Raichel highlights other talented musicians, with his next two CDs – Out of the Depths and Within My Walls – following the example set by The Idan Raichel Project.
While initially hard to get the project’s ethnic-sounding music on the radio, the first single, “Bo’ee” (“Come With Me”), was a hit and the CD became a huge seller. Cumbancha released The Idan Raichel Project worldwide in 2006 and Within My Walls in 2009.
“We really feel these days that we’ve got to this point in our career that people define our music as Israeli music, and not only as world music,” Raichel told the Independent in a phone interview. “For us, it’s very important because, first of all, it’s a great honor for us to be considered as the sound track of Israel of the past decade. It’s actually what we really want people to feel and to hear when they come into our concerts. It’s not a Jewish project, but it’s definitely a world music, international project that started as Israeli music.... We feel that nowadays, this music of the project is something that we can really not only feel as cultural ambassadors for our region, but also to bring the music of the world to Israel.
“I think that my background as an accordion player, which was pretty embarrassing, you know, for a child to play the non-coolest instrument ever, but I think that these are really my musical roots for what I’m doing these days.”
Raichel, born in 1977, is from Kfar Saba, a small city near Tel Aviv, where he currently lives. He started playing the accordion at the age of nine, an instrument, he said with a laugh, that his mother chose for him.
According to his biography, Raichel started playing keyboards when he was a teenager and studied jazz in high school. At 18, he joined the army and its rock band, touring military bases performing covers of Israeli and European pop songs. After completing his service, Raichel worked as a counselor at a boarding school for immigrants and troubled youth. Here, he developed friendships with members of the Ethiopian community and began exploring Ethiopian music and culture.
“The main achievement, if I can say, in the project, is that the project brought to the Israeli and mainstream radio the voices of the minorities, the youngsters who immigrated from Ethiopia, from Morocco, from Yemen,” Raichel explained. “This is the first time for people to hear the music from these cultures, or the influences from these nations. Just imagine that in Manhattan, N.Y., people will hear Chinese music from Chinatown in the mainstream radio and not only contemporary pop.”
The first CD, said Raichel, “got a lot of PR because it was the first time that people would hear the music of the Ethiopian influences, the eastern African community that lives in Israel. On the second album, it’s more of an Israeli project that you could hear, on one track, the great diva of all time in Israel, Shoshana Damari, she was 83 years old, and the youngster in the project, who participated in the first album, was 16 years old. You could hear the voices of the Yemenite prayers side by side with Sergio Braams from the Carribbean who immigrated to Israel ... so it’s more of an Israeli project. The third one, Within My Walls, is the first international release that we had people from all over the world join this project.”
Despite being well known internationally, Raichel said, “I’m a bandleader, but I’m the composer and I’m not a front man, I’m not the lead singer, so I’m not kind of this celebrity in our region. It’s more of bringing the backstage to the stage, to bring the producer, the writer or the composer, to bring them on stage. I’m enjoying just doing my music and not dealing with the side effect of show business.”
While his first CD did not set out to highlight various musical cultures, by his third recording, Raichel is deliberately choosing musicians from various countries and influences. About how he finds his collaborators, Raichel explained, “I just keep my ears and eyes open to interesting voices and interesting characters on stages around the world. I saw Marta Gómez in a rehearsal room in Manhattan. I heard Somi’s voice a long time ago. I saw Mayra Andrade on stage – we have the same booking agent – in Germany.” Gómez is from Colombia, Somi is from Rwandan and Ugandan heritage and Andrade is from Cape Verde.
Raichel has two bands: acoustic and electronic. “This time, in Vancouver, we’ll play with the acoustic band, which will be a great opportunity to approach the songs in a different way. I think it will be very interesting for us and also for the audience. We have great musicians on stage,” he said, including drummer Gilad Shmueli from Tel Aviv, who is also Raichel’s co-producer.
Praising Canada’s multicultural nature, Raichel said about the future, “I hope that in Israel ... in school, kids will be able to learn about Palestinian art, about Lebanese culture, about Syrian folksongs or old school music. And I hope that people from Lebanon will learn about Israeli theatre, the Palestinian kids will hear Israeli music, so that we will raise a generation that knows that, across the borders, there are neighbors – maybe a neighbor you cannot stand for a generation or two, but it’s a neighbor, it’s not your enemy, and you’ll face the [fact that] across the borders, there are people with culture, with life. I think that this is more important than peace conferences, for now. So people will learn that Iran is not just their horrible leader, but also great culture.”
About the more immediate future, Raichel, said about his upcoming concert, “We’re not coming often to Canada and I hope that everyone will come and I hope that ... people who are familiar with our music, or people from the Jewish community, will bring their friends who are not from this community – to show them other faces of Israeli society.”
For more information about the Idan Raichel Project and to hear some of their music, visit idanraichelproject.com. The group opens Chutzpah! on Thursday, March 4, at 8 p.m., at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts at the University of British Columbia. Tickets ($41-$54) are available at Ticketmaster, 604-280-3311 (service charges apply).
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