Israeli Jazz Musicians in the International Scene: A Case Study of Musical Transculturation in

Contemporary Jazz Performance and Composition

by

Noam Lemish

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Musical Arts in Performance

Faculty of Music University of Toronto

© 2018 Copyright by Noam Lemish

ii

Israeli Jazz Musicians in the International Scene: A Case

Study of Musical Transculturation in Contemporary Jazz

Performance and Composition

Noam Lemish

Doctor of Musical Arts in Performance

Faculty of Music University of Toronto

2018

ABSTRACT

This dissertation is a case study of musical transculturation in jazz performance and

composition through the examination of the practices of Israeli jazz musicians who began to

operate on the international jazz scene starting in the 1990s.

An impressive number of Israeli jazz performers have received widespread exposure and

acclaim over the last twenty years. Artists such as Omer Avital (bass), Anat Cohen

(woodwinds), Avishai Cohen (bass) among many others have successfully established

themselves on a global scale, creating music that melds various aspects of American jazz with

an array of Israeli, Jewish and Middle-Eastern influences and those from numerous other non-

Western musical traditions. While each musician is developing his or her own approach to

musical transculturation, common threads connect them all. Unraveling these entangled sounds

and related discourses lies at the center of my study.

While this is the first comprehensive study of the contributions of Israeli musicians in the

international jazz scene, it is also intended to engage with the “global” phenomenon of

transcultural jazz practice more broadly. By considering the performers discussed in the study

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as multi-local musicians, I offer an alternative to both American exceptionalist views of jazz,

for instance, jazz as America’s gift to the world, and to “jazz nationalism”, a scholarly outlook

that emphasizes the localization of “jazz” in (non-American) nation-states, and that continues

to hold sway around the world, especially in Europe. In so doing, I also aim to invite

explorations of the multi-local music making practices of jazz musicians worldwide. Thus, this

project simultaneously provides insight into the nature and role of transcultural music making

in contemporary jazz practice while enhancing knowledge of modern Israeli society and

culture.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Completing this project would not have been possible without the mentorship, support

and generosity of many wonderful people. First, my deepest gratitude to professor Jeff

Packman, my dissertation advisor, who shepherded me through this lengthy journey with

constant enthusiasm, encouragement, expertise and inspiration. Jeff’s sharp intellect, broad

based knowledge, timely and poignant advice, were invaluable. His engaging and engaged

approach, humour and positivity also made the process greatly enjoyable and uplifted me when

things were challenging. I always looked forward to our meetings, not only because I knew that

I would gain greater clarity about the project but because I relished every opportunity I had to

“talk shop” with Jeff and “pick his brain” about matters relating to my dissertation and beyond.

Without fail, I left my meetings with Jeff with my batteries replenished, feeling galvanized and

motivated to push forward, clear about what I needed to do next.

My gratitude also goes to my two other dissertation committee members, professors

Farzaneh Hemmasi and Terry Promane. They too provided illuminating feedback and valuable

insights that helped me tremendously as I advanced this project forward. I want to also thank

University of Toronto professors Midori Koga, Jim Lewis, Mike Murley, Alexander (Sasha)

Rapoport, Chase Sanborn, for their mentorship and support for the entire duration of my

doctoral studies. Many thanks also to Professor Evan Rapport, my external examiner, for his

careful reading and thoughtful feedback about my dissertation.

I want to thank the faculty and staff at the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies

at the University of Toronto, particularly Galina Vaisman and professors Doris Bergen and

Anna Shternshis for providing crucial financial support for my fieldwork in the US and Israel. I

am grateful for their commitment to sustaining and shaping the interdisciplinary collaborative

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graduate program in Jewish studies. This invaluable program broadened my understandings and

engagement with Jewish studies and offered me a community of colleagues and friends whose

own research provided inspiration and education.

I am also very grateful to several scholars outside of the University of Toronto who

gave of their time to discuss my ideas and provided valuable insights, advice and feedback

about my project at various points along the way including E. Taylor Atkins, Ofer Gazit, Tomie

Hahn, Motti Regev, Alona Sagee-Keren and Edwin Seroussi.

I often shared with friends and colleagues that the most enjoyable part of this project

was my fieldwork. Life is pretty good when you get to spend your days sitting at cafes in NYC

and Israel talking about music with fantastic musicians who are thoughtful about their life and

work. I am grateful to all of my interlocutors for so graciously lending their time and energy to

our conversations and for their generosity of spirit. Thank you also to Shira Senesh for her

meticulous, precise and expeditious interview transcriptions.

My thanks to my dear friend Miles Wick for hosting me in Brooklyn during my first

round of fieldwork in winter of 2014 and to my brother Leeshai Lemish and sister-in-law,

Sarah Cook for hosting me during of my second visit to NY in spring of 2015. My thanks to my

sister Erga for her support and uplifting humor! As I write these words, I think it is finally fair

to say that I’ve reached the yeshoret: now it’s your turn. To Yehonatan Vardi and Ofer

Globerman, for their friendship and generous hospitality during my fieldwork in Israel. In

1998, when we were classmates in high school, Ofer and I created IJO-Israeli Jazz Online. We

never would have imagined that twenty years later, our modest website would serve as a

resource for my dissertation on Israeli jazz.

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My profound thankfulness to my aunt and uncle Hadas and Amos Gershony for so

lovingly opening their home at Kibbutz Galed and hosting me for the duration of my fieldwork

in summer of 2015. My time in the kibbutz, my first extended stay in Israel in nearly a decade,

was richly productive, deeply meaningful and indeed critical for the success of this project.

Between busy and joyful days of interviews and concerts across the country, I was blessed to

have the opportunity to spend many wonderful hours visiting with my family in the kibbutz

(which included, aside from my aunt and uncle, cousins and their children), and reconnected

with sights, sounds, flavours and memories from my childhood and youth.

Perhaps, most significantly, amidst the summer in the kibbutz, I had the great fortune

of being able to spend much quality time with my maternal grandmother Chaya (Mishkov)

Barkai (1925-2016) by way of daily visits, conversations and meals together. Back in Toronto,

I spoke with her by phone for the last time in late November of 2016, only a week or so before

she passed away. During our conversation, she asked me, as she almost always did during our

trans-Atlantic conversations in recent years, “are you able to find time to write?” Indeed, after

her passing, during the months of intense writing this past year I called on her kind and gentle

nudge, hearing her voice echoing in my ear’s memory as a motivation to keep pushing towards

the finish line.

My parents, both professors and scholars, traveled a fair bit for work during my

childhood and they would always bring back souvenirs from their travels. After I started to get

serious about music, jazz in particular, they began to bring back CDs of local jazz artists from

those countries. My father traveled to Capetown, South Africa when I was 13 and returned with

a pile of CDs by Abdullah Ibrahim and many other South African jazz artists who created a

style of music known as “Cape-jazz”. He and my mother also brought back jazz CDs from

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Canada, Finland, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, the UK and many other places. The sounds I heard

on those CDs excited me and planted the seeds for my interest in transcultural jazz, which

eventually led me to pursue this project.

My love and my unending gratitude to my parents, Peter and Dafna Lemish, whose own

lives, work and values have so inspired and influenced mine. I am forever grateful for growing

up in a household that valued intellectual inquiry, critical thinking and to having parents who

modeled what passion and dedication for their chosen craft looks like. I feel immensely

fortunate to have parents who themselves had gone through the process of writing dissertations

and were able to provide me with such valuable insights, advice and support. I am particularly

grateful to my father for our many enjoyable and engaging conversations about my research

and for his feedback about my work.

Finally, my boundless love and gratitude to Marie: for the still points and for all the

points in between. For her unending encouragement, constant support, and always sound

advice. Thank you for sharing this journey with me.

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DEDICATION

To my parents

Dafna and Peter

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF MUSICAL EXAMPLES……………………………………………………. xii

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION: “ISRAELI JAZZ”, MUSICAL

TRANSCULTURATION AND THE MULTI-LOCAL

MUSICIAN……………………………………………………………………………... 1

“ISRAELI JAZZ” AS A CASE STUDY FOR MUSICAL TRANSCULTURATION………………… 4

PERFORMING ISRAELINESS………………………………………………………………………... 6

PROBLEMATIZING ESSENTIALIST CONCEPTUALIZATIONS………………………………….. 9

AUDIOTOPIAS OF THE MULTI-LOCAL MUSICIAN……………………………………………… 14

PERSONAL BACKGROUND…………………………………………………………………………. 17

METHODOLOGY……………………………………………………………………………………… 22

DISSERTATION OUTLINE…………………………………………………………………………… 23

CHAPTER TWO: VOICING JAZZ NARRATIVES: INDIVIDUAL

AND COLLECTIVE VOICES OF JAZZ IN GLOBAL CONTEXT……………… 27

STANDARD VOICINGS……………………………………………………………………………… 29

COMPLEX VOICINGS: THE “NEW JAZZ STUDIES”……………………………………………... 33

GLOBAL VOICINGS: JAZZ DIALECTS AND THE EMERGENCE OF “GLOBAL JAZZ STUDIES”……………………………………………………………………………………………… 34 PERSONAL VOICINGS: TRANSGENERIC, MULTI-LOCAL MUSIC-MAKING………………… 51

MULTI-LAYERED VOICINGS: JAZZ POLYPHONY AND THE SIMULTANEITY OF NARRATIVE…………………………………………………………………………………………... 54 CHAPTER THREE: “ISRAELI JAZZ”: HISTORY AND OVERVIEW………… 58 ISRAELI JAZZ MUSICIANS IN THE WORLD TODAY…………………………………………… 60 A BRIEF HISTORY OF JAZZ IN ISRAEL: 1930-1990……………………………………………… 72 THE INSTITUIONALIZATION OF JAZZ IN ISRAEL………………………………………………. 77

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THE WAVE OF RETURN, AND THE BACK AND FORTH………………………………………… 90 “KFAR” NEW YORK: TONS OF HUMMUS IN THE BIG APPLE………………………………….. 97 CHAPTER FOUR: “ISRAELI JAZZ”: BLEND OF BLENDS…………………….. 105

THE COMPLEX “GLOBAL” PART I: THE JAZZ TRADITION……………………………………. 107

THE COMPLEX “LOCAL”…………………………………………………………………………… 117

THE COMPLEX “GLOBAL” PART II: “WORLD” MUSIC…………………………………………. 148

SUMMARY BY WAY OF A CASE STUDY: AMOS HOFFMAN AND MULTI-LOCAL

MUSICIANSHIP……………………………………………………………………………………….. 154

CHAPTER FIVE: THE SAND AND THE SEA: NAVIGATING THE

ARRANGEMENTS OF ISRAELI JAZZ MUSICIANS…………………………….. 163

INDIGENOUS JAZZ STANDARDS: HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENTS………………………….. 164

ISRAELI SOURCES AND WHAT TO DO WITH THEM: KEY REPERTOIRE RESERVOIRS………………………………………………………………………………………… 168 THE POLITICAL-ECONOMY OF JAZZ IN HEBREW…………………………………………….. 172 ISRAELI STANDARDS?...................................................................................................................... 177 ANALYSIS OF REPERTOIRE EXAMPLES………………………………………………………... 183 SUMMARY…………………………………………………………………………………………… 199

CHAPTER SIX: CONCLUSION: “FALAFEL JAZZ”, AND THE POLITICS OF

GENRE AND CULTURE…………………………………………………………….. 202

THE POLITICS OF GENRE: THE CASE OF “FALAFEL JAZZ”………………………………… 205

FALAFEL, MUSIC, AND CULTURAL POLITICS………………………………………………... 212

THE FUTURE OF “ISRAELI JAZZ”………………………………………………………………… 216

AN AUDIOTOPIA FOR THE MIDDLE-EAST……………………………………………………… 220

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REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………………. 222

BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………………………... 222

DISCOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………………………… 227

WEB RESOURCES…………………………………………………………………………………... 228

ONLINE VIDEO CLIPS……………………………………………………………………………… 230

INTERVIEWS………………………………………………………………………………………… 230

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LIST OF MUSICAL EXAMPLES FIGURE 4.1 Head In from “The Archeologist” by Amit Friedman ………………………….. 127 FIGURE 4.2 Excerpt from Head In of “Elli” by Avishai Cohen……………………………… 132 FIGURE 4.3 D Section from Head In of the “Archeologist” by Amit Friedman……………... 133 FIGURE 4.4 Malfouf Rhythm………………………………………………………………… 141 FIGURE 4.5 Call and response interlude from “New Middle East” by Omer Avital………… 145 FIGURE 4.6 Excerpt from Head In of “Bgida” by Itamar Borochov…………………………. 147 FIGURE 4.7 Melody excerpt from “Sahadi’s Serenade” by Itai Kriss……………………….. 147 FIGURE 4.8 “Sahadi’s Serenade” excerpt with silsulim…………………………………….... 148 FIGURE 4.9 Figure 4.9 Ostinato from “Dreaming” by Avishai Cohen………………………. 151 FIGURE 5.1 Head In for “Zameru”, arranged by Ilan Salem………………………………..... 185 FIGURE 5.2 “Zameru” Rhythmic Feel………………………………………………………... 187 FIGURE 5.3 “Eli, Eli” Lead Sheet…………………………………………………………….. 191 FIGURE 5.4 “Eli, Eli”: first three measures transposed to C minor…………………………... 191 FIGURE 5.5 “Eli, Eli” melody transformed by Yuval Cohen to 13/4……………………….... 192 FIGURE 5.6 “Eli, Eli” - Yuval Cohen’s arrangement bass opening…………………………... 193 FIGURE 5.7 “Eli, Eli” tenor saxophone entrance……………………………………………... 193 FIGURE 5.8 “Eli, Eli” piano and bass counterpoint…………………………………………... 194 FIGURE 5.9 “Eli, Eli” first blowing section…………………………………………………... 194 FIGURE 5.10 “Eli, Eli” piano and bass ostinato for drum solo……………………………….. 195 FIGURE 5.11 “Eli, Eli” melody quote in bass part…………………………………………..... 196 FIGURE 5.12 “Eli, Eli” three horn contrapunctal loop………………………………………... 196

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CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION: “ISRAELI JAZZ”, MUSICAL TRANSCULTURATION AND THE MULTI-LOCAL MUSICIAN

It was a beautiful summer evening at the Shuni Fortress, situated near Binyamina, an

agricultural center moshava in northern Israel.1 The sun had set, and the ancient Roman outdoor

theater was packed to the brim and buzzing with the audience members’ anticipation of the

coming performance by Israeli jazz icon, bassist Avishai Cohen. Cohen was in Israel for a

single show to introduce his new band, New York Division, before heading off on a European

tour. The stars began to sparkle under darkening skies, conjuring vivid memories of my youth,

when I attended concerts at the renowned Red Sea Jazz Festival (RSJF) in the southern Israeli

city, Eilat. In fact, the last time I had heard Avishai Cohen play live was during the 1998 RSJF,

when he was the bassist in Chick Corea’s Origin band. Now, seventeen years later, I was back

in Israel for six weeks of fieldwork for my research on Israeli jazz.

As I sat and waited for the concert to begin, I recalled the thunderous ovation Cohen

received back in 1998 when he was introduced by Corea in front of an adoring “home” crowd.

Cohen’s appearance as a sideman for an American jazz great was a landmark moment in Israeli

jazz history: one of our very own jazz musicians had “made it”. As an Israeli teenager who

aspired to become a jazz pianist myself, witnessing this event first hand was a profound

experience. Not only did it fill me with local pride, but it also bolstered my optimism for my

future, effectively signaling that the door for international success had been opened to all Israeli

jazz musicians.

1 The fortress itself is an Ottoman structure. A Moshava is a village located in an agricultural region that serves as a service center for the surrounding farming settlements.

2

Back at Shuni fortress, Cohen’s new band was a sextet featuring an ensemble of Israeli

and New York-based musicians. One half of the ensemble included Cohen’s touring trio at that

time, featuring Israelis Nitai Hershkovitz on piano and Daniel Dor on drums. The other half

was comprised of three celebrated New York-based musicians with whom Cohen had a long

history of collaboration dating back to the early 1990s and his initial entry into the New York

City jazz scene. The New York division of the New York Division consisted of guitarist Kurt

Rosenwinkel, trombonist Steve Davis and trumpeter Diego Urcola.

The band members’ journey to the stage was lengthy and public, as their green room

was situated in the adjacent fortress. They descended multiple narrow stairs along the side of

the building in order to reach the theater’s main floor. They then climbed several more stairs to

reach the stage. As audience members spotted Cohen, along with the rest of the musicians, a

mounting applause washed over the theater. Cohen took in the applause like a seasoned

celebrity accustomed to receiving such adoring treatment. He displayed gratitude while also

owning the stage and the moment, as if to say: “Yes, I know, I am this loved!”

The concert started with the sextet performing three pieces, all in the vein of late 1990s

cutting-edge New York jazz, replete with Afro-Cuban influences and sparkling solos from

Rosenwinkel and Urcola. The music harkened back to Cohen’s early albums as a band leader,

particularly his 2001 release Unity by his International Vamp Band. After these three pieces, a

revelatory moment occurred: The “New York” portion of the band left the stage leaving the

Israeli trio. Then, within two seconds, as the first few lyrical minor triads were played by

pianist Hershkovitz, the crowd started clapping ecstatically: Were they clapping because they

recognized the tune? Did they welcome these “Israeli” sounding passages or was their applause

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for the familiar “Avishai” sound? Though it is hard to decide, the significance was clear: This

was the Avishai Cohen they have grown to love and had come to see and hear.

For many Israelis and non-Israelis, musicians and critics alike, Avishai Cohen’s original

music is synonymous with the “Israeli jazz” sound. He remains the most well-known,

commercially successful Israeli jazz musician active in the international scene today. His

compositions present his own unique blend and integration of several distinct influences:

modern jazz, Afro-Cuban, ladino songs, popular songs from Israel and Arab music, both

classical and folk.

But Cohen is not alone, and his sound, though highly influential, is not the only “Israeli

jazz” sound. Starting in the 1990s, Cohen was one of several Israeli jazz musicians who arrived

in New York and pioneered a musical direction that explored the fusion of “American” jazz

with an array of influences from Israel and the Middle-East. Now, more than twenty years after

this first wave of Israeli jazz musicians began creating this kind of fused music, which would

only later come to be nicknamed “Israeli jazz”, the international jazz scene is filled with

successful Israeli jazz musicians who continue to explore such blending through their

performances, compositions and recordings.

This dissertation is about the sounds and discourses of “Israeli jazz”. Having said that,

an important caveat is that, as my research progressed, and despite the towering presence of

musicians like Cohen, there is not and likely never has been one “Israeli jazz” sound. Rather

there are as many sounds as there are Israeli jazz musicians. What is fundamentally shared

among the musicians who create this music is that each of them, grounded in their own jazz

training and vocabulary, explores and develops through their own individual processes, a

musical blend of an array of already blended influences. These influences include but are not

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limited to musical traditions associated with Israel, the Jewish world and/or the Middle-East,

North Africa and Central Asia. Furthermore, many Israeli jazz musicians also incorporate

additional musical influences and traditions that extend beyond those cited above. While the

influence of Afro-Cuban and Brazilian musical genres is especially pronounced, each artist has

his or her own particular threads of influence, and these include Western Art Music, North

Indian Classical Music, Bulgarian choir music and much more.

“ISRAELI JAZZ” AS A CASE STUDY FOR MUSICAL TRANSCULTURATION

The dominant narrative about jazz today maintains the music’s strict ties to its

birthplace in the United States and its origins as an African-American practice. Often situated

as exemplary of American exceptionalism, jazz has been widely celebrated as America’s

unique gift to the world by an array of voices within and outside the academy.2 For a little over

a decade now, however, a growing number of scholars (including many from outside the

United States) have begun to highlight different narratives that build on the history of jazz as an

African-American music, but situate it as an agent for cultural hybridity in various national

contexts. In these alternative formulations, jazz is viewed as one of the means through which

various cultures worldwide create new subgenres of music that incorporate American jazz with

local musical traditions, creating their own jazz variants (e.g., Atkins 2001, 2003; Nicholson

2005; Cerchiari 2012; Whyton 2012; Bohlman & Plastino 2016).

In many ways, the processes described by these scholars resonate with what Margaret

Kartomi has called “musical transculturation”, the “complete cycle of positive musical

2 James Lincoln Collier’s 1993 book Jazz: The American Theme Song is one good example of this as is Ken Burns’s influential documentary series, Jazz (2000).

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processes set in motion by culture contact” (1981:233).3 Kartomi is writing about culture

contact within the colonial encounter and the meeting of two musical traditions. Yet, she also

notes that no musicial tradition is completely discreet: “First, it is highly doubtful that any

completely isolated cultures exist in the world today. Thus, there is a strong likelihood that all

musics are syntheses of more than one cultural (and, in some cases, class) influence …

Intercultural musical synthesis is not the exception but the rule” (1981:230). Building on

Kartomi’s understanding of transculturation, this study explores Israeli jazz as a practice rooted

in the blending of influences from multiple musical traditions that are already transcultural in

nature even if they are viewed by many, including scholars, audiences, and the musicians

themselves, as distinct and even pure.

As a case study of this emergent trend toward understanding the roles of

transculturation in jazz performance and composition, and thus a contribution to newer,

alternative directions in jazz scholarship, this dissertation focuses on the rich, multi-layered and

transcultural musical practices of Israeli jazz musicians who began to operate on the

international jazz scene starting in the 1990s.

An impressive number of Israeli jazz performers have received widespread exposure

and acclaim over the last twenty years. Artists such as Omer Avital (bass), Anat Cohen

(woodwinds), Avishai Cohen (bass), Avishai Cohen (trumpet), Eli Degibri (sax), Anat Fort

(piano), Gilad Hekselman (guitar), Amos Hoffman (guitar, oud), Omer Klein (piano), Avi

Lebovich (trombone), Shai Maestro (piano), Daniel Zamir (sax) among others have

successfully established themselves internationally, creating music that melds various aspects

of “American” jazz with an array of Israeli, Jewish and Middle-Eastern influences and those

3 Kartomi advocated for this term, which she borrows from Cuban scholar Fernando Ortiz asserting that it does not carry with it the ethnocentric and/or confused etymological history of other terms such as “acculturation” or “hybridity”.

6

from numerous other non-Western musical traditions. While each musician is developing his or

her own approach to this process of musical transculturation, collectively one can hear common

threads interwoven and connecting them all. Unraveling these entangled sounds and related

discourses lies at the center of my study.

In his book Is Jazz Dead? (Or Has it Moved to a New Address?), British journalist

Stuart Nicholson (2005) argues that many of the most innovative and creative developments in

jazz are now happening outside of the United States precisely through the interaction between

local musical traditions and American jazz. Beyond shedding light on the important work of a

generation of Israeli jazz artists whose music has infused the international jazz scene with

exciting new sounds, this case study of Israeli jazz musicians hopes to contribute to the

growing body of literature that views jazz as a vehicle of expression for local cultures rather

than a codified art form beholden to strict conventions of performance associated with its

American origins.4

PERFORMING ISRAELINESS

The musicians who are the focus of this project are Israeli nationals, who were born,

raised, educated and socialized in Israel. And they are Jewish. With few exceptions, though,

they are not religiously observant and view their Jewish identity through a cultural lens; that is,

if they give it any consideration at all.5 Some take their Jewishness for granted, and others

reported an antagonistic relationship with religion, Judaism or otherwise. A few did not identify

as Jewish at all. For all of them, Jewishness was a secondary concern to national identification.

4 For a discussion of this perspective see Atkins 2001, 2003; Heffley 2005; Nicholson 2005; Cerchiari 2012; Feld 2012. 5 There are a few exceptions, most notably, saxophonist Daniel Zamir who moved to New York as a secular Jew but turned towards piety and is now a practicing orthodox Jew.

7

Even then, however, while most identified as Israeli, several others consider themselves

cosmopolitans and reject national identification. Thus for all of these musicians, there is a

distinction between Israeliness and Jewishness and this distinction informs my account of them

and their practices.

Furthermore, their engagements with their Jewishness need to be seen through an Israeli

lens rather than a North American or Western European one. That is to say, issues of concern to

Jews as an ethnic and religious minority group in North America and Europe played no

significant role in these musicians’ processes of identity formation since they grew up as part of

the dominant religious and cultural order in Israel, a Jewish state. Thus, debates over

assimilation versus upholding particular Jewish ethnic and religious practices are not part of

their discourse. Arguably, their identities are more strongly informed by pernicious binaries of

Ashkenazy and Mizrahi ethnic and cultural identification that continue to hold sway within

Israel’s cultural landscape than a Jewish/gentile division.6

For the above reasons, the musical backgrounds and music making practices of the

musicians who are the focus of my study ought to be understood as separate and quite distinct

from those of both American-born Jewish and, of course, non-Jewish jazz musicians. Needless

to say, then, that discussions about “Jewish jazz” in the twentieth century, such as the work of

the Tin Pan Alley composers, the music of Benny Goodman or Artie Shaw, Mickey Katz and

Shelley Manne are quite a different matter altogether.7

6 In Israel, these terms are used casually rather problematically and lump diverse groups with drastically different histories, cultures, religious practices and origins into oversimplified generalities. Ashkenazy refers to Jews whose origins are in Europe. Mizrahim (translated literally to Eastern) refers to Jews who originated from various countries in the Middle-East. The term Mizrahi is also often conflated with the term Sephardi which refers to Jews that are descendants of the exiled Jews of Spain (Brinner: 2009:16-17). 7 Communications scholar Josh Kun has written (2005) on Mickey Katz and Jewish-American identity in Audiotopia: Music, Race and America. More recently, political scientist Charles Hersch (2016) published a comprehensive study of Jewish American jazz musicians, their music and issues of ethnicity in Jews and Jazz: Improvising Ethnicity.

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It is especially critical to distinguish between Israeli jazz musicians and their Jewish-

American counterparts who promoted a renaissance of primarily Eastern-European Jewish

musical traditions as part of an American klezmer resurgence starting in the 1970s. Pre-dating

and paralleling the emergence on the scene of foundational Israeli jazz musicians such as

Avishai Cohen, several American Jewish jazz artists, most famously saxophonist John Zorn,

have been creating jazz that fuses Klezmer, Hassidic and Eastern European Jewish folk

elements. Zorn has dubbed this movement “Radical Jewish Culture” and went as far as

founding a record label called Tzadik dedicated to promoting and releasing albums that he

deems resonant with his vision.8 Despite their temporal and geographic proximity, however, the

degree of overlap between these two jazz movements emerging out of NYC is limited in terms

of the individuals involved, ensemble personnel and musical sounds. Nonetheless, Zorn’s label

has been home to several Israeli jazz musicians’ albums including most notably saxophonists

Daniel Zamir and Uri Gurvich, bassist Haggai Cohen Milo and pianist Omer Klein.

Such contact with Zorn’s label and the musicians who see themselves as part of Radical

Jewish Culture is one facet of a broader tendency in which Israeli jazz musicians are confronted

(more often than not, for the first time) with their “Jewish” identity, and the sense that they are

members of a minority group only upon arrival in NYC and as part of their enculturation to

American culture. While the relative separateness of the scenes suggests a degree of discomfort

in this reimagining of identity, my interviews and fieldwork also revealed that Israeli jazz

musicians often benefit greatly from connecting with established Jewish-American

congregations, communities and organizations. I should point out, though, that the support they

receive from these types of groups often pre-dates their arrival as adults in NYC. Indeed, many

8 Ethnomusicologist Tamar Barzel’s monograph (2015) New York Noise: Radical Jewish Music and Downtown Scene is an excellent first comprehensive account of this movement.

9

of the Israeli musicians who became active in the New York scene received scholarships to

study jazz as teenagers while still living in Israel from the American philanthropic organization

America-Israel Cultural Foundation. This is but one example of special place that the United

States holds in terms of its influence on Israeli society in general and as the birthplace of jazz in

particular—a matter that will be elaborated upon further in Chapter Three.

PROBLEMATIZING ESSENTIALIST CONCEPTUALIZATIONS

The complex circuits of influence by which American jazz has informed the work of

Israeli jazz musicians suggests the need for more critical engagement with prevalent binaries

that continue to shape current discourses about both jazz and Israeliness. For instance, British

jazz scholar Tony Whyton, has lamented the “loss of complexity and sensitivity to the

intercultural dialogue” (2012:368) that arises out of binaries such as George Lewis’s

“Eurological” and “Afrological” distinction and results in a kind of jazz essentialism that

marginalizes musicians, such as those from places like Israel, whose racial and cultural

identities are not easily reconciled with longstanding and over-simple notions of jazz

authenticity and authority.9 Similarly, the Israeli musical world in its many forms, continues to

be informed by another assumed and problematic dichotomy, that of “East” and “West”. Rather

than digressing into a detailed discussion of the historical forces that have shaped this deep-

seated binary in the thinking of numerous Israelis, I turn to ethnomusicologist Benjamin

Brinner, who summarizes its impact: “For many Israeli Jews, the East/West distinction

continues to mark a fundamental sociocultural divide within the nation despite several

9In his essay “Improvised Music after 1950: Afrological and Eurological Perspectives” (2002) George Lewis defines “Afrological” improvised music as following the path of resistance initiated by be-bop artists such as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk; while “Eurological” refers to improvised music that belongs to the Western Art Music experimental music tradition and can be considered to be a reaction to the prominence of “jazz” in the Western Hemisphere.

10

generations of intermarriage and cohabitation in Israel” (2009:223). In other words, as a result

of long-standing and problematic binaries, the musicians central to my study fit uncomfortably

both with dominant notions of “jazz” and their musical practices situate them problematically

in cultural terms in relation to Israeliness.

For example, the task of describing their music succinctly or conveying the flavor of

particular sounds for promotional or conversational purposes can often lead to simplistic and

reductive formulations. Still, as Brinner (2009) argues, musicians often utilize such glosses to

communicate with one another and, thus, they should not be summarily dismissed as they

embody important if often assumed meanings and values. Like other, related identity issues, the

many musicians I interviewed admitted that even though what they do is far more nuanced than

a simple combination of “jazz” and “Israeli” or “Middle-Eastern” music, they often utilize such

reductive descriptions for promotion and publicity. These musicians, their managers, critics and

fans often find it easiest to call the music they make “Israeli jazz” or to say that such and such

musician creates music that fuses “jazz” and “Israeli” music. Furthermore, such simplistic

labeling is often commercially effective.

My intention in using the term “Israeli jazz”, then, is to acknowledge its prevalent use

by musicians, industry professionals and fans and not to reify it as a hard and fast category. To

that end, my analyses aim to undermine essentialist conceptualizations of the sounds and

discourses that are associated with this label. Fundamentally, the music of the artists I discuss

cannot be reduced to a simple fusion between jazz and “Israeli” or “Middle-Eastern” practices.

Indeed, such generalizations do not aptly characterize the immense diversity of styles,

traditions and sub-genres that exist within each label. As I discuss in detail in Chapter Two, for

instance, “jazz” is not a stylistic monolith but rather an umbrella label for a wide array of

11

differing sounds, styles, and practices from different points in history. Furthermore, vociferous

debates around the stylistic and generic characteristics of the jazz and the meaning of “jazz

tradition” are ongoing. A newer aspect of these debates is that the histories of musics that may

be called jazz are transcultural and transnational, and have been so from the start (Atkins 2003).

Similarly, to speak of “Middle-Eastern” influences in sweeping generalizations is to grossly

oversimplify an immense diversity of sounds and styles—a diversity that is to some degree

evident in the varied influence on Israeli jazz musicians. Brinner writes lucidly about the

ongoing and imperfect labels that exist to describe the various musical traditions emerging

from the Middle-East:

While some see both Eurocentrism and denial of Arab ownership in the label “Middle-Eastern music,” others find “Arab music” exclusionary as it ignores the essential contributions of Turks, Greeks, Armenians, and Jews, to name other ethnic groups that partake and contribute to this area of musical practice. Muslim Arab cultural hegemony masks ethnic, religious, and political diversity in many parts of the Middle East, just as it diverts attention from circum-Mediterranean similarities and connections. (2009:81)

The label “Israeli music” is broad and at least equally misleading if used as a genre designation.

Those Israeli jazz artists who have risen to international prominence during the past two

decades were born into a rich and diverse musical world that includes many separate – albeit

fused - musical traditions along with a variety of blended styles that emerged out of a wide

array of intersecting practices, both “local” and “global”. As my findings demonstrate, these

multiple, mixed, and ever-changing genres stand as important influences for Israeli jazz

musicians. The diversity in Israeli music is, further, inseparable from the diversity of Israeli

society. As waves of Jewish immigrants from all over the world moved to Israel-Palestine

during the course of the twentieth century, they brought with them musical traditions that had

developed (often over centuries) in their previous homes.

12

With these caveats in mind it is reasonable to say that Jewish immigrants to Israel-

Palestine are generally, albeit problematically, understood to belong to two large and distinct

groups, Mizrahi/Sephardic and Ashkenazy Jews. While this division informs everyday life and

describes related but distinct cultures, ancestries, and histories of migration, in a general way, it

is also important to note that each group is profoundly multiple and diverse in terms of cultural

practices, especially music. Sephardic or Mizrahi Jews, whose cultural heritage is rooted in

countries all across the Middle-East, North Africa, Iberian Peninsula, the Balkans, and Central

Asia brought with them music informed by Iraqi, Persian, Turkish, Yemenite, North African

genres as well as the Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) musical traditions. Primarily immigrating from

Eastern and Central Europe, Ashkenazy Jews enriched musical life in pre-state Palestine and

subsequently, post-1948 Israel with Eastern European folk songs, liturgical music and Western

European classical music. They also brought the Klezmer tradition and Hassidic musical

practices.10

As Brinner notes in Playing Across a Divide (2009), even with the traction of history

and the Askenazy/Mizrahi binary, cosmopolitanism has also been central to many Israeli

musicians’ outlooks and identities for several decades now. Their attitudes have roots that go

beyond globalization and Euro-American influences on daily life in Israel. After all, the vast

majority of Israelis are either immigrants or children of immigrants, and have personal or

referenced memories and ties to other locales. Extending beyond Israeli life, Brinner also

recalls that for centuries Jews have performed a kind of doubleness, “always maintaining at

least one language and set of relations in an internal community life and other languages and

relations with the external Christian or Muslim majority” (2009:88). For many Jewish

10 For a comprehensive account of music, society and culture in Israel see Shiloah 1997; Regev and Seroussi 2004; Brinner 2009; Horowitz 2010.

13

professional musicians, such “doubleness” did not equate to separateness and often resulted in

transcultural musical practices and polymusical competences.

Ethnomusicologist Evan Rapport’s study (2014) of Bukharian Jewish musicians

illustrates this point well. Rapport writes about the cosmopolitanism of professional Bukharian

Jewish musicians who developed competencies in a wide array of styles ranging from

traditional shashmaqom to diverse genres from various cultures. Indeed, as a result of the

social, cultural, and aesthetic conditions that affected their lives, Jewish musicians in many

locales have long adopted polymusicality and versatility as a means of professional survival. In

this regard, Israeli jazz musicians at the start of the twenty-first century merely continue a

practice prevalent for centuries.

Thus, the Israeli jazz musicians I discuss draw upon a wide and diverse array of

“Israeli” or “Jewish” influences that are in and of themselves blended and “cosmopolitan” in

nature, while simultaneously drawing upon an even broader array of non-Israeli sources. In

most cases, they don’t privilege the “Israeli” influences above others (such as African-

American jazz traditions, Arab classical). This fusion of already fused styles, underscores a

second shared dimension that characterizes the musical practices of Israeli jazz musicians. As

the following pages will reveal, cosmopolitanism is one of the distinctive markers of the

Israeliness in their musical practice. Indeed, the musicians I interviewed argued that the

uniqueness and strength of Israeli music is rooted in the blending that occurred and continues to

occur as a result of the multicultural interactions that occurred in Jews’ previous homelands as

well as in Israel between the diverse array of newly arriving immigrants. This blend of blends

is both an actual marriage of the “local” and ”global”, as well as an invitation to probe beyond

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this binarism to consider what are the dynamic interactions of “local” and “global” in the

context of the Israeli musical landscape.

AUDIOTOPIAS OF THE MULTI-LOCAL MUSICIAN

Novelist Taiye Selasi proposes that we substitute the primacy of nationalist identity

with that of locality, and introduces the idea of the multi-local citizen. One “isn’t a citizen of

the world,” she writes, “but a citizen of worlds” (Selasi 2014). Selasi outlines three categories

that help us understand the various ways “localities” form our identities: rituals, relationships

and restrictions. “Rituals” include the things we do every day, where we live, what we do, what

we eat, what music we listen to, etc. “Relationships” involve the people in our lives.

“Restrictions” cover the real-politik dimensions of our lives, such as the passport we hold,

racism or discrimination we face, the political system of the country we reside in and the

economic conditions that affect us. Selasi proposes that instead of asking “where are you

from?” we should ask, “where are you a local?” Her invitation to re-consider the weight we

give to national identification in our identity discourse is highly relevant and important in the

context of a jazz world that is increasingly defined by “stylistic pluralism” and transcultural

musicmaking.

Following her, I suggest that jazz scholars should not limit themselves to a nationalist

discourse of transcultural jazz that lumps artists into categories such as “Israeli jazz” or

“Norwegian jazz”. Such definitions too often essentialize and reduce complex, wholly unique

and personal blends. Instead we might productively speak of the multiplicity and simultaneity,

the polyphonies, as it were, of particular musical “localities” in individuals who possess

complex identities and unique circumstances.

15

As a way to avoid the limitations of the nation-state as a descriptor for complex

practices, born out of transculturation and created by multi-local citizens, I suggest the concept

of the multi-local musician. Multi-locality is both a useful way to think about identity

construction for today’s jazz musicians—and not just those from Israel—and an

acknowledgement of the transformative power of a longing for a more inclusive, pluralistic and

cosmopolitan world. Philosopher Ruth Levitas characterizes such utopic yearning as the desire

to see “a better way of living…the description of a different kind of society that makes possible

that alternative way of life” (1993:256).

This proposal resonates with what communications scholar Josh Kun offers in the

concept of audiotopias as “the space within and produced by a musical element that offers the

listener and/or musician new maps for re-imagining the present social world” (2005:22-23). He

argues that, first, musical pieces are “almost-places of cultural encounter”. Second, he notes

that, though music may be immaterial, it nevertheless exists “somewhere”. That “somewhere”

is the place where the musician and listener may envision a different social reality. Though this

“almost-place” may be unutterable,11 it has the power to transform and change those that

experience it (2005:2-3).

The multi-local musician is local in a diverse set of musical traditions, spanning vast

geography and temporality, some of which may be conflicting musically, politically, and/or

discursively. Through their practices, these musicians make music that provides a space for

themselves and for their listeners to imagine and experience multiple localities and cultural

affinities (past, present, and future). This “contact zone”, as Kun puts it, is not a space that

erases contradictions or dissonance, but rather a place where “disparate identity-formations,

cultures, and geographies historically kept and mapped separately are allowed to interact with 11 Levitas in Kun 2005:2-3

16

each other as well as enter into relationships whose consequences for cultural identification are

never predetermined” (2005:23). This audiotopia is not only a “map of the future” (2005:23),

but also a transformative process of living and creating in the present that affects the lives of

musicians and listeners alike.

The music-making activities and lives of the Israeli jazz musicians who stand at the

center of this dissertation demonstrate a multi-local existence both “real” and “audiotopic”. The

vast majority of them grew up in Israel to parents or grandparents who immigrated from

elsewhere but have lived the majority (or at least a substantial portion) of their adult life in the

United States or Europe. Their multi-locality started as soon as they were born. For example,

bassist Omer Avital father’s side of the family comes from Morocco and his mother’s side from

Yemen; bassist Gilad Abro has one side from South African Jewry (Ashkenazy) and the other

from Iraq. Similarly multi-local examples are numerous. Whereas, several important musicians

have recently relocated back to Israel, a significant number of others have partnered with non-

Israeli spouses and declare no intention to return to Israel in the future. As internationally

touring jazz musicians, based out of New York City or other large cosmopolitan cities, they are

involved in numerous cross-cultural and transnational collaborations.

Musically, these musicians’ multi-locality also begins with their upbringing in multi-

cultural Israel, a country whose soundscape is colored by layers upon layers of transcultural

exchange. Such embedded multi-locality was further enhanced for each of them in their

adolescence as they began developing their command of African-American jazz traditions and

vocabularies. Eventually, by way of musical “Ritual” and “Relationships”, many strived to

become “locals” in American jazz traditions and styles. Similarly, many of the musicians I

interviewed have further sought to become musical “locals” in additional musical practices,

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such as Arab Classical Music, Moroccan and Algerian Andalusian music, North Indian

Classical, and various Afro-Cuban and Brazilian musical idioms.

In seeking to describe the transcultural music these artists make, it is important to

highlight the fluidity with which they, themselves, traverse a wide range of geographical and

temporal dimensions of musical style even within what can be considered the same genre.

Indeed, the very nature of their musical fusions and those that they “fuse” is highly personal

and often varies from moment to moment. Thus, my research emphasizes an understanding of

the multi-local threads of influence that form the foundation for the music these musicians

make.

PERSONAL BACKGROUND

My interest in Israeli jazz as a topic of study is no accident. Indeed, generationally, and

in terms of the broad trajectory of my upbringing, musical training and career as a jazz pianist

and composer, I belong to the third wave of Israeli jazz musicians on whom I focus this study.12

Still, my own musical journey both overlaps and diverges from them. I was born in the US to

an Israeli mother and an American Jewish father. I spent the vast majority of my childhood and

adolescence in Israel, with three separate six-month stints in the US before the age of twelve.

Hebrew was our primary language at home, but I often spoke English with my father. While

living in Israel, I maintained other links to the US as well. My grandmother’s annual visits from

the US were treasured occasions, truly the highlights of the year. “America” was the smell of

gram’s candy-filled suitcases, packets full of baseball cards, and endless card games conducted

in English. As I got older, my connection to the US – both my constructed ideal of it and those

12 Media articles about me have similarly positioned me as belonging to these waves, “Part of a wave of brilliant Israeli jazz musicians who have invigorated the US jazz scene over the past two decades, Lemish was…” (Gilbert 2012).

18

that were a matter of family ties—was a comforting presence, for instance when aspects of

Israeli life (particularly politics and the constant fear of terrorism and war) were hard to bear.

Conversely, though I have lived in North America for over fifteen years now, my daily

morning routine still includes reading the news in Hebrew from my online subscription to the

Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz. Moreover, very little if anything in North-American culture can stir

in me the unfettered emotion that a classic Israeli song or touching novel in Hebrew can. This

sense of in-between-ness, the feeling that I neither fully belonged in either US or Israeli culture

even though I identified with both, was, I think, cemented during a one-year period, the first

half of which was spent in Philadelphia followed by a return to Israel at age eleven. I used to

joke that home was in an airplane somewhere above the Atlantic Ocean, but I also cultivated a

fascination with cultures around the globe, a rejection of nationalism and cultural chauvinism

(even before I knew what those words meant) and a strong sense of empathy.

Interestingly enough, my own musical life is marked by a similar in between-ness. I

think of myself as a performer-composer-scholar. I started composing music not long after

starting to play and I have been thinking and writing about music and music making almost

equally as long. I cannot simply define myself as one or the other; for me they are not

separable, but rather fully interconnected aspects of my musical being. In navigating my way

through the university system, the challenge of traversing through what seems like artificial

separations of musical life has not always been easy. Likewise, the music I make and my

musical interests cannot easily be categorized into one specific genre. My music lives in-

between jazz, Western art music, free improvisation, Israeli popular song, and a whole

assortment of other influences. Perhaps a bit like my national and cultural identity, musically, I

have never sought to become fully identified with any one specific tradition (though I have

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studied several traditions in great depth) but rather to invest fully in expressing an integration

of the many different aspects of my musical identity. In that regard, I have been fortunate from

a young age to have parents, mentors and teachers who valued this type of pursuit and

encouraged it. Yet I also believe that the seeds for my interest in transcultural iterations of jazz

were planted long before I ever started playing music.

My interest in Israeli jazz specifically also predates my return to graduate school by

many years. This dissertation, in fact, was foreshadowed in 1998, when my high school

classmate Ofer Globerman and I built the first website dedicated to the topic. Called IJO-Israeli

Jazz Online, (Lemish and Globerman 1998) the site presented an overview of Israeli jazz

musicians, recordings, venues and educational institutions. It even included a detailed

description and our own reviews of the 1998 Red Sea Jazz Festival. It was a one-time project

and we didn’t keep the site up-to-date following its creation. Before stumbling across it as part

of my dissertation research I had forgotten about its existence for at least a decade.

None of this is especially distinct from the experiences of third wave Israeli jazz

musicians. Like many of them, I also witnessed and was inspired first hand by the debut

appearances in Israel of several first wave Israeli jazz musicians who worked as sidemen for

jazz luminaries such as Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock. I devoured newspaper reports in the

late 1990s about the early successes in NYC of musicians such as Omer Avital, Avi Lebovich

and Amos Hoffman. Much like most of my interlocutors, I also received my early jazz

education by taking private lessons from one of the leading jazz educators in Israel and by

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matriculating from a jazz program concentration at one of the few elite arts high schools

situated around Tel Aviv.13

Yet, after high school my path diverged rather dramatically from my contemporaries

and the typical path taken by most Israeli jazz musicians. Instead of moving to NYC or Boston

to further my studies or attempt to “make it” in the mecca of jazz, I moved out west to a small

town in Sonoma county, Northern California, where I lived with my paternal grandmother.

Situated about an hour north of San Francisco, I advanced my own studies and career by

studying privately with pianist, composer and theorist W.A. Mathieu, enrolling as a jazz

performance music major at Sonoma State University and simultaneously establishing myself

as a pianist/composer in the San Francisco Bay Area jazz scene. In the years that followed my

move to California, I lost touch with most of my high school classmates, and had no contact

with the jazz scenes in Israel or NYC. For example, out of the forty-four musicians, industry

professionals, educators and scholars I interviewed during my fieldwork for this project, I had

only personally met or interacted with a handful previously. Those were all individuals I had

known as a teenager while still living in Israel but had not been in touch with for years. In those

few extraordinary instances, our interview served as a quite enjoyable reunion after fifteen

years.

Still, my own musical journey contained within it many of the same experiences and

characteristics that I discovered were typical for the Israeli jazz musicians I interviewed. For

example, in the decade leading up to starting this study, I began exploring the blending of

“Israeli” and “Jewish” influences and sources in my own music. In 2005, approximately three

years after I left Israel, likely as part of my attempt to process the emotions associated with my

13 Between the ages of 14-18 I studied with Opher Brayer, one of the founders of the Thelma Yellin High School for the Arts jazz program, and a teacher for many well-known Israeli jazz artists, including Eli Degibri, Anat Fort, Yaron Herman, Shai Maestro, Anat Fort and numerous others.

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departure and nostalgia for my childhood home, I developed an interest in Israeli music, film,

literature and poetry. Visits to Israel would be marked by extensive shopping sprees for CDs

and books unavailable anywhere else. Later, from the distance of the US, and like so many

other ex-pat Israelis I have known, I too discovered the appeal of songs that in my youth I

dismissed as hokey. My growing interest in “world music” also led me to purchase several

collections of books and CDs documenting archival recordings of liturgical and folk traditions

of various Jewish congregations from across Europe, the Middle-East and Central Asia.14

I started to notice these various influences in my original compositions around 2007 and

they seemed to sprout in my music organically.15 Indeed, in the years leading up to this

dissertation project, my own journey of listening, studying and eventually incorporating

musical influences derived from traditions associated with various Jewish communities and

Israeli popular music in my own original compositions and arrangements was never a

deliberate or entirely conscious effort. Furthermore, its appearance was sporadic, and much of

my music making bore no distinct sonic marker of such influences. Now, following four years

of intense research, my creative activities have been influenced even more by the rich musical

traditions emerging out of Israel, the Middle-East and various Jewish communities across the

world. I have also begun to broach a vast and abundant wealth of music by Israeli jazz artists

14 These collections were published by the Jewish Music Research Center at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. 15 Remarkably, I was contacted around this time by a researcher conducting genealogical research on the “Lemish” musician tree. He revealed a world unknown in our family, namely that my own paternal lineage connects to one of the three powerful Jewish Romanian klezmer family dynasties (known as Kapelyes). Indeed, it turns out that the Lemish clan from Iasi, Romania was very influential across the entire Black Sea region for several centuries leading up to WWII. And, starting in the late nineteenth century, when several family members immigrated to the US, in the development of klezmer musical culture and Yiddish theater in the Philadelphia area. Indeed, learning that being a professional musician was the “Lemish” trade for centuries in Europe as well as in the United States sparked even greater interest in connecting with these ancestral and musical roots (Strom 2002; Netsky 2015).

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who, owing to their countless musical influences, should be understood as multi-local

musicians.

METHODOLOGY

Though internationally active Israeli jazz musicians live in many sites across North

America, Europe and Israel, the vast majority reside in NYC or in one of several Israeli urban

centers. In order to adequately capture the multi-local and dynamic nature of these musicians’

work, this dissertation should be read as a “multi-sited ethnography” (Marcus 1995; Hannerz

2003; Hemmasi 2010). My fieldwork was based primarily in NYC and multiple locations

across Israel. In keeping with the idea of multi-localism, several important musicians were on

tour during my research period and a few live outside of the NYC-Israel circuit. I interviewed

these players telematically using Skype and I visited others in cities such as Columbia, South

Carolina. In all, I conducted forty-four interviews with musicians, educators, journalists,

producers and scholars.

As a matter of the schedules of the musicians in the study and my own performance

career, fieldwork was done over the course of multiple short trips. I spent ten days in NYC in

December 2014 conducting interviews and attending concerts of Israeli jazz musicians. Later

that month, I flew to Columbia, South Carolina to interview and spend time with

guitarist/oudist Amos Hoffman who had recently relocated there. My field research continued

in May and June of 2015 when I returned to NYC for three more weeks. Subsequently I spent

six weeks in July and August of 2015 in Israel, primarily in Tel Aviv and its surrounding

towns. In spring and summer of 2017 I conducted several more interviews with musicians and

industry professionals in NYC, Israel and Germany via Skype.

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My time in NYC and Israel allowed me to map the field of Israeli Jazz, including the

interconnected networks of musicians, educators, scholars, journalists, foundation

representatives, and promoters. In addition to conducting extensive interviews with Israeli jazz

musicians, I spoke at length with scholars as well as leading educators, many of whom are

associated with high school and post-secondary jazz programs in Israel. In order to expand my

understanding of the full context of the Israeli jazz “music world” (Becker 1982), I interviewed

concert and festival directors and producers as well as leading critics and journalists (both print

and media).

To complement these interviews, I combed the archives of Israeli newspapers and

American jazz magazines, such as Downbeat and JazzTimes. I also utilized numerous online

articles interviews from additional media outlets and artist websites.

Finally, my research is grounded in extensive listening and analysis of sound recordings

and performance videos. My listening focused not only on the albums released by my

interlocutors but also recordings of the myriad of musical influences that have shaped their own

music making. In addition to analysis and transcription of recorded media, I also analyzed

charts and lead sheets (provided by the artists themselves whenever possible).

DISSERTATION OUTLINE

Chapter Two situates this case study of Israeli jazz within the broader field of jazz

scholarship. It identifies new developments since the emergence of the “New Jazz Studies”

while highlighting the ongoing lacuna of in-depth studies of jazz practices outside of the US.

The chapter thus points toward an emerging field that focuses on transcultural and transnational

iterations of jazz, what I call the field of “Global Jazz Studies”.

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Chapter Three provides an in-depth overview of the Israeli jazz phenomenon and the

key figures who stand at its center. Particular attention is paid to the conditions that enabled the

growth of the generation of Israeli jazz musicians that established itself internationally since the

1990s. The chapter traces the historical development of jazz in Israel, the importance of its

institutionalization in the late 1980s and the powerful influence of jazz educators who began

teaching at arts high schools and post-secondary programs in the late 1980s and continue to

teach today. Further analyses from explorations of the Israeli jazz phenomenon and its broader

social context present the importance of what I call the “Israel-NYC” axis and interconnected

networks of support and influence that started to develop in the early 1990s with the first wave

of Israeli jazz pioneers.

Chapters Four and Five present analyses of the repertoires of music created and

performed by Israeli jazz artists. Chapter Four focuses on original compositions, detailing and

analyzing the many diverse musical influences, both local and global, that they draw upon to

create their own particular transcultural jazz style. In showing the ways in which each

individual creates music, drawn from their own particular blend of specific influences, I

problematize essentialist conceptualizations of Israeli jazz and instead argue for understanding

it as multiple, fluid, and changing. The chapter concludes with a discussion of multi-local

musicianship, using the music making activities of guitarist/oudist Amos Hoffman as a case

study.

Finally, shifting from original compositions to arrangements, Chapter Five

demonstrates the widespread practice of Israeli jazz musicians’ incorporation of musical and

thematic material from a diverse array of “Israeli” and “Jewish” sources. The chapter

contextualizes this practice within the broader phenomenon of jazz indigenization worldwide

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and identifies the repertoire reservoirs utilized. It also investigates the differences and

commonalities between these arrangements and the role that “standards” derived from the

Great American Songbook have played traditionally in the US. Finally, utilizing detailed

musical analysis, I demonstrate the ways in which these arrangements provide further evidence

for Israeli jazz as a transcultural music making jazz practice.

While this is the first comprehensive study of the contributions of Israeli musicians in

the international jazz scene, it is also intended to engage with the global phenomenon of

transcultural jazz practice more broadly. By considering the performers discussed in the study

as multi-local musicians, I add additional perspectives to an ongoing debate that wrestles with

the place of “America” in jazz practice and ascriptions of jazz authenticity. Indeed, as I discuss

in the next chapter, an emergent body of literature that I refer to as Global Jazz Studies has

challenged what might be thought of as an American exceptionalist view of jazz, for instance,

that “real jazz” must be rooted in the United States geographically, sonically, or both. Yet this

de-essentializing project has, at times, relied on an outlook that emphasizes nationalism in the

localization of jazz in non-American nation-states. This approach has been especially prevalant

among European scholars working on European jazz scenes. In contrast, my study emphasizes

how, on one hand Israeli jazz musicians draw on and, indeed, are local in multiple music

cultures while, on the other hand, they place tremendous importance on the notion of jazz as

firmly rooted in a decidedly African-American tradition. My intervention invites further

explorations of the multi-local music making practices of jazz musicians worldwide. Thus, as a

case study, this project provides insight into the nature, role and politics of transcultural music

making in contemporary jazz practice broadly. However, it is also an ethnography of a

26

particular group of Israeli musicians that aims to enahnce knowledge of modern Israeli society,

culture, and jazz sounds, discourses and practices.

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CHAPTER TWO

VOICING JAZZ NARRATIVES: INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE VOICES OF JAZZ IN GLOBAL CONTEXT

“Play your own voice” is one of those cliché phrases frequently repeated by jazz

educators during lessons and spoken about in almost mystical terms by jazz musicians, from

unknowns to those that are included in nearly every historical account of the music. What may

seem to be a personal journey towards musical self-actualization can actually be interpreted as

highly rich in political and cultural meaning. “Play your own voice” means not only

discovering and expressing your own voice, but also being heard, being acknowledged for your

individual expression, for your part in a collective expression and everything these contain.

Thus, as musicians have continually stretched or contracted the stylistic boundaries of jazz

through their music and words, they have also actively contributed to and been a part of

continually shifting narratives of jazz’s history and stylistic boundaries.

Many consider this directive to “play your own voice” to be one of the most salient

characteristics of jazz, and it is also this call of duty that has contributed greatly to its rapidly

evolving nature: “one of jazz’s main tenets is the responsibility it confers on each performer to

develop a personal sound…to contribute uniquely to a dialogic whole” (Barzel 2012:182). The

room and demand for individual expression has been, since the 1960s, a main impetus for

musicians the world over to express who they were by constantly re-defining the music,

incorporating various new elements and at times challenging some of its previously held

musical features to the core. One can identify at least three important stylistic directions of

musical exploration emerging since the 1960s that have fundamentally been left out of the

standard narrative of jazz history and “mainstream” jazz world: transcultural jazz practices, free

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jazz and jazz-rock fusion. This chapter will focus primarily on the first of these categories, the

emergence of various manifestations of transcultural jazz and the study thereof, what I call

Global Jazz Studies.

In the past decade, a growing body of predominantly (but not exclusively) European

scholars have challenged the assumptions of American exceptionalism that seem to lie at the

heart of most American jazz discourse. Indeed, as noted above, the expectation for individual

expression became a real catalyst for musicians the world over to change the stylistic nature of

the music they were making. Thus, musicians living outside the United States decided to

interpret the call for individual self-expression as a mandate for rejecting imitation and

exploring new modes of expression that more authentically represented their own cultural

background and influences. Since these musicians were not American, expressing “their own

voice” meant expressing something different than established African-American jazz traditions.

As global jazz voices sought expression within jazz, we have witnessed the emergence of an

assortment of transcultural “jazz dialects” (Nicholson 2005). This dissertation, which focuses

on the transcultural “Israeli Jazz”, fits within this growing field of inquiry, which has

challenged some of the key epistemological limitations that have hindered a more cosmopolitan

understanding of jazz practice.

Before we focus on these emerging jazz styles and associated discourses, the next few

pages will present a brief survey of the “standard” American jazz narrative and the critiques

directed towards it by scholars belonging to the “New Jazz Studies”.

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STANDARD VOICINGS

In detailing the emergence of the dominant narrative of jazz history, American scholar

Taylor E. Atkins (2003) argues that historians and critics sought to establish the legitimacy of

jazz as “serious art” by creating a canon of jazz greats and important works. This view remains

prevalent well-into the twenty-first century in spite of a growing number of scholars active

since the early 1990s who have engaged with the political, social and cultural dimensions of

jazz in increasingly nuanced and interdisciplinary ways (what is generally referred to as the

“New Jazz Studies”).16 The older and now much critiqued “great man/serious art/evolutionary

line” narrative was popularized and further entrenched through the Ken Burns’ PBS series,

Jazz, which was subsequently used as a teaching resource for jazz history courses across North

America. As noted by Atkins, “The resulting narratives detailed a natural stylistic evolution,

guided by a select handful of geniuses who captivated the world with the sounds they

produced” (2003:xii).

Much attention, perhaps rightfully so, is afforded to Wynton Marsalis’s role as

torchbearer for the “traditionalist” construction of jazz history. Still, as historian Eric Porter

(2002) points out, Marsalis’s canonization efforts should be viewed as a continuation of a

century long effort to define jazz as “America’s Classical music”.

From the genre’s inception to the present, jazz musicians have continually had to

negotiate the tension of the music’s associations with popular music and Western art music.

Their positions on this matter have been complicated by the multilayered intersection with

issues such as race, commercialism, politics and aesthetics. Porter’s extensive survey in What Is

This Thing Called Jazz? (2002) reveals a great diversity of contrasting personal positions. For

16 See DeVeaux 1991; Monson 1996; Tucker 2000; Porter 2002; Ake 2002, 2012.

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example, Duke Ellington embraced popular music whereas Louis Armstrong’s sought to

differentiate his more sophisticated “Hot” music from the commercial “Sweet” music.

In the 1910s and 1920s, the emergence of jazz challenged Victorian era social mores

and perceptions of “highbrow” and “lowbrow” culture (Levine 1988 Cited in Porter 2002:8-9).

Porter underscores the way jazz challenged European “highbrow” distinctions between

composer/performer and performer/audience. Still, already at that juncture, some musicians and

intellectuals sought to distinguish jazz from popular music, aiming to elevate its place in

society by bringing it to the concert hall. Indeed, jazz scholar Scott DeVeaux argues that efforts

to “protect” jazz (whether seen as folk music or art music) from popular music and the

“dangers” of commercialism have been recurring and pervasive throughout its history

(1991:529).

Thus, it seems jazz identity has often been constructed in terms of what it is not rather

than what it is. For example, bebop artists positioned themselves to revolt against the

commercialism of swing and big band, while avant-garde artists railed against an assortment of

“confining” mainstream styles. When Wynton Marsalis and Stanley Crouch emerged as

spokespersons for the “neoclassicist” jazz movement, they, and many others who subscribed to

this understanding of jazz, targeted fusion artists for “selling out”. Yet, as DeVeaux (1991:530)

points out, this is not without some irony since, in his view Marsalis, and likely many other

neoclassicist musicians have cultivated a non-commerical, “aura of artistic purity” that actually

enhances their commercial appeal.

Jazz neoclassicists have been especially critical of popular culture, which in their view

fails to uphold high cultural standards. Porter (2002) asserts that this belief informs Marsalis’s

conviction that the role of the jazz artist is not only to make music that is artistically superb and

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broadly appealing, but also to educate and uplift the masses. From such a vision, it is

understandable that he and many other like minded musicians and scholars have sought to

codify, preserve and uphold their particular notion of The Jazz Tradition. Yet, as DeVeaux

notes, this project and the attitude that underpins it, has engendered the formation of a jazz

canon that excludes many aspects of the music’s history and arguably has limited its appeal and

development. Historically, this means that contributions of, for instance, Europeans or Asians,

and women have been largely unattended to by jazz scholars. In the present and recent past, this

has meant that various fusions of jazz that do not fit closely with a “swing and blues” based

model (Nicholson 2005) struggle for legitimacy.

Debates over jazz authenticity, further, are not new. Rather, rancorous debates about the

music’s definition characterized much of the twentieth century: “Hot” jazz vs. Swing, the

“moldy figs” New Orleans revivalists vs. the bebop progressives, the hard boppers vs. free

jazzers. As DeVeaux argues, scholars and critics repeatedly struck compromises choosing to

emphasize commonalities over divisions, using the term “jazz” to encompass an ever-growing

range of evolving styles. A key result is that “[jazz’s] definition [is] now more than ever

dependent on ideas of continuous evolution and growth” (DeVeaux 1991:539).

In his essay, DeVeaux demonstrated how a narrative that viewed jazz as an “organic

entity” that periodically regenerated itself while maintaining forward momentum came to

dominate the historical view of the music. This narrative of progressive continuity served as a

powerful unifying force that gave meaning to otherwise diverse styles under the broad umbrella

of jazz:

The essence of jazz, in other words, lies not in any one style, or any one cultural or historical context, but in that which links all these things together into a seamless continuum. Jazz is what it is because it is a culmination of all that has come before. Without the sense of depth that only a narrative can

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provide, jazz would be literally rootless, indistinguishable from a variety of other “popular” genres that combine virtuosity and craftsmanship with dance rhythms. Its claim to being not only distinct, but elevated above other indigenous forms (“America’s classical music”), is in large part dependent on the idea of an evolutionary progression reaching back to the beginning of the century. (DeVeaux 1991:530)

This view of “jazz organicism” seems to be widely embraced. Whereas traditionalists accept

this basic tenant of stylistic evolution but only until the 1960s, progressives believe that such

change has never stopped.

In reifying a linear history of evolving styles (from New Orleans, to Swing, to Bebop, to

Cool Jazz, to Hard Bop, etc) and deifying its heroes, the “mainstream” world of jazz has been

engaging rather self-consciously with “tradition”. Looking backward, advocates of this view

have established conventions that freeze practices particular to specific styles and pieces while

emulating them in present day performances. Pieces from the great American songbook

(“standards”) coupled with compositions by jazz legends such as Monk, Ellington, Mingus and

Coltrane (“jazz standards”) form a fixed, though large, repertoire of pieces. Recordings of

spontaneous performances have been elevated to “works” status, studied meticulously and

subsequently replicated by students and professionals alike.

In such an environment, a mastery of convention and the ability to imitate is viewed as

a prerequisite to innovation. Before you can “play your own thing” you are expected to show

that you can play what Prez, Bird, Miles and Trane played.

The key is to sound like somebody else, to take what is already there and sound like an extension of that. It’s not to not sound like that. Music has a tradition that you have to understand before you can move to the next step. (Marsalis quoted in Porter 2002:292)

Thus, what had previously been an organic process of apprenticeship, collaboration, variation

and innovation passed generationally (often on the band stand) has been transformed into a

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codified set of historically “accurate” performance practices that are often taught institutionally

and practiced widely.

COMPLEX VOICINGS: THE “NEW JAZZ STUDIES”

In the 1990s a range of scholars coming from diverse fields such as history,

ethnomusicology, American studies, ethnic studies and literary studies began to challenge the

tidy canonization of jazz history. They focused on the music’s development in its broader

social context while highlighting the voices of individuals, movements and groups of

marginalized people whose “own voices” had not been heard. This scholarly movement has

come to be recognized as the “New Jazz Studies”.

Many scholars point to Scott DeVeaux’s already referenced “Constructing the Jazz

Tradition” as an important catalyst for this concentrated and continuous reevaluation of jazz

narratives and identities. Viewed somewhat more broadly, in the early 1990s jazz scholars

finally caught up with already well established advances in Black Studies, Women and

Gender’s Studies, Literary theory and thus began to critically investigate jazz in a far more

interdisciplinary framework (Tucker 2012).

Indeed, scholars such as Eric Porter, Sherrie Tucker, Ingrid Monson and David Ake

have made important contributions to our growing understandings of jazz discourse. They have

introduced the voices of African-American musicians and intellectuals while urging a

consideration of these in a broader social context (Porter 2002); introduced gender into jazz

studies (Tucker 2000); explored the margins of the jazz canon while elucidating the complexity

of genre formation (Ake 2002, 2012) and shed light on the interactive dimensions in jazz

improvisation (Berliner 1994; Monson 1996).

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Working from an understanding that canon formation operates as “a technology of

exclusion, hierarchy, and power” (Tucker 2012:266) these scholars, individually and

collectively, have poked holes at the tidy master-narrative of jazz history. Such efforts have

vastly enriched our understandings of jazz as a musical and cultural expression, along with the

complex debates that surround it.

GLOBAL VOICINGS: JAZZ DIALECTS AND THE EMERGENCE OF GLOBAL JAZZ STUDIES

Whereas the growing number of scholars advancing the New Jazz Studies paradigm

(e.g., Ake; DeVeaux; Monson; Porter; Tucker) have challenged what they view as a linear,

often romanticized account of the music’s history, there remains a puzzling neglect of jazz

practices in the international sphere. British jazz scholar Tony Whyton (2012:367) observes

that “ironically, in dispelling several mythologies about jazz, the New Jazz Studies has

arguably failed to engage with the global spread of jazz and the intercultural exchanges that

have occurred in the music since its inception”. Over the last decade this lack of critical

attention to “global jazz” is gradually being addressed by scholars primarily outside of the US,

who are developing what I refer to as Global Jazz Studies.

Indeed, since the early 2000’s several books and articles focused on jazz beyond

America’s shores have been published. These include Jazz Planet (Ed. Atkins, 2003), Is Jazz

Dead? Or Has It Simply Moved to a New Address (Nicholson, 2005) Eurojazzland (Ed.

Cerichari et all 2012) to name but a few.17 Additionally, several multi-national and

interdisciplinary research initiatives have been set up in Europe, including Rhythm Changes:

Jazz Cultures and European Identities, along with new academic journals such as the European

17 Additional important books on the subject include: Heffley 2005; McKay 2005; Nicholson 2014; Perchard 2015; Bohlman & Plastino 2016;

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Jazz Research Journal and Routledge’s Transnational Studies in Jazz book publishing line

edited by British scholars Tony Whyton and Nicholas Gebhardt.

Since all histories are constructed out of subjective choices, authors’ assumptions are

often revealed by their omissions (Jost 2012). As Sherrie Tucker indicates, focusing on the

work of musicians that have been neglected is a very worthy pursuit in and of itself, but another

still, involves ascertaining the causes for such neglect.

In his introduction to Jazz Planet, American jazz historian Taylor Atkins takes aim at

the premise of American exceptionalism that seems to lie at the heart of much jazz discourse. It

is often argued that jazz possesses intrinsic characteristics that capture the essence of American

life and the spirit of its people and that its birth could have only happened in the United States.

Rejecting such a view, Atkins proposes viewing “frontier expansion, settler colonialism,

slavery, immigration, industrialization, and cultural hybridization as transnational processes”

(2003:xiii), with analogies possible in Australia, Brazil, Russia and beyond. Jazz, Atkins

claims, should be viewed from the outset as both national and postnational music.

Furthermore, Atkins makes a general case for jazz as an “agent of globalization”. He

recounts the story of jazz’s global travels outside the US, briefly documenting its spread (and

complex reception) after World War I as a result of the confluence of new technology and

growing American influence in the world. Indeed, it would seem naïve to analyze jazz’s ascent

in the global sphere in isolation from the circumstances of growing economic and cultural

American hegemony in the twentieth century. Yet, perhaps not unlike other cultural and

political discourse in the United States (democracy or sports for example) a decidedly insulated

approach persists:

The evolution of jazz from local subaltern expression to cosmopolitan art form has typically been explained as purely a result of the music’s intrinsic

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charm, and displayed as evidence in a triumphal narrative of benign American cultural achievement. Of course, many did indeed find the music appealing, liberating and refreshing…But this supposed aesthetic detachment from base politics has too often obscured the relationship between jazz’s ubiquity, colonialism, nationalist politics, and American military, economic, and cultural hegemony. (Atkins 2003:xix)

Atkins also suggests that the music itself did not remain unchanged. Every locale

adapted jazz to their particular musical and cultural context. By the 1930s and 1940s efforts

were already underway to nationalize or indigenize jazz all over the world, using indigenous

musical material and repertoire. Ironically these nationalizations were sometimes motivated by

a desire to mask its (African) American origins. These efforts preceded the oft-cited cross-

cultural fusions credited to American musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane and

Randy Weston (Atkins 2003:xvi).

Atkins provides particularly interesting insight into the complex role that jazz played as

America’s “secret sonic weapon” during the Cold War. The US promoted jazz overseas

sending leading black musicians as cultural ambassadors representing the “voice of freedom”

aiming to demonstrate racial tolerance. There is evidence to suggest that this was effective as

some “eighty million people put their lives on hold for two hours every night to listen to Willis

Conover’s jazz program Music U.S.A. on Voice of America” (2003:xviii).

However, jazz as cultural propaganda tool was full of paradox and yielded some

unintended consequences. Back home in the US these same musicians were discriminated

against and oppressed. Leading American jazz artists often expressed solidarity with anti-

imperial, anti-colonial sentiments. Local cultures embraced jazz, which was birthed by

oppressed people, as a symbol of “third world” solidarity and as rejection of American colonial

aspirations. Musically, this often meant artists being interested in incorporating indigenous

aesthetic principals, “The result was a considerable expansion of jazz’s sonic palette and

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expressive potential, and a multilateral, truly global exchange of musical ideas, inspiration and

influence” (Atkins 2003:xviii-xix).

The nationally oriented jazz style emerging in Japan in the 1960s serves as a useful

example of the complex cultural and musical processes that were directly tied to jazz’s travels

worldwide. In Blue Nippon: Authenticating Jazz in Japan (2001), Atkins proposes viewing the

move to create a national style as a part of a larger movement in the arts and society of Japan in

general in the 1960s motivated partly out of anti-American, anti-imperial sentiment.

As the subtitle for his volume suggests, the issue of authenticity is central to

understanding the processes that took place. Japanese jazz musicians generally pursued three

strategies of authentication: 1) imitating “American Jazz” 2) making it in a “legitimate” scene

such as the US or interwar Shanghai 3) indigenzing or nationalizing the music by way of

incorporating elements from local traditional music.

The third strategy, “indigenization,” which was employed actively by some Japanese

musicians starting in the 1960s, is particularly relevant to my discussion below of emerging

transcultural jazz dialects and most especially to this dissertation’s focus on music created by

Israeli jazz musicians. In an effort to create “Japanese Jazz”, musicians began incorporating

traditional melodies and instruments from Japanese folk music. Additionally, artists developed

a discourse about use of “space” and other characteristics that were imagined as uniquely

Japanese. I will return to this strategy in greater detail below.

Responding to issues of authenticity and exclusion arising from the US, some Japanese

artists sought to highlight an ethnic bond with African-Americans that would ordain legitimacy

to their musical efforts. They aligned themselves with Black Nationalist causes both politically

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and in the arts. This inspired their view of the “yellow negro” arguing for shared commonalities

between Japanese and African-Americans (Atkins 2001).

A different response to the same set of concerns involved Japanese musicians

constructing exclusionary fences around their own musical practice. These artists often made

the claim that Japanese Jazz can only be authentically played by Japanese. In creating a musical

expression “which foreigners cannot imitate” (Atkins 2001:12) these musicians created a space

for themselves (both artistically and commercially) in Japan and within the broader

international jazz community.

According to Japanese writer Yui Shoichi “jazz, rather than sweeping away the

diversity of global cultures, provides a mechanism for rediscovering indigenous traditions” (in

Atkins 2003:xix). Indeed, Japan was not alone in this process. Noted British jazz journalist

Stuart Nicholson analogizes jazz to the English language, as both spread globally by “the

agents of globalization” (2005:171) and both serve as a lingua franca for many “non-native”

speakers: “In the world at large, English and jazz are both viewed as tools for expression, not as

something that is “owned” by the Americans or the British” (2005:173). As a result, musicians

in various places around the world are asserting their own cultural identity within the global

jazz world through the development of local jazz dialects (ibid).

Following this line of thought, Nicholson offers two views on the use of these

languages that stand in tension with one another. A prescriptivist view is advocated by those

who feel themselves to be gatekeepers of a particular version of history or interested in

maintaining economic and political power. From this perspective, jazz (or English for that

matter) should be practiced following certain rules and guidelines. The descriptivist view

perceives the practice of these languages as more malleable. Origins aside, local communities

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adopt these languages, feeling no particular obligation to specific rules and incorporating them

into their own cultural repertoire (Nicholson 2005).

As they relate to the meanings of jazz and especially its historiography, the complex

processes of globalization lead to seemingly paradoxical musical results. In writing about

transculturation in the context of popular music, Nicholson notes that pioneering global music

industry scholars Roger Wallis and Krister Malm (1984) argue that both musical

homogenization and increased musical diversity are occuring simultaneously (Nicholson

2005:167). Building on Wallis and Malm as well as the work of Roland Robertson, Nicholson

proposes the distinction between two co-existing phenomena: “globalization” and

“glocalization”. For Nicholson, “globalized” jazz, whether performed in Amsterdam, Rome,

Sydney or Tokyo, involves musicians emulating and imitating established stylistic conventions.

This homogenization of jazz practice lines up with conceptualizations of globalization as

“cultural imperialism” as discussed in the writing of scholars such as Shuker and Ritzer (cf.

Nicholson 2005:165-66). In contrast, “glocalized” jazz occurs when “local” communities

process and transform these exported “global” cultural products into new, “glocal” variants.

This view of local/global synthesis arises out of the growing critique of the “center-periphery”

model of globalization which Nicholason sees as lacking in nuance (Nicholson 2005:166-67).

It is important to note that Nicholson is not suggesting that what he calls new jazz

dialects supplant the more traditional styles and practices. Rather, he assers that multi-

dialecticism in jazz is about “musicians around the world working within the music to find

innovative and original ways for it to continue to evolve and broaden the music’s expressive

resources in the twenty-first century in ways that are relevant to them and their audiences”

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(2005:193). This strikes me as an inclusive, pluralistic and positive vision for the genre’s

future, and one that is evident in the practices of Israeli jazz musicians.

As referenced already, Jazz Planet, was a first of its kind collection of essays edited by

Taylor Atkins focused on the story of jazz globally. Focusing on the way in which local

cultures outside of the United States absorb and interact with jazz practices, the essays in this

volume range in topic from individual musicians, to particular geographical contexts, to

specific temporal junctures in the twentieth century. Jazz Planet made an important early

contribution to the emerging field of Global Jazz Studies, challenging traditional historical

narratives of jazz, and highlighting untold histories of jazz in Europe, Australia, Latin America,

Asia and Africa.

For example, Raul Fernandez (2003) traces the history of Cuban musicians and their

contribution to the development of jazz and Latin jazz. His main argument is that from the

outset Cuba played an important role in the birth of the new genre. The back and forth

exchange between Cuba and New Orleans in the early days meant that “Latin” influence was

already in play with musicians such as Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet and

others. Similarly, jazz was present and active in Cuba from the early part of the twentieth

century and thus influenced the development of Cuban popular styles. In subsequent decades,

Cuban musicians coming to the US and US musicians bringing jazz to Cuba, as well as

collaborations between these musicians was paramount in creating the “Latin Jazz” genre.

Acacio Tadeu de Camargo Piedade (2003) contextualizes the emergence of “Brazilian

Jazz” within the history música popular brasileira (Brazilian popular music), positioning it as a

product of an ongoing ambivalent interaction between Brazilian national styles and influences

from North American Jazz. Piedade describes this as “friction of musicalities”. He argues that

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just as “ US jazz” has influenced “Brazilian jazz”, the same is true in reverse and that this

process is a dynamic, interconnected, on going process of change and exchange, often very

much cyclical or back and forth several times.

In her essay about jazz in Zimbabwe, Linda Williams (2003) argues that Zimbabwean

jazz artists have blended American jazz elements with their own musical traditions to create a

“distinctive style of music, transferring American idioms into an African expression” (96). To

substantiate her claim, Williams presents a discussion of the type of competences and values

that are favored in musical training and music making in the jazz scene of Zimbabwe.

One competence that is highly valued in Zimbabwe is the ability to play by ear,

“indispensable to the creative process in Zimbabwean music” (Williams 2003: 83). Williams

articulates the different views on the balance between “playing by ear” and theoretical training.

A second competence, developing a unique sound is identified as parallel with American jazz

values. A third important competence involves a performers’ rhythmic ability, and in particular

the skill to recognize and effectively utilize intricate rhythmic patterns. Furthermore,

Zimbabwean musicians value the way in which rhythm informs melody. According to the

musicians she interviewed the Triple-Rhythmic Effect (a kind of poly-rhythmic 12/8

simultaneity) is the most distinguishing feature of Zimbabwean jazz.

The recently published volume Jazz Worlds/World Jazz (2016) edited by

ethnomusicologists Philip V. Bohlman and Goffredo Plastino includes chapters focusing on

jazz from diverse regions, countries and diasporas such as Scandinavia, the Balkans,

Azerbaijan, Iran, Portugal, Ethiopia, South Africa, Italy, India, and the Armenian diaspora. All

these examples point to the various ways in which individuals belonging to diverse cultures

around the world have worked with the global American jazz tradition, adapting, blending and

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often transforming the music to create new transcultural jazz dialects. These efforts emerge out

of the desire of musicians around the world to express “their own voice” individually and

collectively.

To put this process in historical perspective it would be useful to reflect on Eric Porter’s

account of early jazz composer/arranger/bandleader James Reese Europe who advocated the

legitimacy of African-American artistic expression in an environment of continued

marginalization. In a 1919 interview Reese Europe is quoted as saying that he is, “more firmly

convinced than ever that negroes should write negro music. We have our own racial feelings

and if we try to copy whites we will make bad copies” (in Porter, 2002:20). Notable here is that

the practices in subsequent decades of many jazz musicians worldwide operating within

American jazz hegemony, seem to be rooted in an imperative similar to Reese Europe’s

advocacy for the definition of a distinctly African-American artistic space within hegemonic

white American culture. Through various means, they seek to play their own voices rather than

imitate. In so doing, many create their own transcultural jazz dialects, developing musical

styles that more closely express who they see themselves to be.

German music historian Ekkehard Jost is one of the foremost scholars on European jazz

with a primary focus on the free jazz movement emerging in Europe in the middle of the

1960s.18 In his essay “The European Avant-Garde of the Later 1960s and Early 1970s: Where

Did Emancipation Lead?” (2012), Jost positions European free jazz as a response to several

developments (both musical and political) in the 1960s. Up until the 1960s European musicians

were primarily imitating styles developing in the US, and such was the case with the free jazz

of the late 1950s from the US. Unlike various styles preceding it that had clear stylistic

18 It may be worth noting, parenthetically, that several scholars writing about jazz in Europe highlight the significant role that the free jazz movement played in creating the conditions for these various transcultural subgenres to emerge across Europe.

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conventions (such as swing or bebop), free jazz was characterized by its lack of stylistic

cohesion, and by the emphasis on individuality. This left room for, in fact required, European

musicians to develop their own individual voice in the music. So, paradoxically, in this case,

out of imitation grew independence.

Additionally, the resulting musical sounds emerging out of the American free jazz scene

more closely resembled the sounds created in Europe by post WWII avant-garde composers,

and thus had immediate sonic connections to the activity and influences of many European

creative musicians. Speaking politically, the emergence of European free jazz was closely tied

the European student protests of the late 1960s and to a growing anti-American sentiment.

In his 2012 essay Jost uses the loaded word “emancipation” to describe the process of

European self-realization through Free Jazz. Their approach, Jost suggests, frees European jazz

musicians from the requirement to follow the norms and imitate American jazz. He further

situates this liberation as a protest against American imperialism. The result was a distinctive

genre. He writes, “The European players [of the 1960s] created their own means of expression

and structural patterns…Thus, toward the end of the decade, a specifically European type of

free jazz found its way to audiences” (2012:277). Musicians such as Peter Brotzmann, Han

Bennink, Evan Parker, and Derek Bailey created diverse music that ranged in style from

explosive “kaput playing”, to humorous deconstruction of jazz conventions to so called “non-

idiomatic” free improvisation that hardly referenced swing or otherwise recognizable jazz

language.

From another perspective, the complexity of racial politics in the US and jazz’s position

within it cannot be underestimated. A music that was created primarily by oppressed and

marginalized people was adopted and exported by the very dominant culture and establishment

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that oppressed them. As such, it is no surprise that a number of scholars and musicians persist

in their efforts to protect the music from appropriation and adaptation.

In “Europe and the New Jazz Studies” (2012), Tony Whyton takes aim at a host of

binaries and oversimplifications emanating from both sides of the Atlantic. In addressing

American scholars, including those belonging to the New Jazz Studies, Whyton laments what

he sees as a continual “denial of European influence” (368) in narratives of jazz history.

Whyton further argues that the continued equation of “whiteness” with “European” makes it

“impossible to move beyond very straightforward and oppositional descriptions of U.S. and

European scenes” (ibid). Indeed, in today’s twenty-first century cosmopolitan reality, it is

hardly possible to imagine the United Kingdom or countries belonging to continental Europe as

monolithically “white” nations.

While acknowledging the continued presence of institutionalized and day-to-day

racism, Whyton seeks to destabilize the “essential black subject”, drawing on the writings of

bell hooks, Paul Gilroy and Stuart Hall in an effort to allow for more fluid and diverse

formations of racial identity. For example, Whyton notes “Hall argued that in order to

transform the politics of representation and liberate ourselves from the monolithic construct of

race as a sociopolitical category, it is important to acknowledge and celebrate the existence of

new ethnicities and to understand a diversity of subject positions” (Whyton 2012:372). In

moving towards a more nuanced jazz scholarship, Whyton provocatively challenges African-

American ownership of the genre based on a fixed black subject position while simultaneously

cautioning against the pitfalls of European essentialism. Representative of an extreme position,

the debate over the place of African-Americaness in jazz continues among musicians and

scholars a like worldwide.

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Steven Feld’s account of Ghanian percussionist and composer Guy Warren (Ghanaba)

in his Jazz Cosmopolitanism in Accra (2012) lends other perspectives to this debate. Warren,

born in Ghana, moved to the US as a young man in the 1950s seeking to establish himself as a

drummer in America’s jazz scene. He collaborated with some of the leading jazz artists at that

time but became disillusioned with American attitudes towards African music and musicians.

He subsequently moved to the UK where he produced several of his innovative Afro-Jazz

albums and returned to Ghana in the mid-1960s, focusing on creating works for talking drums

that blended Western art music (Handel, Ravel), jazz, and Ghanian styles.

Feld details Warren’s scathing critique of both white critics and black jazz musicians

for their exoticization of Africa and their refusal to explore the “idea of renewed cross-

fertilization with African music” (2012:41). It is particularly interesting to note that much of

Warren’s wrath is directed at black jazz musicians whom he views as elitist for viewing

African music as “primitive”. Speaking about how he and other African musicians were

perceived in the 1950s by African American jazz musicians, Warren recalls:

They thought we were incomplete versions of them. They thought that jazz was better than us, more sophisticated, that, you know, we stopped on the evolutionary ladder. That what we had to do with jazz was in the past, you know, that it was just about drums and the slave times. Well that’s bullshit. And it’s racist. (in Feld 2012:53)

The poignancy of Warren’s critique centers on the way in which imaginings of Africa in the

past blinded the view of Africa in the present. Warren witnessed first hand the emergence of

Black Nationalism in the United States and the “return to roots” movements’ re-claiming of

pre-diasporic African heritage. African-American jazz musicians claimed an imagined and

glorified Africa of the past as cultural capital. Their legitimacy and authenticity as jazz

musicians grew thanks to their connection to pre-slave African musical heritage. Yet, this view

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of connection to Africa as a thing of the past was often accompanied by dismissal of the

potential for equal artistic contribution in the present from African musicians. As Feld writes

about Warren, “Africa was often reduced to a distant place and time in the American story of

jazz. He found that narrative to be an act of cultural humiliation, with no serious space for

engaging with Africa in the present” (2012:55-56).

As noted above, Warren went to the US with ambitions of making it in the American

jazz scene. However the seeds for his move towards Afro-Jazz fusion were planted early in life.

At the time of his arrival he was already highly aware of and fluent in a diverse array of

Ghanian popular music styles, practices originating from Nigeria and Sierra Leone (by way of

encounters with migrants), American swing and music from Hollywood movies. He also

embraced the interconnectedness of these styles:

The background to his African musical universe was seriously reflexive; he understood that African music contributed hugely to popular musics in the U.S. and the Caribbean diasporas. And he knew that the diaspora had fed back its own fusions into African popular styles. (Feld 2012:58)

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, around the same time as many European musicians

came to same realization, Guy Warren understood that in order to play authentically he had to

be himself. That meant reflecting the totality of his musical-cultural background and blending

the various influences in his own unique way, “I had to make a choice between being a poor

imitation of Buddy Rich or playing something they couldn’t. I could play jazz well, but I

possessed something that nobody else had, so I started to play African music with a little bit of

jazz thrown in, not jazz with a little bit of African thrown in” (in Feld 2012:58-59). Here,

Warren echoes one of the recurring themes of this dissertation, the centrality in jazz of playing

one’s own voice, and one’s own history and culture. Furthermore, when Warren says that he

chose to play something “they couldn’t”, he also pursues the same exclusionary stance that

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Atkins reports about the “Japanese Jazz” nationalist school in the 1960s. Several times in our

survey of these jazz narratives, we witness the marginalized respond to their own exclusion by

marginalizing others in order to confer legitimacy upon their own art.

The marginalization Guy Warren felt and his critique of the monolithic “American” jazz

narrative is paralleled, perhaps even on a broader scale, by ongoing segregation of the range of

styles known as “Latin Jazz”. Trombonist and ethnomusicologist, Christopher Washburne

writes about the variegated styles of “Latin Jazz”:

In spite of growing interest and popularity, this music, along with the musicians who make it, are persistently marginalized and separated economically, politically, ethnically, and racially by the media, educational institutions, jazz producers and promoters, consumers, and musicians. (2012:89)

Washburne argues that the reasons for such segregation are numerous and complex,

undoubtedly at least partially driven by economic competition. However, I believe that the

tightly constructed narrative of jazz history and its accompanying discourse of authenticity also

have considerable bearing on the positioning of “Latin-Jazz” as “other”. Indeed, as Washburne

indicates, radio, festival and programming compartmentalization suggests that “Latin Jazz” is

viewed as “the exotic, the novel, the lightweight, the not real jazz music for cats who can’t play

changes” (2012:90).

Washburne also details the career of conguero Ray Barretto who experienced enormous

success in the 1960s and 1970s fronting his own Salsa band. He subsequently spent the

remainder of his career striving to leave what he dubbed the “Latin jazz Barrio” (2012:101)

and be accepted as part of the “legit” jazz world. The case of Barretto reflects a different

response to the type of marginalization that Guy Warren experienced in the 1950s. Instead of

protesting the exclusionary attitudes and fundamentally withdrawing from engaging them

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within the US, Barretto sought to situate himself and his music squarely within the dominant

narrative: “In spite of his difficulties and his financially rewarding salsa career, he steadfastly

believed that his alignment with jazz yielded greater prestige and cultural capital” (Washburne

2012:102).

In his book Latin Jazz (1999), journalist John Storm Roberts asserts that the role of

Latin American music has been underplayed and under researched in the general discourse of

jazz. He believes that when narrating the story of jazz’s birth and evolution, Latin American

music must be added to the mix. This is not meant to undermine the critical role that African-

American elements played in the evolution of the genre, but rather that “jazz has always been

in some measure an Afro-Euro-Latino-American music” (1999:x).

Building on such historical argumentation, one may consider the multi-directional

intercultural exchanges of the Americas and Africa in the context of what Joseph Roach calls

the “circum-Atlantic”:

The concept of the circum-Atlantic world (as opposed to a transatlantic one) insists on the centrality of the diasporic and genocidal histories of Africa and the Americas, North and South, in the creation of the culture of modernity. In this sense, a New World was not discovered in the Caribbean, but was truly invented there. (Roach 1996:4)

The diverse musical traditions of the Americas, Caribbean and Africa, and their on-going cross-

pollination with one another have existed from before the birth of jazz and have continued

uninterrupted to the present day. These various often overlapping genres and sub-genres,

consisting of popular, folk and traditional musical practices, have been informing one another

for centuries, defying any notion of “purity” or “authenticity” (Washburne 2012). Why

shouldn’t jazz be considered within this broader framework?

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Let us return momentarily to the historical analysis. Roberts details the extent to which

pre-jazz New Orleans was a hub for musical and cultural interaction, an arena involving more

than African-American, Creole and European cultural mixtures. New Orleans was home to

Haitian refugees and its local musicians had regular encounters and exchanges with Mexican

and Cuban bands and immigrants. Furthermore, Roberts claims that various Caribbean idioms,

themselves already transcultural, had been influencing one another for at least a century before

the birth of jazz. He speculates that early jazz works in New Orleans may have been a product

of musicians blending already fused rhythms, melodies and dance structures.

An exclusive focus on jazz itself has left us with an overly narrow view of groups that usually played a range of dance music, of which jazz was only part. Moreover, much early jazz research was influenced by various political, ethnic, and romanticizing agendas that have disguised the complexity of the story. Mostly these have led them to overplay the working-class, black, and folk-oriented aspects of the music. (1999:6)

Roberts provides yet another challenge to the racial and cultural tidiness of the master narrative

about the music’s birth. In so doing he pushes for further and continual re-evaluation of jazz

historiography. For those embracing an essentialized notion of jazz this view could be

threatning.

Viewed constructively however, what kind of doors might open if we were to embrace

this challenge even partially? Wouldn’t we be more inclined to accept the fact that jazz has

always engaged in a multi-directional stream of interaction with cultures outside of the United

States? Might such an embrace of circum-Atlantic, Pan-American cross-current influences not

invite us to explore the obvious historical similarities that exist across the Western hemisphere

such as the commonalities between cultures of the Americas in the way in which race, slavery,

colonialism, European settlements and the musical products that emerged out of these cultures

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interacted? Wouldn’t such a view further advance the notion of jazz as a blend of blends?

Wouldn’t this liberate us to take future blends seriously?

As Taylor Atkins notes, jazz’s spread, increased popularity and influence around the

world should be considered within the purview of growing American economic and cultural

influence in the twentieth century. Jazz’s appeal to millions of people worldwide is

undoubtedly partially related to the beauty and engaging nature of its sounds. However, it’s

popularity and growth globally cannot be separated from America’s growing reach. Is jazz

categorically different or exceptional when compared to other “new world” transcultural styles

such as Afro-Cuban styles, cumbia or Brazilian choro or has it simply been amplified and

elevated on the world stage for almost one hundred years by the dominant economic power of

the twentieth century?

Much like Taylor Atkins, a growing number of scholars from around the world are

challenging the narrative of American excpetionalism that seems to underlie much of American

jazz discourse. These scholars ask us to reconsider our assumptions about the genre’s birth and

be open to the possibility that even more extensive transcultural exchange than has been

acknowledged occurred throughout the development of this treasured musical practice.

Furthermore, many around the world are highlighting the contributions of local jazz musicians

who are actively forging new stylistic directions for the music, incorporating diverse influences

both local/global and turning them into transcultural jazz dialects. Collectively, we can start to

see a new branch of jazz studies emerging: Global Jazz Studies.

The important contributions discussed in the preceding pages represent an encouraging

start for Global Jazz Studies. However, there remains a tremendous amount of research that still

needs to be done in the years to come, both in terms of breadth and depth of inquiry. This

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dissertation, which focuses on the sounds and discourses of Israeli Jazz, aims to contribute

modestly to this enterprise.

PERSONAL VOICINGS: TRANSGENERIC, MULTI-LOCAL MUSICMAKING

In Birds of Fire: Jazz, Rock, Funk and the Creation of Fusion (2011) music and cultural

theory scholar Kevin Fellezs frames jazz-rock fusion as a transgeneric, “in-between” musical

movement emerging in the 1970s that stayed between genres, in what he calls the “broken

middle”. In this realm, the music created by the artists at the center of his study resides on

shaky ground, a creative instability where tension and contradiction between the various

traditions (jazz, rock, funk, classical) exists. The music does not fully belong to any of the

above genres and yet is “incapable of breaking away completely into its own space” (2011:8).

In occupying this vulnerable creative space, these musicians pushed back against market and

listeners’ expectations, challenged social norms and stylistic conventions.

Fellezs recounts the interest that rock and jazz musicians in the 1960s had in various

types of “world-music”. In an ever more globalized world, and as part of larger

social/political/cultural/spiritual movements in the 1960s, increased availability of recordings

along with greater travel ease exposed artists to a vast array of musical traditions that had

previously been out of reach. Musicians such as John McLaughlin, who with Zakir Hussain

founded the Jazz-Rock-Indian fusion group Shakti, began to create transgeneric music that

could not easily be labeled.

A superficial survey of ECM, arguably Europe’s most significant jazz record label since

the 1970s, quickly reveals the degree to which transgeneric music making is a salient

characteristic of the work of many of today’s jazz artists worldwide. Artists such as Jan

Garbarek, John Surman, Anders Jormin, Anouar Brahem, Egberto Gismonti, Jon Balke (and on

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and on) have been engaging in work that defies the conventional understandings of jazz (and

any other genre, for that matter) for several decades.

In his article “Roots and Collage: Contemporary European Jazz in Postmodern Times”

(2012), German scholar Herbert Hellhund argues that in the present day postmodern European

jazz world that has moved beyond America’s “dictatorial” influence there is room for a wide

range of aesthetic directions and possibilities based on the personal preference of each

musician/group. With “tradition” disassembled and straightforward development of the genre

halted in a post-1960’s world, the evolving aesthetic in Europe favors individual choices out of

a growing abundance of available influences.

Hellhund uses the phrase Stylistic Pluralism to describe the present artistic environment

in the European jazz scene, allowing for interplay between old and new aspects of jazz practice

as well as interaction with musical traditions diverging from jazz, “Thus, out of numerous

present and available idioms ensues a single situation marked by a general lack of direction.

Each musician must adopt a position in this situation, but the positions are anything but self-

evident” (2012:434). In describing today’s contemporary jazz musician in Europe who “must

find or create connections between disparate musical genres without becoming arbitrary” (435),

Hellhund describes a flexible musician (“generalist”) possessing an array of competences that

allow him to be equally at home in modern jazz contexts (“complex changes”) and free jazz,

conversant in European concert and local folk traditions, aware (and often fluent) of current

pop-trends, as both a performer and composer, and skilled with a wide range of emerging

technology.

Similarly, in “Gianluigi Trovesi’s Music: An Historical and Geographical Short-

Circuit” (2003), Italian scholar Stefano Zenni presents the work of Italian reedsman and

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composer Gianluigi Trovesi as a successful example of an artist who integrates a wide range of

influences into a personal artistic statement. According to Zenni, Trovesi’s synthesis cannot

simply be reduced to a simple mixture of Italian folk traditions or European Classical Music

and American Jazz influences. Rather it is comprised of several diverse yet specific sources

relating to both different eras and regions. Trovesi’s multi-local influences include Northern

Italian folk traditions (specifically the area of Bergamo); the compositional techniques and

structures from the baroque and renaissance era; American jazz (both swing and more

“modern” modal approaches as well as the music of Eric Dolphy); Balkan and Middle-Eastern

influences.

Much like Gianluigi Trovesi, many jazz artists have answered the call of “playing your

own voice” to the tune of music that blends often diverse sources from the world over in a

wholly personal way. As noted in the introduction, I propose viewing these artists as multi-

local musicians. Many of these musicians prefer to think of their music as outside any specific

genre and find the label “jazz” to be limiting or an inadequate description of their music. Eric

Porter reminds us that jazz’s history is filled with American musicians (Duke Ellington,

Charles Mingus) who sought to situate their music beyond the limited confinements of the

“jazz” label “because they felt it did not do justice to the breadth of their artistic projects and

because of the ways it signified the economic, discursive, and social limitations under which

they labored” (2012:14).

Though many present day musicians conceptualize their music as genre-defying, Ake,

Garrett and Goldmark argue that genre classification still matters:

Genre designations play a fundamental role in shaping how we teach, learn, create, access and assess music…there is no denying that a wide array of institutions and businesses—iTunes, radio stations, record stores, Internet websites, grant endowments, magazines, newspapers, libraries, booking

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agencies, and college curricula, among them—rely on genre classification to help organize, present, support, and/or sell music. (2012:3)

While the jazz world, for the most part, is not a richly rewarding commercial field, it holds a

cultural cachet that other genres do not. A circuit of jazz festivals and clubs is available to those

artists whose music is labeled as “jazz”, while increased institutionalization has led to available

university positions and governmental grants that are not open to practitioners of “pop music”

for example (ibid).

Thus, much as they have throughout the genre’s history, jazz musicians continue to

negotiate the tension between their individual expression and broader social, political and

economic implications of their identity construction. Furthermore, awareness of these issues

helps explain why debates of ownership and authenticity – often in relation to discrepant

understandings of the place of Americaness and African-Americaness in jazz – continue

vociferously today as ever before. Indeed, as I will discuss, Israeli jazz musicians navigate

these debates in particular ways.

MULTI-LAYERED VOICINGS: JAZZ POLYPHONY AND THE SIMULTANEITY OF NARRATIVE Scott DeVeaux writes that the linear construction of jazz tradition seems to be tied to an

organicist view of jazz history. New developments are explained as having emerged internally.

When previous styles reach artistic impasses, new styles emerge. Indeed, the birth of bebop is

conventionally depicted as a response to swing music’s decay, the birth of free jazz as a

response to the exhaustion of bebop and hardbop.

One can detect a parallel between this sort of account and the modernist narrative of

Western Art Music that claims atonality developed as a result of tonality being exhausted by

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Romanticism at the end of the nineteenth century. Though this matter continues to be a

contentious debate in certain circles, I believe events of the past thirty years have demonstrated

that tonality had not been exhausted at the dawn of the twentieth century. Tonality and

modality continue to be explored in novel ways by composers today while experimental work

in the fields of electro-acoustic music, serialism, and many other branches of contemporary

Western Art Music are ongoing side by side.

Similarly, one might argue for a pluralist, inclusive vision and historical view of jazz.

Swing music didn’t hit a total impasse when bebop was born, as evidenced by the continuing

big band tradition well into the twenty-first century. New swing tunes are still being written and

New Orleans style Dixieland bands continue to perform in festivals across the US and Europe.

Bebop, Hardbop and Cool Jazz continue to permeate the present day jazz world, not only

because the neoclassicist stance is so pervasive, but because they never actually left. Similarly,

fusion and free jazz continue to exist, develop and influence a whole range of artists.

Contributions of jazz musicians from the world over have created an assortment of transcultural

jazz dialects that indeed have even influenced jazz styles in the United States. Furthermore,

many artists view their music as genre defying, blending diverse musical traditions into specific

individual expressions.

Imagine a Venn diagram of overlapping jazz styles. In an inclusive view of this sort, all

of these jazz styles co-exist, constantly informing one another, evolving within established

convention and breaking away from convention to chart new stylistic territory. It is not so much

a matter of replacing the old with the new in an evolutionary process but rather a growing

plurality of existing styles that reside simultaneously, continuing to inform one another,

interact, develop and contract. It is a polyphony of jazz styles.

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As in any strong polyphonic piece, all voices are of equal importance but their sonic

perceptibility to the listener’s ear varies from moment to moment and section to section based

on their thematic content, range and the performer’s rendition. Indeed, listeners perception is

dramatically influenced by the performer’s privileging of one voice over the other, such that in

a baroque fugue, it is custom to bring out the subject of the fugue, and the ear follows along.

Thus, in this polyphony of jazz styles, each musician’s privileging of selected influences and

styles form the basis of her unique individual expression, playing her “own voice”.

In a variation on Elsa Barkley Brown’s “Polyrhythms and Improvisation: Lessons for

Women’s History” (in Tucker 2012:266), I want to extend the image of polyphony further, as

even the narratives themselves can be seen as creating a tapestry of overlapping views of jazz

history and identity. These narratives reside side-by-side, partially true, creating a polyphony of

narrative voices that is dynamic and ever changing in its power distribution.

As far as 1991 DeVeaux called for the emergence of new, alternative jazz narratives.

Twenty years later, after two decades of important work by scholars belonging to the emerging

field of New Jazz Studies, Sherrie Tucker’s compelling essay “Deconstructing the Jazz

Tradition” (2012) asks scholars to continually challenge their own assumptions about jazz, their

“subjectless subject”. Tucker asks, “What kind of narratives do we want to tell in the new jazz

studies” (270)?

The preceding pages have highlighted contributions coming from Global Jazz

Studies as one important new branch of narratives about jazz history and identity.

Inspired by Sherrie Tucker’s call for self-reflection by performers, scholars and

educators, I would like to ask what kind of jazz scholarship can more accurately reflect

an inclusive and global view of the multiplicity of jazz narratives? How can we, as jazz

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scholars, teachers, performers, and listeners incorporate a more nuanced view of jazz as

artistic creation, but also an actor in nationalist and transnational politics; an agent of

American cultural hegemony in the world, the artistic expression of marginalized people

and yet paradoxically a symbol of rebellion against American colonial interests?

A more inclusive understanding of jazz history would incorporate an account of jazz

globally, including an exploration of the many transcultural jazz dialects that have emerged

over the past fifty years. Such a view would also include study of the free jazz movement, the

trans-generic, post-generic, cosmopolitan and individualistic poly-idiomatic styles that

characterize the “creative music” scene and an array of individual artists who do not associate

with any particular label yet produce music that has direct ties to the jazz tradition.

Bearing in mind that even with the aim of complicating narratives, highlighting

omissions, and challenging the marginalization and neglect of unheard voices, “we

cannot but narrate” and must accept that no narrative is objective truth (Spivak 1990

Cited in Tucker 2012:271). Perhaps the best possibility, then, is to embrace a messy,

overlapping, multi-vocal polyphony, in which the emergence of new narratives such as

those coming out of “Global Jazz Studies” can help expand the richness of our

understandings and imaginings of jazz as musical practice, culture and discourse. One

such narrative is the story of Israeli jazz musicians, and the transcultural jazz they

perform and compose. The next chapter provides an historical overview of jazz in Israel,

introduces the waves of Israeli jazz musicians who have emerged in the international jazz

scene beginning in the 1990s, and contextualizes the phenomenon of Israeli jazz that

stands at the center of this study.

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CHAPTER THREE

“ISRAELI JAZZ”: HISTORY AND OVERVIEW

The Rex, Toronto’s premier jazz club, hosted a spotlight on “Israeli Jazz” featuring two

bands led by prominent Israeli jazz musicians in April 2016. Headlining the event was

internationally celebrated trumpeter Avishai Cohen, on tour to mark the release of his album

Into the Silence (2016), produced and distributed by ECM, the prestigious European label. In

fact, this was the third consecutive year in which The Rex celebrated Israeli jazz. The bill was

highlighted by guitarist Gilad Hekselman and pianist Shai Maestro in 2014 and the next year by

woodwind artist Anat Cohen.19 Such events are not unique to Toronto. For the past ten years

such celebrations of “Israeli jazz” have become regular occurrences worldwide. From Japan to

Germany and France as well as to San Francisco and NYC, festivals, jazz clubs, concert series,

and music halls in dozens of locations around the globe have all taken to featuring leading

Israeli jazz artists, while highlighting in their public relations the Israeliness in these musicians’

music making.

The past fifteen years have also seen a proliferation of attention in leading media outlets

around the world covering the wave of internationally successful Israeli jazz musicians who are

said to be creating music that listeners will identify as blending “Israeli” sounds with

“American” jazz. Further, some of these artists graced the covers of American jazz magazines

Downbeat and JazzTimes and have received generous and ongoing coverage by the New York

Times, NPR, and many other local media outlets. The titles of several of these features reveal

the extent to which this phenomenon has generated buzz among media circles. For instance, a

2008 JazzTimes article hails “The Israeli Jazz Wave: Promised Land to Promised Land”

19 Notably, in terms of the political-economic dynamics of the music world, these events have been sponsored by the Canada-Israel Cultural Foundation and supported by the Israeli consulate of Toronto.

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(Gilbert 2008). Two years later an NPR special, “Why Are So Many Jazz Musicians from

Israel These Days?” (Jarenwattananon 2010),20 asks the question that is, seemingly, the focus of

attention of many critics, musicians, and fans. Indeed, a joke popular among Israeli jazz

musicians presently living in New York goes like this: Whenever an Israeli arrives at New

York’s JFK international airport, the immigration officer asks: “What instrument do you

play?”21 Both overtly and between the lines of many articles and discussions within jazz

circles, many people are asking how and why so many successful jazz musicians have emerged

in the international jazz scene from Israel.

Though this question is intriguing, and contains within it several layers of meanings and

assumptions that have to be parsed, it is secondary to this project. That is, I am far less

concerned with addressing the question: Why is it that so many Israeli artists have made it in

the jazz world? Rather, my primary concern is to present, in the following three chapters,

analyses of the music they make as well as the discourses surrounding their musical lives and

identities as jazz musicians from Israel.

The present chapter lays the foundations for doing so by providing an overview of

Israeli jazz by identifying key figures in its international emergence since the 1990s; providing

background about the institutionalization of jazz in Israel, with particular attention to the

important role of jazz education there; and mapping the complex, variegated cultural, political,

and musical issues involved in its history. My aims are to situate, contextualize, and provide

historical perspective on the waves of Israeli jazz musicians who have established themselves

20 Similarly, in an article published in Israel in late March 2016 - “A Jazz Superpower Has Accidentally Grown Here”, noted Israeli music critic Ben Shalev of Haaretz marvels at the continued outpouring of influential, successful and compelling albums released by Israeli jazz artists. 21 I heard this joke on several occasions during my fieldwork in NYC and Israel.

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on the international scene creating music that blends an array of already blended sources, both

“local” and “global”.

ISRAELI JAZZ MUSICIANS IN THE WORLD TODAY

Dozens of Israeli jazz musicians maintain busy international touring schedules, appearing

in festivals, concert halls, and jazz clubs across the globe. According to David Homan,

Executive Director of the American-Israeli Cultural Foundation (AICF),22 which maintains a

large database of Israeli jazz musicians operating in the US, there were at least 200 Israeli jazz

musicians living and working in New York City alone in 2014 (Homan 2014). This number

does not include dozens of undergraduate students attending universities and conservatories

(primarily the New School in NYC and Berklee College of Music in Boston) nor the many

musicians who live in NYC or elsewhere in the US but who do not have ties with or registered

their profile in AICF’s online database. Though NYC is home to the highest concentration of

Israeli jazz musicians operating internationally, a select number of others with thriving careers

work from other locales. For example, pianists Yaron Herman and Yonatan Avishai are based

in France, while pianist Omer Klein lives in Germany. Additionally, several prominent Israeli

jazz musicians have returned to Israel after long stints in NYC. Utilizing their international

reputations, they continue to maintain their touring careers out of Israel, as will be discussed

toward the end of this chapter.

22 The AICF is a US based non-profit organization established in 1939 that provides financial support for artists and cultural institutions in Israel. According to its website the AICF’s mission is “to support and develop artistic life in Israel by awarding scholarships and grants. By encouraging Israeli artists and supporting institutions and programs, AICF makes a vital contribution to the cultural foundation of Israel and strengthens her relationship with the United States” (AICF n.d.). According to current executive director David Homan and my research many leading Israeli jazz musicians received grants and bursaries from the AICF during their teenage years in Israel.

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This noted, NYC remains the premier hub of Israeli jazz activity. On any given night in

New York, you can open Time Out magazine and find the names of Israeli musicians

performing at the leading jazz clubs in town including Smalls, Fat Cat, Cornelia Street Café,

The Jazz Standard, The Blue Note, Sweet Basil, The Bar Next Door, Rockwood Hall,

Mezzrow, Minton’s Play House in Harlem and countless other prominent establishments.

These musicians often lead their own bands or appear as sidemen with other artists of varied

nationalities. Indeed, the NYC jazz scene is filled with Israeli musicians performing in a

multitude of styles and in a variety of contexts. At jam sessions or when an Israeli jazz

musician performs leading her own ensemble, one is also likely to see a group of young Israeli

men and women congregated in the audience. Hebrew language and spirited exchanges can be

heard sprinkled with jazz terms in English from time to time. Aside from non-musician Israeli

locals visiting or living in NYC, these audience members include the youngest and newest

musicians who are recent arrivals from Israel. Indeed, cohorts of new students appear each fall

to join the jazz program at the New School, which is part of a special collaboration with the

Center for Jazz Studies at the Tel Aviv Conservatory.

Indeed, the NYC jazz scene has played a central role in the development of the

international phenomenon of Israeli jazz. Out of NYC came the explorations of transcultural

jazz making by Israeli jazz musicians blending an array of local and global influences. The vast

majority of the musicians I interviewed either live in NYC in the present or lived formative

years there before returning to Israel or moving elsewhere. The prominence of Israeli jazz

musicians in New York is, nevertheless, part of a much wider ranging presence both across

space and through time. Thus, much of this chapter is focused on a history of jazz in Israel.

This will help contextualize and partially explain the explosion of talent coming out of Israel,

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exemplified by a group of musicians who have explored blend on the international scene since

the 1990s. Then, I shift to a discussion centred on New York in order to introduce the global

and multi-local nature of Israeli jazz in relation to what I call the NYC – Israel axis. Indeed,

both locales, and movement between them, have played significant and critical roles in the

emergence of Israeli jazz, and both remain central scenes for its practice.23

In order to make sense of the prominence, abundance, and wide-ranging creative

activities of Israeli jazz musicians operating on the international scene today, then, it is

productive to start by introducing several, but by no means all, of the main actors. In focusing

on those most central to my study, I necessarily omit their forbearers. However, their work and

contributions will be presented in mid-chapter.

The First Wave – Pioneers

Though the seeds were planted long before the 1990s, it was the emergence of artists

such as bassists Avishai Cohen and Omer Avital, guitarist/oudist Amos Hoffman and

trombonist Avi Lebovich that for the first time situated Israeli jazz musicians as prominent

players on the international jazz scene. Avishai Cohen joined Chick Corea’s trio in 1997 and

was a founding member of the Origin band. In 1998 he released Adama, his first album as a

leader on Corea’s Stretch label.24 I consider this album to be the first widely heard artistic

statement by an Israeli musician blending a wide array of middle-eastern, Cuban, Israeli and

American jazz influences. The musical blending heard on Cohen’s first release, later

nicknamed Israeli jazz, would come to influence an entire generation of Israeli jazz musicians.

23 NYC, on one side of the axis, holds a special place as the destination of choice for the vast majority of Israeli jazz musicians who seek to establish international careers. Israel the nation-state, stands on the other pole as Israeli jazz artists emerge from different locales within the country. 24 Adama in Hebrew means “ground” or “earth”.

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It foreshadowed Cohen’s now twenty years of creative output that continues to be as

emblematic and influential as that of any Israeli jazz musician.

Meanwhile in the mid- to late 1990s, a second bassist, Omer Avital, forged a formidable

place as an in-demand musician in the downtown NYC scene. Avital became a mainstay at jam

sessions and gigs at Smalls Jazz Club and other downtown venues that at the time featured soon

to become American jazz icons Brad Mehldau, Mark Turner, Kurt Rosenwinkel, and many

others (Avital 2017).

Cohen, and Avital were not alone. Guitarist and oudist Amos Hoffman, himself an early

1990s arrival in NYC, was similarly an in-demand sideman in the same downtown scene.

Trombonist Avi Lebovich, also a part of that inner circle of trailblazing Israeli jazz musicians

active in the downtown scene, was taken under the wing of Slide Hampton, joining Hampton’s

Big Band “The Jazz Masters” for a stint that led to many more opportunities with leading jazz

musicians (Lebovich 2015).

Not only did Cohen, Avital, Hoffman, and Lebovich arrive on the New York scene

around the same time in the early 1990s,25 these four men, all in their early twenties at the time,

actually lived in the same building in the Upper East Side of Manhattan:

Socially, this togetherness strengthened us. Musically, it strengthened us even more because we were always busy making music. Omer [Avital] was always playing gigs, I would always be going out on tours, Avishai [Cohen] would be out on tour with Danilo [Perez]. Then we would meet in the building and I remember that Avishai and I would play music that he was writing and play standards and it was incredible…we did a lot of learning by playing with friends, these jams, you know playing all the time. It really strengthened our creative output and the connection between us, even as each one of us would eventually go pursue his own thing. That was the melting pot and we still have a lot of respect for that point in time.26 (Lebovich 2015)

25 According to Lebovich, he and Avital, who became friends as teenagers in Israel, flew to NYC on the same flight (Lebovich 2015). 26 Unless otherwise noted, all interviews were conducted in Hebrew, and interview based quotes were translated by the author from Hebrew to English.

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Lebovich dubbed it the “Israeli building”. They jammed together, ate together, listened to

music together. In short, their lives were intertwined. Supporting each other, as after all, they

were young men, foreigners in a new land, a big city, trying to make their way into the scene.

Together they forged the path followed since by dozens of Israeli jazz musicians.

The international success that Cohen, Avital, Hoffman and Lebovich achieved in the

mid- to late 1990s as sidemen to jazz superstars and as respected young talents in the jazz scene

of NYC had a profound effect on the aspirations of countless younger Israeli musicians.27 As

these achievements received widespread publicity in the Israeli press, teenagers and young

musicians across the country took it as a sign that “they too can make it”.28 Their success not

only forged real paths, connections, and networks for future musicians, it established what is

now the commonplace perception about Israelis’ jazz acumen and provided a symbolic beacon

for others to believe in themselves and follow in their footsteps. Indeed, what we have seen

since those early days, is wave after wave of young Israeli jazz musicians picking up and

moving to NYC (and to a lesser extent Boston or Europe) and going on to establish themselves

in their respective scenes.

As noted above, perhaps the most well-known Israeli jazz musician today is Avishai

Cohen (b.1970). Enjoying widespread international acclaim as one of the world’s leading jazz

bassists, Cohen is celebrated for his instrumental virtuosity and his unique compositional voice

27 Eli Degibri’s meteoric rise as the 1998 winner of the prestigious Thelonious Monk Institute award and as sideman for Herbie Hancock had the same kind of profound influence on younger Israeli musicians. Degibri arrived in the US in 1998 and belongs generationally to The Second Wave, explored below. Nonetheless, he achieved international success around the same time as Cohen and others did in the late 1990s. 28 By way of personal memory and experience: I was in attendance in 1998 when Avishai Cohen walked on stage at the Red Sea Jazz Festival, held in Eilat Israel, as bassist for Chick Corea; and similarly at Tel Aviv symphony hall when Eli Degibri was introduced in front of a rapturous Israeli crowd by Herbie Hancock. These moments were etched in my mind as a teen-age jazz pianist with dreams of making it in the world as a professional musician.

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– both of which have influenced jazz musicians worldwide. His distinctive compositions are,

for many, synonymous with the Israeli jazz sound. Indeed, from gigs to the halls of jazz

departments across North America, one might hear non-Israelis reference “Avishai’s” sounds

either directly or by invoking the phrase Israeli jazz.29 Similarly, YouTube is littered with

bassists imitating Cohen’s compelling groove based melodies and soloistic prowess.

Cohen, who resided in NYC for many years, now works from a base in Israel, from

which he tours the world year-round. His early career included aforementioned work as bassist

for Chick Corea’s groups, as well as being a member of Panamanian pianist Danilo Perez’s

trio. Since Adama in 1998, he has released fifteen other albums as a leader, most recently

‘1970’ (2017). His projects present mostly original compositions and to a lesser extent

arrangements of songs from the Jewish Ladino tradition and the Shirey Eretz Israel (Songs of

the Land of Israel, henceforth, SLI) canon.30 31 The jazz piano trio has served as the cornerstone

vehicle for his music. However, albums and projects have also featured larger ensembles,

including extensive collaborations with oudist Amos Hoffman, percussionist Itamar Doari,

vocalist Karen Malka, as well as projects with strings. In additional to continuous tours with his

trio, Cohen has also been recently involved in concerts in Europe featuring arrangements of his

original compositions for jazz trio and symphonic orchestra.

Cohen is an accomplished pianist in his own right, and his piano playing is on display in

the 2001 album Unity. His compositions often feature very specific piano parts, clearly

reflective of his own pianistic abilities and preferences. In recent years, Cohen has also begun

29 Based on my own experiences as a course instructor and graduate student at the University of Toronto jazz program and through informal conversations with colleagues who teach in other universities in North America. 30The Songs of the Land of Israel (SLI) is a canonical set of popular songs composed primarily from the 1920s to the 1950s. Chapter Four focuses on this repertoire with greater detail.31 Cohen has also recorded arrangements of three songs from the Great American Songbook including “Nature Boy”, “Smile”, and “A Child Is Born”.

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to incorporate singing into his albums, performing original songs as well as selections from the

Ladino tradition. Albums such as Aurora (2011) and Seven Seas (2010) feature several vocal

selections and the 2008 album Sensitive Hours consists entirely of vocal tracks.

Bassist and oudist Omer Avital (b.1971), too, is a leading figure in the global Israeli

jazz scene. Avital’s path to international prominence was forged in the 1990s downtown NYC

scene through collaboration with many of the young and leading musicians of the time.32 Avital

was a fixture in the Smalls jazz club scene, a hub for much of the “modern jazz” innovation of

the time. This is suggested by how he was characterized by a local jazz publication in New

York: “Years from now, when folks are remembering the early days of the West Village jazz

haunt Smalls, bassist Omer Avital’s name will be synonymous with the club as Bill Evans’s is

with the Village Vanguard and Thelonious Monk’s is with the original Five Spot Café” (Time

Out 2006). Sometimes referred to as the “Israeli Charles Mingus”, Avital is widely acclaimed

by fellow American musicians and critics for his tone, formidable stage presence, and deeply

groovin’, swingin’ blues based bass playing.

Avital has been leading his own groups since the mid-1990s, having released ten

albums as leader and countless others as co-leader.33 Avital is widely regarded as a pioneer in

blending influences from the Arab world and the Maghreb into original jazz compositions. In

addition to his considerable work as a leader and co-leader, he appears as a sideman on dozens

of recordings by Israeli and non-Israeli jazz musicians.

Avital has also been involved in several compelling transgeneric and transcultural

projects. First, he served as artistic director for the New Jerusalem Orchestra, an orchestra that

combined jazz, classical, and middle-eastern folk instruments to create transgeneric

32 Folks such as Brad Mehldau, Peter Bernstein, Mark Turner, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Jason Lindner, Christian McBride and others. 33 His most recent releases with the Omer Avital Quintet are New Song (2014) and Abutbul Music (2016).

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performances and recordings of Jewish Andalusian music and piyyutim derived from Jewish

communities across the Arab world.34 Second, he co-founded, produced, arranged, and played

in the “world music” ensemble Yemen Blues, a group that combined Yemenite influences with

jazz, blues, and funk. Third, his on-going collaboration, entitled Avital Meets Avital, with

classical music mandolinist Avi Avital (no family connection), showcases original

compositions and arrangements of music from diverse sources including jazz, Western Art

Music, and several Middle-Eastern musical practices. Their first album was released earlier in

2017 on the prestigious German label Deutsche Grammophon (Avital and Avital 2017).

Similarly, Israeli guitarist and oudist Amos Hoffman (b. 1970) has been an important

and leading figure in the jazz scenes of NYC and Israel. He is best known to international

audiences through his distinct oud playing on bassist Avishai Cohen’s most popular recordings.

His recordings as a leader demonstrate both a deep and profound affinity for the be-bop and

hard-bop jazz traditions as well as a dedication to Arab Classical music and folk traditions from

North Africa. Indeed, much of his original music explores the blending of his various

influences. One of Hoffman’s most remarkable contributions has been the introduction of the

oud as a soloing instrument in the jazz context. His virtuosity on the instrument, including the

ability to perform repertoire that is not idiomatic to the oud, stands unparalleled in the jazz

world today.

34 Piyyutim, plural for piyut refer to liturgical poems that were composed to embellish prayers during holidays, and other public, familial or private religious ceremonies. Dating back to the 4th century, originating among the Jews in Palestine, and from there spreading over the centuries to Babylonia, Italy, France, Germany, Byzantine Greece and most importantly around the 10th century to Spain. There, for about five centuries the piyut tradition “blossomed with a direct affinity to the various forms of Arabic poetry” (Shiloah 1992:111). After the Jews’ expulsion from Spain, the Spanish piyyut continued in the various diasporic communities (such in Yemen, Tunis, Morocco and Aleppo). Also, according to Shiloah, “From its inception the piyyut was meant to be sung”, and indeed many piyyutim have accompanying melodies that go with the poems. A single piyut often has multiple melodies that can go with it.

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Not long after his arrival in NYC in the early 1990’s, trombonist Avi Lebovich (b.

1972) sought the mentorship of the legendary trombonist Slide Hampton. Shortly thereafter,

Hampton invited Lebovich to join his orchestra “Slide Hampton & The Jazz Masters”.

Lebovich’s stint with the Big Band led to many more professional opportunities, including

work as a sideman with such notable jazz musicians as Michel Camilo, Tom Harrell, Jason

Lindner, Danilo Perez, and Steve Turre. Lebovich returned to Israel in 2003 after a period of

time working with the British pop group Incognito. Since then he has been leading The Avi

Lebovich Orchestra, a 12tet that performs original compositions as well as arrangements, and

in recent years has advanced collaborations with leading Israeli singer/songwriters (Lebovich

2015).

The Second Wave

Soon after the successes of Hoffman, Avital, Lebovich, Cohen and their peers, a second

wave of Israeli musicians began forging their own distinguished international careers followed

suit. For instance, in 1998, saxophonist Eli Degibri (b. 1978) won the Thelonious Monk

Institute award and was recruited by Herbie Hancock to be a part of his quintet. Degibri toured

with Hancock for three years (1999-2002) and later with drummer Al Foster for nearly a

decade. Between these gigs, Degibri settled in NYC. From the beginning of his tenure with

Hancock, he has also led his own groups, releasing multiple albums featuring collaborations

with leading American jazz musicians. For example, his 2010 release Israeli Song features

American jazz greats Brad Mehldau on piano, Ron Carter on bass, and Al Foster on drums. In

2011, Degibri moved back to Israel, where he continues to record and tour internationally with

an all-Israeli quartet. Since his return, Degibri has also taken an active role as a jazz educator

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and currently serves as the artistic director of the Red Sea International Jazz Festival (Degibri

2015).

Unusual for any jazz or even music community, the “Three Cohens”, as they are

known, are siblings: saxophonist and clarinetist Anat Cohen, trumpeter Avishai Cohen (not the

same person as the bassist), and saxophonist Yuval Cohen. Each Cohen sibling has established

a thriving independent career. Together, their collaborative ensemble, the “3 Cohens”, has also

generated international acclaim as suggested by their feature on the cover of Downbeat

magazine in January 2012. In 2005, Anat Cohen founded the artist owned Anzic records. The

label has been home to numerous releases by the Cohen siblings, the Israeli jazz ensemble

Third World Love, Eli Degibri, as well as such well-known American artists as Joel Frahm,

Daniel Freedman, and Jason Lindner (Cohen 2017).

Anat Cohen (b. 1975) has established herself as one of the leading woodwind players on

the international jazz scene today. She has released seven albums as a leader and multiple other

recordings as co-leader and sidewoman. Keeping an intense touring schedule, Cohen performs

in many of the world’s most prestigious jazz venues, festivals, and concert halls. Her

performances and recordings utilize a wide array of sources, including jazz, Israeli songs from

the SLI, and Brazilian choro.

Trumpeter Avishai Cohen (b. 1978) has released nine albums under his own name,

including two recent recordings, Into The Silence (2016) and Cross My Palm With Silver

(2017) with the prestigious European label ECM. He is widely acclaimed to be one of the most

versatile and virtuosic jazz trumpet players of his generation. Therefore, he is also a much

sought after sideman for projects covering a wide range of styles, from straight-ahead, modern

and free jazz to fused styles that draw upon Israeli and Middle-Eastern influences.

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After a stint in the US, studying at Berklee College of Music and living in NYC,

saxophonist Yuval Cohen (b. 1973) returned to Israel to establish himself as one of the leading

performers, arrangers, composers, and educators of jazz in Israel. His albums showcase a

proclivity towards modern jazz and the influence of the SLI (Cohen 2015).

Another prominent “second wave” Israeli jazz player, saxophonist Daniel Zamir (b.

1980) also arrived in NYC in the late 1990s and shortly thereafter recorded his debut album

Satlah (2000) on John Zorn’s record label Tzadik.35 Featuring saxophone, bass, and drums, the

album blends klezmer as well as post-Coltrane, free jazz sensibilities. Zamir’s numerous

releases followed suit advancing a similar artistic direction. After his return to Israel from the

US in the mid 2000s, Zamir established himself as the second best-selling jazz artist in Israel,

after Avishai Cohen, releasing a series of albums that presented a more accessible blend of

Chassidic, Klezmer, Israeli popular music, and modern jazz. His 2006 hit album Amen sold

over 10,000 hard copies, an unusually large number for a jazz album, revealing his crossover

appeal beyond jazz audiences. Zamir continues to release albums on both Tzadik and Israeli

labels.

Pianist Anat Fort (b. 1970) is also a late 1990s arrival in NYC. Unlike many of her

peers, who aimed to situate themselves right at the heart of the downtown scene centered at

Smalls, Fort first pursued an undergraduate degree in the jazz program at William Patterson

University, located in New Jersey. In 1996, she formed a New York based trio with two

American musicians - bassist Gary Wang and drummer Roland Schneider, a collaboration that

35 Tzadik is a record label founded by American-Jewish saxophonist John Zorn. The label is dedicated to presenting “avant garde and experimental music” with one prominent line of recordings focused on “Radical Jewish Culture”. According to the label’s website, the “Radical Jewish Culture” series presents “Jewish music beyond klezmer: adventurous recordings bringing Jewish identity and culture into the 21st century” (Tzadik, n.d.). For more about John Zorn and the Radical Jewish Culture movement of downtown NYC read ethnomusicologist Tamar Barzel’s recent book New York Noise (2015).

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continues to this day. Fort’s international breakthrough came after legendary drummer Paul

Motian recorded an album with her and shared the mixed tracks with Manfred Eicher, owner of

ECM. Eicher decided to release the album and to sign Fort to the label, making her the first

Israeli to appear in the label’s jazz line. Fort continues to record for ECM, and in addition to

her steady work with her trio she has recently collaborated with fellow ECM recording artist,

Italian woodwind player Gianluigi Trovesi (Fort 2015).

In 2002 bassist Omer Avital teamed up with trumpeter Avishai Cohen, pianist Yonatan

Avishai, and American drummer Daniel Freedman to form the ensemble Third World Love.

The ensemble enjoyed a highly successful decade of activity, establishing a tremendous

following in Israel, especially among young musicians. The ensemble released five albums and

had numerous performances worldwide. Throughout their tenure together, Third World Love

displayed an extraverted attempt to blend post Hard-Bop jazz sensibilities with Middle-Eastern

grooves and melodic themes.

The Third Wave

The past decade has seen an explosion in the number of Israeli jazz artists forging

careers on the international scene. The list is too long to include here in full, but a list of the

most prominent musicians would include: guitarists Gilad Hekselman, Yotam Silberstein,

Rotem Sivan, and Nadav Remez; pianists Omer Klein, Shai Maestro, Omri Mor, and Nitai

Hershkovitz; bassists Gilad Abro, Haggai Cohen Milo, and Or Bareket; drummrs Ziv Ravitz,

Amir Bresler, and Daniel Dor; flutists Hadar Noiberg and Itai Kriss; saxophonists Uri Gurvich,

Oded Tzur, Asaf Yuria, Jonathan Greenstein, and Amit Friedman; trumpeter Itamar Borochov.

Each of the artists listed above leads their own projects, serve as sidemen for a diverse array of

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collaborations, appear on numerous records (as leaders and sidemen), and maintain active and

sometimes busy touring schedules. In their effort to “play their own voice”, each of these

musicians blends a personal array of influences into their own distinctive style.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF JAZZ IN ISRAEL: 1930-1990

Whereas prominent First Wave artists - Cohen, Avital, Hoffman, and Lebovich - as well

as the many others who followed in their footsteps, have for twenty years made a mark on the

international jazz scene and established what has come to be considered by critics, fans, and

musicians alike a distinct “Israeli” sound, they didn’t emerge out of a vacuum. The foundations

for their emergence on the international scene were actually set in motion in prior decades via

more modest and local beginnings of jazz in Israel.

Notably, little has been written about jazz in pre-state Israel British Mandate Palestine

or during the earlier periods of Israel as a nation-state, in the late 1940s – 1980s, certainly

nothing in English. The one exception is a recently published book chapter, in Hebrew, by

musicologist Alona Sagee-Keren (2014). Sagee-Keren’s chapter provides some historical

background about ways in which globalized jazz music influenced the Israeli music scene and

established its roots in Israel.

According to Sagee-Keren the earliest seeds for jazz in Israel were likely planted with

the wave of Jewish immigrants coming from Central Europe in the middle part of the 1930s.

These immigrants had been exposed to various kinds of imported American jazz, by way of

visiting bands, recordings, and local musicians who imitated them. These immigrants arrived at

a time when the fairly new city of Tel Aviv was quickly becoming a cultural hub of what would

become Israel. Tel Aviv’s popular music scene, prevalent in theatres, cafes and hotels, was

characterized by various international trends including dance music such as the tango,

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charleston, and foxtrot. Often frequented by British soldiers, the Jewish musicians who

performed at these night spots, usually in small ensembles, played a repertoire which can be

characterized as “light popular music”, including Dixieland and swing inflected dance music.

The economic downturn that followed the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948

forced a reduction in ensemble sizes and a diminishing of swing music’s popularity. The waves

of immigrants that came to Israel from Central and Eastern Europe after WWII along with the

younger Jewish musicians born in Palestine became aware of the emerging be-bop language

through listening to American radio. As a result, this was the generation responsible for

introducing be-bop into Israel’s local musical landscape, albeit in small doses. According to

Sagee-Keren, while this period was primarily marked by small ensembles, there were also

several big band orchestras operating in Israel that included some jazz like pieces in their

repertoire.

During the 1950s, most of the musical activity was still centered in Tel Aviv.

Interestingly, bands performed commercial popular and dance music in hotels and cafes during

the earlier part of the evening, and then switched over to swing style jazz during the late hours

of the night. The 1950s also saw an influx of musicians immigrating to Israel from North

America. These musicians brought with them more direct knowledge of the jazz styles

prevalent in the United States. In the latter half of the 1950s several clubs hosted jam sessions,

which were mostly attended by students. The first jazz club opened in Israel in 1956 near the

American Zionist House in Tel Aviv. This location hosted a weekly jam session, had listening

lectures, and provided a space for ensembles to play and rehearse. Another important milestone

during the 1950s included the first appearances by well-known American jazz musicians,

including Lionel Hampton and Louis Armstrong (Sagee-Keren 2014).

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The 1960s saw an expansion of jazz activity in Israel. According to Dani Gottfried, who

is cited extensively in Sagee-Keren’s article, saxophonist Mel Keller, an American Jewish

immigrant, founded the new nation-state’s first regularly performing jazz ensemble in 1961.

Keller’s group, which included two other American immigrants and the Israeli born Gottfried

on piano, had a live weekly broadcast on Israeli national public radio (“Kol Israel”) and

performed educational jazz concerts across the country during the early part of the 1960s. The

1960s also saw several additional jazz clubs open their doors, including, most importantly “Bar

Barim”, which was founded by drummer Aharale Kaminsky in Tel Aviv. This club became a

hub for jazz activity until 1979.

The late 1960s and early 1970s also saw the advent of the first dedicated jazz recordings

in Israel. Saxophonist and arranger Stu HaCohen and vocalist Rimona Francis released two

vocal jazz albums in which be-bop was merged with Israeli songs and odd-metered Balkan time

signatures. The first album, released in 1969, included jazz arrangements of several Israeli

popular songs from the SLI, as well as, well-known jazz tunes, such as Paul Desmond’s “Take

Five” and Clifford Brown’s “Joy Spring”. It is interesting to note that even the earliest jazz

records in Israel pursued a fusion between American jazz styles and a differing folk tradition, in

the above case, the SLI and the rhythmic world from Bulgaria, HaCohen’s country of origin

(ibid).

This move toward transculturation was present in the first instrumental jazz album,

entitled Mezare Israel Yekabtzenu (trans. From Exile to Return), released by “The Jazz

Workshop” ensemble in 1972. This was not only the first instrumental album released in Israel,

but it was also the first example of an Israeli jazz album that blended indigenization of local

musical styles with American jazz. Led by pianist Dani Gottfried and saxophonist Albert

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Piamenta, the record featured jazz arrangements of Israeli songs and traditional folk melodies

from Jewish, Arab, and Armenian traditions. When I asked Gottfried about the transcultural

blends of today’s Israeli jazz artists, he maintained that, really, they were “already doing it”

back in the 1970s (Gottfried 2015). Indeed, to a certain extent he is right. The impulse and the

explorations were already happening, much as they were in other places around the world at the

same time.36 However, when listening to the 1971 release, the sounds reveal a dramatic

difference as compared to the work of today’s Israeli jazz artists.

By comparison, today’s creations more often than not reflect the individual artist’s

integrated voice, which has matured over time, through the particular blend of disparate

influences into a personal expression. This personal sound then manifests primarily through

original compositions but also through arrangements of various existing materials. In contrast,

one hears in the arrangements in Mezare Israel Yekabtzenu, a coarser result achieved through

collage and juxtaposition between various middle-eastern sonic vocabularies and American

jazz swing and blues vocabularies. Thus, while Mezare deserves its place as the “first” instance

of indigenization, it is not necessarily an influential predecessor for today’s explorations. This

is doubly true as the recording went out of print long before the aforementioned generation of

Cohen and Avital came of age, and thus had little influence on their music making or artistic

visions.

Sagee-Keren argues that the 1970s, too, was an important decade. On the one hand, jazz

had established roots in Israel by the 1970s, with a dedicated following, and an emerging

stream of young musicians. At the same time, Sagee-Keren maintains that the local scene

suffered from diminishing activity during this decade, partly as a result of the October 1973

36 For wide ranging global examples of indigenization in jazz read E. Taylor Atkins Blue Nippon (2001) and Jazz Planet (2003) and Philip V. Bohlman’s and Goffredo Plastino’s Jazz Worlds/World of Jazz (2016).

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War and its consequences: economic slowdown, political turmoil, decline in morale and

general post-war malaise. Also, in the second half of the 1970s, many of the leading younger

musicians moved overseas to pursue studies and further their careers abroad. Still, the 1970s

also saw a new set of immigrants arrive in Israel from the Soviet Union, which included several

notable jazz musicians: woodwind player and arranger Roman Kuntzman and pianist-composer

Nachum Pereferkovich. Shortly after his arrival in Israel, Kuntzman teamed up with leading

drummer Aharale Kaminsky to form the very influential band Platina, which was founded in

1971. The ensemble was originally conceived as a back-up band for well-known Israeli popular

music singer Arik Einstein, but it actually dedicated itself to performing jazz and various types

of jazz-rock fusion. The band stayed active until 1976 with its pinnacle achievement a 1974

appearance at the famous Newport Jazz Festival (Sagee-Keren 2015).

Within Israel’s local jazz world, the 1980s was a period of time that can be said to have

very directly laid the foundations for the emergence of the aforementioned First Wave of Israeli

jazz musicians internationally. The decade’s importance is attributed to the increased

institutionalization of formal jazz education, the creation of international jazz festivals in Israel

and to an increased appetite by Israeli jazz musicians to seek further education in the US.

Musicians such as saxophonist Amikam Kimelman and later flutist Ilan Salem felt that in order

to play jazz they had to go to the “source”: the United States. Salem conveys this exact notion

while also comparing it to the remarkable difference that today’s Israeli jazz musician faces:

I really went there without knowing anything. [It’s different for] the guys that go today…take my son Hillel for example. Hillel went at a level where he already knows the music and knows how to play it. He can already join ensembles and play. So, you see the young guys, to a certain extent, don’t go to study, they go to make a career. They don’t need to study, what will they teach them there? You understand? But, I really went there to study, to understand the language. What are these phrases, you know. I came to Berklee and heard: What the fuck [are] you’re playing. (originally in

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English)…Its not that I didn’t play. I played here (ed: in Israel) before I went…we were playing jazz, standards, and all, but I was playing by ear and I had no clue what I was doing. No clue. And I wasn’t really playing the language, just the sounds here and there. (Salem 2015)

When musicians such as Kimelman and Salem returned from the US to Israel, they brought

back with them the knowledge and experience gained during their studies and gigging. And,

perhaps not entirely unrelated, around the same period of time, towards the end of the 1980s, in

what now can be seen as pivotal events in the history of jazz in Israel, jazz became

institutionalized in Israel in a few important schools and through creation of the Red Sea Jazz

Festival.

THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF JAZZ IN ISRAEL

Formal Education: High School and Post-Secondary Programs

High School Programs

Among the most important initiatives in development of jazz in Israel was the founding

in 1987 of the jazz program at the Thelma Yellin Arts High School in the Tel Aviv suburb of

Givatayim. Thelma Yellin had already been long established as the most prominent arts high

school in the country, a place to which talented kids in all the arts disciplines (music, dance,

visual, cinema, theater) gravitated. But prior to 1987, the music department only focused on

Western Art Music. As we will see, following the creation of its jazz program it has produced a

very high percentage of Israel’s jazz musicians.

It was jazz educator Opher Brayer who along with Eli Benacot (who had studied at

Berklee) pioneered the establishment of Thelma Yellin’s jazz program. It emerged quite

organically, as a response to the needs of students who did not feel satisfied with the school’s

classical music focus--these students wanted to improvise and make other kinds of music.

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Brayer, who had taken a correspondence course with Berklee, and Benacot created a program

that modeled itself after Berklee’s curriculum but applied it to the high school setting (Regev

2015).

Trombonist and jazz educator Yossi Regev, who has been serving as the director of the

jazz program at Thelma Yellin since 1994, describes the vision that guided the establishment of

the program:

The important invention of this program, when it was created around 1987-1988, is that it didn’t orient itself around the students’ age, but rather their abilities…Brayer and Benacot adopted many things from Berklee…they created a program that is generally designed for students above the age of 20 but applied it to 15 year old students…its like I always say, if you don’t tell the kid how hard something is, he doesn’t know. (ibid)

Indeed, in scope and breadth, this high school program is essentially equivalent to a large North

American undergraduate jazz program. This rigorous training that Israeli jazz musicians receive

in their teens helps explain the strong foundations they possess as well as the success so many

achieved on the international scene (ibid).

In the Israeli version of an arts high school like Thelma Yellin, students matriculate in

all the standard subjects like their national peers, but in addition spend approximately twenty

hours a week studying music related courses. At present, there are approximately 70-75

students enrolled in the program spanning grades 9-12. Since its inception, the faculty roster at

Thelma Yellin’s jazz program has consistently included some of the leading jazz

musicians/educators residing in Israel. According to the department’s website, its current roster

of instructors includes, among many others: Erez Barnoy, Yuval Cohen, Ilan Salem, and Daniel

Zamir. The late Amit Golan (d. 2010) and Amos Hoffman, who moved back to the US in 2014,

both were mainstays during the 2000s at Thelma Yellin. Director Yossi Regev also notes that

every year he has brought in special guests to lead some of the ensembles, including great

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singer/songwriters such as the legendary and influential Matti Caspi or Arkadi Duchkin (Regev

2015).

Here is a brief overview of the Thelma Yellin curriculum, which is modeled after

Berklee’s and has stayed fairly consistent since its early days. All students take four years of an

integrated harmony/arranging course. As a final project for each year, the students compose a

chart: grades 9 and 10 arrange a chart for 4 horns, grade 11 for 5/6 horns, and in grade 12 each

student prepares a big band chart. All students also study four years of improvisation (the

improvisation instructor rotates every year to allow for different perspectives to be shared with

students), ear training, and jazz history. And, each student participates in two ensembles, of

varying sizes, per academic year. There are twenty ensembles each year, including a Big Band,

a vocal jazz ensemble, and a salsa band (Regev 2015).

Thelma Yellin’s notable alumni list reads as a Who’s Who of Israel’s jazz scene, as

many of the most well-known Israeli jazz artists are graduates. Among them are: Yonatan

Avishai (piano), Omer Avital (bass), Amir Bresler (drums), Anat Cohen (woodwinds), Avishai

Cohen (trumpet), Yuval Cohen (sax), Eli Degibri (sax), Daniel Dor (drums), Gilad Hekselman

(guitar), Shai Maestro (piano), Haggai Cohen Milo (bass), Reut Regev (trombone), Gilad

Ronen (sax), Ilan Salem (flute), Jonathan Voltzok (trombone), Asaf Yuria (sax), and Daniel

Zamir (sax) (ibid).

In the 1990s, following the model set forth by Thelma Yellin, several more high schools

created specialized jazz programs, most notably Yigal Alon High School for the Arts in the Tel

Aviv suburb of Ramat Hasharon and Ironi Aleph High School in Tel Aviv. Though these

schools have smaller jazz programs, they too featured faculty rosters with leading musicians,

and have produced some notable alumni. For example, Yigal Alon High School has among its

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noted alumni, Gilad Abro (bass), Yaron Herman (piano), Yotam Silberstein (guitar), Doron

Tirosh (drums) and me. The last decade has seen continued growth of jazz departments or jazz

divisions within high school music programs across the country, including in locations that are

farther away from Tel Aviv. This has allowed more students across the country to study jazz at

the high school level and matriculate nationally with a jazz concentration.

Post-Secondary Programs

In 1985, the Rimon School for Jazz and Contemporary Music was established in the

affluent Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Hasharon to provide training for post secondary level

students.37 In 2013 it changed its name to the Rimon School for Music. Founded by young

musicians Guri Agmon, Gil Dor, Yehuda Eder, and Ilan Mochiah, Rimon quickly became a

learning center from which many of Israel’s leading jazz musicians emerged (Kimelman

2015).38 Saxophonist, arranger, and composer Amikam Kimelman has been serving as

Rimon’s academic director since 1990. He played a key role in developing its vision and

curriculum, as well as establishing its wide ranging partnerships in Israel and with institutions

overseas. Kimelman was recruited to join the faculty at Rimon around 1987, very shortly after

returning from years in the US studying at Berklee College of Music as well as living and

performing in NYC (Kimelman 2015).

In our interview, Kimelman spoke about designing Rimon’s curriculum and vision

based on the education he received in Berklee. Furthermore, utilizing his connections with 37 Though Rimon is widely considered the first influential post-secondary jazz program in the country, it was actually not the first post-secondary institution to open a jazz program in Israel. The Jerusalem Academy opened its jazz program in 1980 (Sagee-Keren 2015). 38 In the broader context of Israel’s music scene, it is also important to note Rimon’s central position as a hub from which many leading singer/songwriters as well as popular music arrangers/composers emerged. In fact, during its entire existence, the vast majority of its students have not been jazz musicians but rather musicians aspiring to make a career in various popular music genres. However, in the context of this research project, I focus on its important role as a post-secondary institution for jazz studies.

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Berklee, he established in 1993 an accredited collaboration with it through which Rimon

became part of the Berklee International Network (BIN). This allows graduates of Rimon who

wish to transfer to Berklee’s Boston campus to carry over their core area credits and shorten the

time it takes them to complete their degree there. Many Israeli musicians have pursued this

option often receiving generous scholarships. Over the years, Rimon has established a strong

reputation at Berklee for the caliber of students it sends over. In subsequent years, Rimon also

established reciprocal relationships with schools in Ireland and Spain that belong to the

international network. As a result, Rimon even has a small group of foreign students enrolled in

its BIN program. According to Kimelman, these students are often drawn to the possibility of

completing Berklee accredited courses at a much more affordable institution with a more

affordable cost of living (ibid).

Rimon has also established curriculur partnerships with some of the leading high school

jazz programs in Israel, Thelma Yellin chief among them, such that high school graduates from

these programs can waive some of the Rimon degree requirements. Kimelman refers to the path

followed by the many jazz musicians who complete their high school studies, continue on to

Rimon, and then transfer to Berklee as the “Thelma Yellin-Rimon-Berklee express”.

In the 1990s Rimon grew from a small school that enrolled approximately thirty

students into the “Berklee” of Israel with a student body that averages 500. The school now

comprises six departments and offers 250 courses and multiple ensembles all dedicated to

teaching a wide range of musical styles from jazz to various forms of “world music” to an array

of popular music idioms. The interaction that takes place as a result of the school’s diverse

offerings has led to many successful projects and collaborations (Kimelman 2015).

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In 2012, Rimon established the Jazz Institute, a small “elite” two-year program that

enrolls approximately thirty students per year. This new program focuses on helping its

students build profiles as versatile performers/composers/arrangers who are proficient with

technology. The program is deliberately open stylistically, drawing on popular idioms as well

as jazz, and includes a broad range of courses designed to develop strong skills in arranging,

composing, and improvisation (ibid).

In 2002, in what would become another important marker in the growth of jazz

education in Israel, pianist and educator Amit Golan established the jazz youth program at the

Tel Aviv Conservatory. By 2005 there were already ninety students studying in the program

and teachers included saxophonist Erez Barnoy, guitarist/oudist Amos Hoffman, trumpeter

Danny Rosenfeld, drummers Shay Zelman and Doron Tirosh, along with Golan. Four years

later, Golan and Michal Abramov established the Center for Jazz Studies at the Tel Aviv

Conservatory, as a partnership with the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in

NYC.39 The Center for Jazz Studies offers students a four-year Bachelors of Arts degree from

the New School that begins with two years of study in Israel followed by two years in NYC.

According to current director of the Center, Erez Barnoy, many of the leading Israeli graduates

receive the highest scholarships when they arrive at the New School, and from there establish

themselves in the NYC scene. Current faculty members at the Center for Jazz Studies include

many of the leading jazz musicians living in Israel, such as: Gilad Abro, Erez Barnoy, Yuval

Cohen, Ofer Ganor, Avi Leibovich, Omri Mor, Ilan Salem, Jonathan Voltzok, Daniel Zamir,

and Shay Zelman (Barnoy 2015).

39 Golan drew his inspiration for the center from the education model created by American saxophonist Arnie Lawrence who founded the New School University’s jazz program (The Center for Jazz Studies n.d.). Incidentally, Lawrence who moved to Israel in 1997 and died in 2005 was cited by several of my interloctours for being a highly influential educator and mentor in their lives.

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A few years ago, saxophonist Daniel Zamir was recruited to serve as the academic

director of a new post-secondary jazz program called Mizmor located approximately an hour

south of Tel Aviv. It is no coincidence that Zamir, who is the only prominent religiously

orthodox Jewish jazz musician with a following among both secular and religious communities,

was tasked with the challenge of opening this program. He has become a singularly important

figure for young aspiring religious musicians in Israel, who see in him a role model proving

(against criticisms from within the religious community) that one can be an orthodox Jew and a

jazz musician at the same time.

Mizmor was founded in 2010 with the mission of catering primarily to the religious

Jewish population in Israel and so providing a musical education that also accommodates for its

students’ religious beliefs and traditions (Mandel 2010). Fifty students enrolled in the first year

of existence and the school has been thriving since, with some of the leading jazz musicians in

the country on its faculty roster. Thus, in just a few years there has been a growing involvement

with jazz music by certain segments of the religious Jewish sector in Israel (Zamir 2015).

The founding and success of Mizmor is clearly more than a teaching job for Zamir, as it

aligns with his deeper aspirations to make inroads for creative music making among the

religious Jewish community and gain acceptance within it. Since Mizmor has only been around

for a few years, it is still too early to fully gauge its impact on the availability and interest in

jazz among Israel’s more pious Jews but Zamir is pleased with the early results:

There’s high demand for enrollment, and what has happened as a result are many things that didn’t previously exist in the religious world … [such as] types of music and styles of music that folks invented here. All sorts of combinations and blends, and things they are doing that didn’t exist [before]. All sorts of singers and instrumentalists that simply didn’t exist before Mizmor. It’s remarkable. We have basically created a real change in the perceptions of music in the religious world, but not only in perceptions, but in actuality in terms of what the religious sector produces. We have turned it

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upside down. We have invented something here that didn’t exist in history: A women’s only salsa ensemble. In two weeks, we will have a show for women only at Haezor (ed. jazz club in Tel Aviv) of a salsa band made up only of women. And there’s a woman here who has an ensemble combining Yemenite music with Afro-Cuban music with her father’s melodies from home…things that didn’t exist. Religious jazz players! Players that are influenced not by Charlie Parker and Miles Davis, but more so by Avishai Cohen, an entire scene of this sort. It’s very hard work but it’s very fulfilling. (Zamir 2015)

In addition to Mizmor, this surprising interest the religious sector has in jazz is also

manifest in a “musical yeshiva” that is affiliated with the Bnei Akiva youth movement, called

Kinor David (trans. David’s harp) and located at the Jewish Settlement of Ateret in the

occupied Palestinian West Bank territory. A yeshiva is a Jewish religious educational

institution for male secondary and/or post-secondary students. According to the Kinor David

website, there are currently 140 high school aged students living and studying at this boarding

school program (Kinor David n.d.). Their studies combine religious with musical studies.

Students majoring in music matriculate through completion of national examinations. Several

interlocutors who serve as examiners on these high school final exams reported their surprise,

indeed astonishment, at the level of musicianship displayed by Kinor David students in recent

years (Barnoy 2015; Sagee-Keren 2015).

As of the year 2017, there are four post-secondary jazz programs (Rimon, Tel Aviv

Conservatory, Jerusalem Academy, Mizmor) and jazz training is available in many high

schools. Still, it is worth noting that the vast majority of internationally successful Israeli jazz

musicians have emerged via the very particular path of a Tel Aviv area high school (most likely

Thelma Yellin) through one of the two prominent post-secondary programs (Rimon or Tel

Aviv Conservatory) and on to the US. Furthermore, the vast majority of these musicians come

from upwardly mobile Israeli families who live in the Tel Aviv or Jerusalem area. Indeed,

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access to this type of extraordinary education in jazz, which entails extra fees, if not tuition, is

topic of heated debate as is virtually every other aspect of education in Israel. Children growing

up in what is known as the peripheria, in provincial towns and villages located far away from

the cities and nearby suburbs of Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, whether in the north or south, and thus

are far from the centers of power and opportunity in Israel, have much less opportunity for

specialized jazz training and, according to many critics, top level education in general.

Such restricted access is even more acute for the non-Jewish population in Israel, a

segment of the population that makes up nearly 20%. The education system for Palestinians

living within Israel as Israeli citizens is almost exclusively segregated and severely

underfunded. At present, there are no jazz programs in Arab towns or villages.

Within the Jewish population living in the peripheria, however, there are exceptions to

the norm of minimal jazz education. Some students with the means to do so travel at great

lengths to go to one of these elite high school programs. For example saxophonist Amit

Friedman would wake up every morning at 5am to travel from the southern town of Ashdod to

Thelma Yellin, a journey that normally would take an hour by car and two hours using public

transit. But Friedman was the exception in his determination and ability to pursue such training:

Say you want to learn jazz in Ashdod, you can’t…same thing in the north, occasionally there’s some nut who’s into it and will build something, but it doesn’t really happen, and I’m not talking about Eilat, or Beer Sheva or Dimona (ed: southern towns even further away from the center), it simply doesn’t exist and it’s ridiculous. You know it’s not the provinciality of the US, this is a provinciality of a 40 minute, one hour drive, from the finest teachers. I teach now at Tel Mond, and now things have reversed a bit, but when I started teaching, I tried to convince parents of talented students to travel to Ra’anana or Kfar Saba, [towns] that are you know just across the road, and it wasn’t an option, you understand? (Friedman 2015)

In some small measure, this geographical limitation is being addressed through the recent

increase of jazz programs in high schools and conservatories in towns in the north and south of

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the country that previously did not have them. This has also led to a growing number of

students coming from areas that are further away from Tel Aviv who enroll and travel to do

their studies at the Tel Aviv Conservatory and travel great distances (by Israeli standards) on a

weekly basis to pursue their studies, as Erez Barnoy notes:

What happened is that folks like pianist Nitai Hershkovitz, saxophonist Lior Piterstein and pianist Hila Kulik came here from Mizra (ed. a village in the north) every week after they finished their studies there and folks started coming from all over the country…from Beer Sheva. This year, for example, we have students from Zichron Yaakov (ed: a town near Haifa, an hour north of Tel Aviv), from Haifa. People come here once a week. They get on the train, they make the whole way. I know that in Toronto this sounds like very little, but in Israel for a fifteen year old to decide that they’re going to go all the way to Tel Aviv because that’s the place to study jazz is kind of crazy, and this has become a hysterical place for jazz studies. (Barnoy 2015)

Though such developments seem to signal an increasing willingness of young Israelis to travel

greater distances to advance their studies, it does not mean that there has been a shift in

accessibility of jazz education for students from lower socio-economic backgrounds. This is

particularly true of those who live in towns and villages that are far from Tel Aviv or who

belong to the most underprivileged segments of Israeli society, namely orthodox Jews and

Palestinian citizens of Israel.

The Red Sea Jazz Festival40

Another important institution established in the late 1980s that has had a tremendous

impact on the development of the jazz scene in Israel is the International Red Sea Jazz Festival.

The event takes place over four days in late August in the port area of the southern-most city of

Israel, Eilat, which sits right on the Red Sea. The festival was established in 1987 by pianist

40 A second important festival, The Tel Aviv Jazz Festival started in 1991. The festival was originally known as “Jazz, Blues, Videotape”, taking place every February for a few days in Tel Aviv’s Cinemataque (ed. a cinema house for independent and art films) (Weiss 2017).

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Dani Gottfried, and has become a staple among the world’s top tier of international jazz

festivals. However, as Gottfried recounts, it came about largely by way of circumstance:

Folks were looking to do something in Eilat. The mayor said to the Ministry of Culture: “there’s nothing going on, do something”. So someone came from an organization called “Tarbut La’am” (trans. Culture for the People) and said maybe we should do a jazz festival. They gave me a call and asked me if I was willing to help out…and I also invented the name, I thought there’s the North Sea Jazz Festival, I can take a ride on that name and call it the Red Sea Jazz Festival. We started very modestly because there was no money. I had a budget of $25,000 for foreign artists in the first festival and I went with this to the US. So, of course, I went only to Jewish musicians, I went to Jews, all sorts of guys that I already knew, like Mel Lewis may he rest in peace and the Brecker Brothers, Red Rodney, all sorts of folks that had already been to Israel and that I knew a bit. I told them, we want to do a festival but there’s no money, only enough to cover travel expenses and accommodation. Come, do it for Zionism! Everyone came, and that’s how the first festival started which already had some really big names. (Gottfried 2015)

Also key to realizing the festival was Gottfried’s pairing with producer Avi Yifrah. It was, in

fact, Yifrah who came up with the idea for an industrial, open-air festival concept situated at

the Eilat port, right on the water, using stacks of the ZIM company’s massive shipping

containers to create buffers between stages. All performances are outdoors, going deep into the

night, followed by an all-night jam session at one of the large local hotels. Masterclasses and

workshops are held during the day. Each of the four nights has approximately ten shows

divided onto four stages, with two stages operating and two stages “resting” at any given

moment. Tickets are purchased by the day or as packages for the entire event, and so movement

between shows is free flowing and flexible (Gottfried 2015).

Over the years the Red Sea Festival has hosted many of the world’s leading jazz

musicians, while simultaneously providing an important platform for Israeli artists. Indeed,

Gottfried intimated to me that it was a high priority for him to ensure equal representation for

Israeli artists. Every year, there is a 50/50 split between local and foreign artists. Gottfried

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speaks about establishing this basic framework with its organizers in advance of the first

festival:

I said, on principle, an equal number of Israeli and foreign bands. To give Israelis a stage…we’re doing an international jazz festival, it’s a platform. You can come later and say, I played in the same festival as Randy Brecker and all the greats that played there. I told them, we’ll do this on principle, this is how it’ll work. (ibid)

Gottfried notes that every year he receives around one hundred artist submissions for the ten

slots available to local artists. He believes this alone led to tremendous growth of activity in the

local jazz scene:

Just by virtue of the fact that you have a hundred submissions that means that there is activity on the ground. In order to submit, after all, even those that weren’t the most serious had to get into the studio, they had to prepare, they had to record, they had to think about what they were going to do. And those that were more serious did much more serious work and so on and so forth. So it really was a very important platform. (ibid)

As with any institution and its leadership, the festival and Gottfried received their share

of criticism on issues ranging from low pay for local musicians, to favoritism of certain artists

over others, to matters of program content and orientation. According to Gottfried, some Israeli

artists complained about being scheduled on the small stages. Gottfried acknowledges that this

is the reality, citing that the economics were such that the biggest draws of the festival remain

the well-known foreign artists, and this dictates a certain hierarchy in terms of stage sizes and

time slots. According to Gottfried, ensuring the financial viability and survival of the festival

also necessitated that the festival be eclectic and diverse stylistically, ensuring that “every

person can find in it something that he loves, from New Orleans to Latin to ethnic jazz” (ibid).

These criticisms aside, now nearly thirty years after its establishment, the Red Sea

festival remains an annual destination for many jazz musicians and fans alike, and has

established a prestigious reputation internationally. It sold approximately 70,000 tickets

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annually in its heyday during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Gottfried no longer serves as

artistic director, and in recent years the festival has been curated by leading Israeli jazz artists

such as Avishai Cohen (bass) and presently by saxophonist Eli Degibri.

A close examination of the 1998 Red Sea Jazz Festival program provides evidence of

increased visibility for musical efforts to “localize” jazz in Israel. Not coincidentally, 1998 was

also the fifty-year anniversary of the creation of the State of Israel and the founding of the city

of Eilat. The program notes from the 1998 festival indicate that the concerts by Israeli

musicians and ensembles were curated with these celebrations in mind, aiming to showcase the

diversity and vitality of Israeli musical activity in the preceding fifty years. For example, the

Israeli Air-Force Big Band with American jazz greats Michael Brecker and Dave Liebman as

special guests presented a concert featuring swinging arrangements of Israeli songs. Pianist

Nachum Pereferkovich, vocalist Ricki Manor, and saxophonist Albert Piamenta led a band

presenting fresh arrangements of texts derived from the biblical “Song of Songs”; guitarist

Meir Ben Michael led a band presenting hard-bop arrangements of Jewish-Moroccan piyyutim

(Lemish and Globerman 1998). 1998 also marks the year that Avishai Cohen’s debut album

Adama appeared – the first internationally released album by an Israeli artist that showcases the

blend of local influences with the global influences of jazz and Afro-Cuban music. These

examples of the various Israeli jazz artists interested in transcultural fusion appearing at the

Red Sea Jazz Festival reveal that while Avishai Cohen and his internationally successful

counterparts may have benefitted from wide ranging credit in Israel and overseas for initiating

such a wave, their interest in blend was very much in line with existing trends and trajectories

in the broader Israeli jazz scene in Israel.

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THE WAVE OF RETURN, AND THE BACK AND FORTH

The last fifteen years have seen a process in which leading Israeli jazz musicians re-

establish strong connections with Israel after having successfully established themselves

internationally. Many Israeli jazz musicians continue to feel a deep connection to their

homeland and choose to return to Israel. Many do so permanently, in their view, so they can be

closer to family, seek Israeli partners with whom they might raise a family, be at greater ease

culturally and/or, simply, return in order to enjoy the comforts of home. Indeed, this is not

necessarily as dramatic as it may appear at first sight, as some artists who have a strong

international presence find that they can live anywhere and continue to tour. In fact, with

venues in Europe providing much of what many of today’s professionals describe as best work

for jazz musicians, Israel becomes an easier and financially preferable central base from which

to travel:

I knew when I was eighteen that I wanted to go through this journey (ed. of moving to the US) only to return to Israel. The day I understood that I can manage my career from a tent in Africa so to speak as long as there is an airport near by it was my cue to return. (Degibri 2015)

Several of these musicians noted that they put in their time in the “jazz capital of the world” or,

in more metaphorical language, paid their dues and cut their teeth. More conceptually, several

affirmed that they have established the kind of career and opportunities they longed for and/or

accomplished the kind of learning they had hoped for, and having done so they return home to

Israel. While each individual’s story is different, collectively, some of the leading figures in

Israeli jazz have returned home. This trend is exemplified by bassist Avishai Cohen, who has

resided in Israel since the mid-2000s. Avi Lebovich returned in 2003; Daniel Zamir in 2006

and Eli Degibri in 2011.

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A second approach was taken by Amos Hoffman, who returned to live in Israel for

almost 15 years between 1999-2014 but recently returned to the US. Similarly, Omer Avital,

spent several years in Israel during the 2000s before moving back to NYC.

Yet a third approach has been adopted by many leading Israeli jazz musicians who

continue to live abroad but return to Israel several times a year, sometimes for extended periods

of time. Saxophonist and director of the Center for Jazz Studies at the Tel Aviv Conservatory,

Erez Barnoy, conveys the tenor of this approach:

Tons of musicians go back and forth, in numerous ways. First, Israeli musicians, even if they live in New York, feel compelled to visit home, some stay here for entire summers. They are home-sick and hummus-sick... They continue to be a part of the community here even when they are not physically present. I think that this homey aspect of the community is strong. There’s no way that the guys will come back for a visit and that they won’t go to Beit Hamudim (ed. jazz club) or come to the Conservatory to do a workshop, or come to hang with the students here. (Barnoy 2015)

For many of the musicians who did not move back to Israel, the pull of home, family, and

community is often still very strong, as is the potential for on-going professional collaborations.

As Barnoy notes, their visits are usually accompanied by concerts, impromptu performances at

jam sessions, workshops, and masterclasses. These return visits by established musicians, who

are operating in the US and Europe at the cutting edge of these various jazz scenes, nourish the

Israeli scene. The returning musicians bring back the energy, experience, and knowledge they

have gained, share it with fellow musicians, students, and audiences in Israel.

This massive “return wave” has had tremendous ripple effects on the scene in Israel,

especially in the formal and informal education younger musicians receive. Indeed, the return

of these musicians was cited by many of the individuals I interviewed as the leading reason for

the explosion of jazz talent emerging out of Israel in the last two decades. As noted, musicians

of the First Wave, such as Cohen, Avital, Hoffman, Degibri and Lebovich, spent a decade

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cutting their teeth in the still “old school” scene of NYC, proving themselves in jam sessions,

performing as sidemen with the leading jazz musicians of the time, and carving out careers for

themselves as band leaders. On their return to Israel, they shared their knowledge, experience,

and musicianship directly, through lessons and workshops, and indirectly by performing in

local clubs and venues. The impact of their return was acknowledged to be of paramount

importance by later waves of the younger generation of musicians now establishing themselves

in NYC.

New York-based guitarist Rotem Sivan, who arrived in NYC in 2008 and belongs to

the Third Wave, talks about going to listen to these returning musicians while he was still

living and studying in Israel:

The first generation, Omer Avital, Amos Hoffman, Ofer Ganor, all those guys that were here (ed. NYC) in the 1990s, learned the music profoundly. So, then, my generation that grew up in Israel basically studied with them. I remember in 2007 going to hear Amos Hoffman play at Taza Doro (ed: Israeli jazz club), and every once in a while Eli Degibri would come by and sit in. And these guys would visit or would be passing through, and Omer Avital is in Tel Aviv playing trio with Omri Mor. It’s crazy. So, it seems to me that my generation, that moved to NY around 2008/9, we had a very strong foundation in the roots of the music, because they studied it from the roots. They weren’t messing around, you know. So, when they taught us, they showed us things from the foundation; the be-bop, the language, with an emphasis on harmony and on transcription, to really learn the music. I think this is one of the reasons that many Israeli players have a really strong foundation and a deep knowledge of the language from its roots. (Sivan 2015)

Amit Friedman has similar recollections:

First and foremost it was going to listen to Amos Hoffman and Shay Zelman which is that exact generation that came back and I believe really revolutionized things here…[Amos] Hoffman was a real figure, a role model, you know to go hear him play, and it’s connected to Amit Golan who told me “go listen to Amos play” and it had to do with a new spirit that they brought, it was a new spirit to hear those guys play, they brought something new that hadn’t been here before…[You’d] hope that they will let you play a tune, and then gradually they call you to sit in, call you to play the gig, and then, you

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know, from there, it took a little bit of time, but from there they become folks that I can call for a gig. (Friedman 2015)

Like Sivan and Friedman, many other musicians cited Amos Hoffman’s importance to their

development. Hoffman, who moved back to Israel in 1999, was one of the first musicians who

returned, maintaining a very active performance and teaching schedule in Israel. Guitarist Gilad

Hekselman, whose meteoric rise internationally has positioned him as one of today’s most

followed young jazz guitarists in the world, speaks about the multiple ways in which Hoffman

was an important figure in his development:

Beyond the fact that he showed me the foundation of what it is to play jazz on guitar, he did two additional things that I greatly appreciate. First, he supported me wholeheartedly and with a fervor from the first time he heard me. Right after that, I was like his brother. He made me feel that I was good, that I have something to offer…and he also showed me a little bit of what it means to be a working musician, the attitude, how to behave, what’s right to do, what’s not right, and just from going to see him play. I would go to hear him play every Friday at Taza Doro. They would play in the afternoon and he would always call me to sit in. He was really, really supportive. (Hekselman 2015)

Hekselman’s story is not unique and was echoed by several other interlocutors. They all noted

that this type of informal, cross-generational education and support on the bandstand and

through the related “hang times” are undoubtedly as important, if not more important, than any

formal education transmitted in lessons or institutions.

Saxophonist Erez Barnoy speaks more broadly about the phenomenon of these

returning musicians:

And Amit Golan also returned to Israel, and little by little, Amit Golan especially, because he’s a really important figure and in every fiber of his being he was a jazz educator, jazz messenger, jazz warrior, and he was so strong and dominant, so sweeping and he really brought this full force ahead, this new wind as we experienced it in NY, that first guys get to know the heroes, how it started, what it’s like to play with spirit, and he really influenced the entire generation, and I think it influenced their success in the world, because the Brecker-types, Europe knows how to produce, no

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problem, and Asia knows how to produce, no problem, but I think that the guys that came here with so much inside their playing, so much of that sound, the guys that came back, you know, even Avishai Cohen the bassist is back so to speak, lives here, and Omer Avital came here for two years and taught at the Jerusalem Academy, and Amos Hoffman came back and so many guys that were there, Yonatan Riklis who teaches here and Yuval Cohen who came back…Shay Zelman that came back from that scene in NY, so we slowly got connected lots of guys that really heard the music ear to ear. (Barnoy 2015)

Barnoy emphasizes the importance of people like pianist Amit Golan, Amos Hoffman, Ofer

Ganor, and Shay Zelman, a group of musicians who all shared a great deal of reverence for the

American straight ahead jazz tradition, imparted this type of respect and admiration to their

students, and taught them to play the music in a way that was deeply indebted to the be-bop and

hard-bop eras. All four musicians returned from stints in NY in the late 1990s. Of the four, only

Amos Hoffman established an international career, but many of the musicians I interviewed

attribute the strong foundations and success that Israelis have had in the American jazz scene to

the education they received formally and informally from the circle of musicians that

surrounded pianist and educator Amit Golan. They emphasized learning jazz in a way that was

even more narrowly focused on be-bop and hard bop than the equivalent American jazz

programs of the same time.41 Note also that when Barnoy refers to bringing a new “spirit” in

this context he is also relating to the fact that up until this point, Israel’s jazz education was

highly influenced and modeled after the Berklee College of Music educational approach as was

evident in the preceding discussion about Thelma Yellin High School and Rimon.

Gilad Hekselman elaborates on Amit Golan’s importance and alludes to the sometimes

heavy-handed manner in which Golan and his contemporaries sought to advance their view of

the music:

41 Since the 1980s and 1990s, American school programs were deeply influenced by the post-Coltrane Michael Brecker/Dave Liebman/Jerry Bergonzi Berklee School of Music educational approach that promoted more chromatic and virtuosic playing.

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Amit exposed me to music that I had never heard before. In our first high school jazz history course, he said the name Miles Davis and I had no clue who that was. He mentioned Louis Armstrong and it sounded a little bit familiar. That was when I was 14, 15 years old and I feel I owe him, even though he also forced his own musical taste on us. But when I think back to it, it was a good thing. Because it’s really easy to fall in love with Chick Corea and The Mahavishnu Orchestra when you’re a kid. But no one comes to you and says - listen to Sonny Clark, go check out Horace Silver and Horace Parlan. These are names that many folks who grew up in the US have never heard of. You tell them Horace Parlan and they don’t know who that is. Amit exposed us to many things and I am really happy that he did. I came from fusion, so I automatically went to Chick Corea and to Mahavishnu and all sorts. But if it wasn’t for Amit then its possible that I would have never heard this music and that would have been a great loss for me. (Hekselman 2015)

Hekselman talks here about the jazz history course he took with Amit Golan in his first year of

high school studies at Thelma Yellin. Indeed, upon their return from the US, Golan, Hoffman,

Shay Zelman, and many others began teaching at multiple high schools and post-secondary

institutions. Thus, starting in the late 1990s, a “new spirit” as it was referred to by many of my

interlocutors entered formal jazz education in Israel and influenced many of today’s leading

jazz musicians, particularly those emerging in what can be called the Third Wave.

Indeed, many of Israel’s leading jazz musicians who reside in Israel make a good part of

their living teaching, simultaneously, in multiple institutions. During my conversations with

him, Amos Hoffman recounted his busy teaching schedule during his years in Israel. Hoffman

taught at the Tel Aviv Conservatory, both in its youth program and in its post-secondary

program collaboration with the New School. He also taught at Thelma Yellin High School and

at the Jerusalem Academy. Hoffman had to teach out of survival, because making a living in

Israel as a professional jazz musician requires that you teach in large volume—supporting

oneself with local performances alone is impossible. He is not a unique case. Other leading

Israeli jazz artists who returned from years overseas continue to teach in both high school

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programs and post-secondary programs as well as give private lessons. This includes folks such

as saxophonists Yuval Cohen, Erez Barnoy, Daniel Zamir; trombonist Avi Lebovich; pianists

Anat Fort and Yonatan Riklis among many others.

Although the payment situation in Israel creates tremendous financial burden for the

artists, a more positive side effect is that high school students, aged 15-18, are availed of

personal, up close and regular attention from world class musicians who have extensive

experience performing jazz in the US and worldwide. This type of education is usually not

available for high school aged students in the United States or Canada.

Whereas much of the new musical “spirit” that the returning musicians instilled in the

Israeli scene was rooted in be-bop and hard-bop, they also inspired younger generations with

stories about current life in NYC, the “Mecca of jazz”. Flutist Itai Kriss recalls:

Why did I even come to NYC? Because of all the Israeli [musicians] that I got to know when I was growing up who had been to New York and told me about it. And it was always like a legendary tale, one that continues to unfold because folks would constantly be arriving from NYC telling you how wonderful it is. (Kriss 2015)

Aside from stories, the returning musicians also provided insights and tips for making it in

New York. They relayed the practical realities of life as jazz musicians in the United States,

while providing invaluable advice about how one has to go about forging their careers in the

Big Apple. Equally important, they often provided critical contacts, connections, and

recommendations for their younger counterparts, enabling these future arrivals to tap into a

growing network of Israeli musicians who had already established themselves in NYC.

While the scene in Israel provides a fertile ground for formal and informal jazz

education, most young Israeli jazz musicians still aspire to move to NYC as a step towards

developing their musicianship and establishing international careers in the world of jazz. In the

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large and competitive broader NYC jazz scene, Israeli musicians often gravitate towards one

another, musically and socially, relying on previously established networks and connections to

get settled and advance their careers. Together, these musicians have created a vibrant and

highly active Israeli jazz micro scene.

“KFAR” NEW YORK: TONS OF HUMMUS IN THE BIG APPLE 42

On July 12, 2017, guitarist Yotam Silberstein posted the above photo on Facebook with

the accompanying caption “An epic moment last night!” (Silberstein 2017). Silberstein’s

caption refers to bassist Gilad Abro’s (center middle row) arrival and performance in NYC and

to the group of musicians memorialized in the photo: a “who’s who” of Israeli jazz musicians

living in NYC who came to listen to the performance. Abro and Silberstein go back almost two

decades to their days as teenaged band mates in a 1998 ensemble class at Yigal Alon High 42 Kfar in Hebrew means village.

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School and their subsequent formative collaborations in Israel .43 The pair was first getting

started as young professionals in Israel in the late 1990s and early 2000s, playing in groups

together and cutting their teeth side by side at jam sessions. Since then, Silberstein, has gone on

to become an internationally touring jazz guitarist based in New York, a much in demand

sideman for leading jazz musicians worldwide, and a band leader in his own right.44 Abro, who

has stayed in Israel throughout, has for years been the first call bass player for both local and

international acts coming through Israel. He has served as a sideman (including in international

tours) for many leading Israeli jazz artists such as Amos Hoffman, Daniel Zamir, and many

others.

In July 2017, nearly two decades after they first met and collaborated as teenagers in

Israel, Abro arrived in NYC for a visit and a series of performances with various Israeli

colleagues and friends who have been living and building careers in NYC. The photo above

was taken after Abro performed at The Bar Next Door on July 11th with flutist Itai Kriss and

drummer Dan Aran. Several days later, on July 15th Silberstein and Abro appeared together at

The Django as part of a trio performance with drummer Felix Lecaros dubbed as “a very

special reunion” by Silberstein (Silberstein 2017).

The photo captures an after gig “Israeli” hang featuring, in addition to the musicians

listed above, prominent Israeli jazz musicians such as bassist Omer Avital, trombonist Yonatan

Voltzok, drummer Daniel Dor, guitarist Alon Albagli, vocalist Yaala Balin, saxophonist Asaf

Yuria and others. Though Abro’s arrival and appearances in NYC might indeed be “epic” in the

43 The small jazz combo at Alon High School was coached by American saxophonist Walter Blanding. Blanding had toured with Wynton Marsalis’ group and was in Israel for a short period because of his marriage to an Israeli woman. The ensemble was rounded out by myself on piano and drummer Doron Tirosh. All four musicians have gone on to become professional jazz musicians.44 For example, Silberstein is the guitarist in American bassist John Patitucci’s newest release Irmãos de Fé (2017).

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context and narrative of the Israeli presence on the NYC scene, the collection of Israeli jazz

musicians gathered together and displayed in the photograph after a gig in NYC is rather

ordinary. Indeed, perhaps, the only extraordinary feature of this event was that it was captured

with a posed snapshot.

For instance, I observed a similar Israeli presence and “hang” at various shows by

Israeli musicians that I attended during my fieldwork in New York during the summer of 2015.

Similarly, when in August 2016 I performed with guitarist/oudist Amos Hoffman at Cornelia

Street Café in Manhattan, I noticed that approximately half of the sold out venue that held

about fifty seats were Israelis, mostly musicians ages 20-40. After the double bill (both shows

featuring Israeli led groups), a lengthy, energetic Israeli hang ensued outside of the café, the

smoke of cigarettes and the sounds of Hebrew traveling through the air.

The Comments section on Silberstein’s Facebook post reveal the way Israeli jazz

musicians perceive their presence in the NYC jazz scene. For example, pianist Shai Maestro

writes humorously “A good day in Allenby”, referring to the name of a main street in Tel Aviv.

Atcha Bar, CEO of a jazz club in Jerusalem called The Yellow Submarine, notes in Hebrew

“Hekamtem Moshava” which translates into “You’ve built a settlement”, and drummer Ziv

Ravitz chimes in, “Wow!!! Kfar NY is getting heavier!!!” Indeed, many Israelis and non-

Israelis, musicians and non-musicians alike, are astonished by the ongoing and pronounced

presence of Israeli jazz musicians on the NYC scene. The Israeli jazz village, “Kfar NY”, as

Ravitz alludes to it, continues to grow, with waves of new musicians arriving regularly.

Above, I discussed the early beginnings of this phenomenon with the arrival in the

1990s of Avi Lebovich, Avishai Cohen, Omer Avital, Amos Hoffman, and several other

musicians who lived in two adjacent apartment buildings in Harlem, supporting one another,

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growing together as young aspiring jazz professionals making their way in NYC. Those

“founding fathers” certainly made initial and critical inroads within the broader NYC jazz

scene. Now, two decades later, the Israeli “hamlet” in NY has grown into a “village”, with a

network that is exponentially larger and more entrenched.

Today, Israeli jazz musicians arriving in NYC tap into a thriving musical micro-scene

within the broader jazz scene. Upon arrival, these new arrivals typically lean on existing

connections with already established compatriots, who introduce them to the broader scene by

way of sessions, gigs, and social “hangs”. These introductions extend to extra-musical issues as

well, for example, providing leads on housing, day jobs, and various ways to survive in the big

city. This informal but effective network of support also manifests itself through a vibrant

social community of Israeli jazz musicians who spend leisure time, play music, and attend

shows together. Bassist Or Bareket recounts his own arrival in NYC and the various ways this

pre-existing “Israeli” network helped him during his initial days on the scene:

It was very important socially, emotionally, and professionally. First of all, I had someone to call when I arrived…there were guys who were my age that moved here before me, so I had someone to call to say, “hey, I’m here, lets play” even prior to some kind of professional or economic consideration, I had someone to hang with…socially it was really important, I had a community the minute I arrived. And on the practical level, someone gave me a phone number of a player who had a regular gig who always needed a bass player. I gave him a call and two days later I got called for the gig. When I started, it was $60 plus tips and I would live on that for like a week (laughs) and it was a really big deal. (Bareket 2015)

Flutist Itai Kriss had a similar experience:

When I finally moved to NY there was an expansive network of people that I already knew from Israel. So the minute I arrived I went with [my Israeli] roommates to Smalls and they introduced me to all of the other Israelis at Smalls really quickly. And you know what it’s like with Israelis, it’s easy to talk to Israelis, we speak the same language and come from the same place, so it’s easy to connect even after a few minutes. So, it really, really helped. I came to an apartment of Israelis and my first gigs were with Israelis that

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already knew me or got to know me quickly upon my arrival. So, it really helped. Until today, I play with tons of Israelis and I pretty much speak Hebrew every day. (Kriss 2015)

Drummer Ziv Ravitz argues that the network of Israeli jazz musicians in NYC is a by-product

of the general habit Israelis have of surrounding themselves with other Israelis when overseas:

It’s generally true in the world today that Israelis really gravitate to other Israelis. I had a conversation the other day with a friend of mine who lives in Paris. She’s from Guadeloupe. She told me, “I know one person from Guadeloupe here, and you are surrounded by a hundred Israelis. How can that be? You live in NYC, how is it that there are so many Israelis in your orbit?” We really gravitate to one another. It’s the herd mentality that we have everywhere in the world. And as a result of that we also play more together. (Ravitz 2014)

It seems abundantly clear that such “herd mentality” has served Israeli jazz musicians well in

their efforts to develop professional careers in the challenging and competitive jazz scene of

NYC.

Beyond the significance of the broad Israeli network, almost every musician I

interviewed who belongs to the younger generation has a story about how an established Israeli

musician inspired them, encouraged them actively, opened doors for them via collaboration, or

imparted knowledge through lessons and informal hangs. Flutist Hadar Noiberg, trumpeter

Itamar Borochov, pianist Omer Klein, and drummer Ziv Ravtiz are just a few of the musicians

who’ve spoken about Omer Avital’s importance. Avital welcomed them, introduced them to

other musicians, Israeli and non-Israeli, and through collaboration lent credibility to their own

early efforts in the NYC scene. Avital is also credited by numerous musicians for having

opened their ears and exposed them to a wide array of Arab classical music, Moroccan Gnawa,

and Andalusian music.

Similarly, bassists Gilad Abro, Or Bareket, and pianist Omri Mor cite bassist Avishai

Cohen’s support and encouragement as playing an important role in their growth and fostering

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self-belief. Furthermore, several of Cohen’s Israeli sidemen have benefited from the exposure

they gained during their years in his band. After his return to Israeli in the mid-2000’s, Cohen

started manning his trio with young and promising Israeli pianists and drummers who had not

yet lived outside Israel. After several years of high profile performances on the international

scene, these musicians were able to utilize the reputation and connections they had gained

through membership in Cohen’s band to launch their own careers or pursue other invitations

from well-established artists. For example, pianist Shai Maestro who anchored the piano chair

in Cohen’s group for many of the bassists’ most successful and beloved albums, eventually

moved on from his work with Cohen, settled permanently in NYC, launching his own trio and

becoming a much sought after sideman.

Bassist Haggai Cohen Milo similarly benefitted from the Israeli network. He goes a step

further in explaining that part of the strength of the network is connected to the excellent

reputation for musicianship that Israeli jazz musicians have in NY:

I think that the network for me, personally, is really helpful, with the move to Boston and to New York, in two ways: First of all, yeah, the people are here, the people you know immediately and people you don't know, but you speak the same language, it's much easier…you hit it off easily, socially I mean, and then the other way is just that there's already the brand, like you are from Israel, you play jazz, you probably play well. Seriously, people think that about you, and I hear it from other people who are not Israelis, sometimes I hear it as a complaint, sometimes I hear it as a good thing, but I hear people say, “yeah, you know, you guys always take each other, you always hire each other, you always help each other” and it's true. I don't think we mean to do it, I think it just happens. Seriously, it's easy and it happens, and it's so amazing, like this network, it's like, I can't say enough good things about it, all these guys are also great friends, and always hang together, really so nice, beautiful, beautiful.45 (Cohen Milo 2014)

As Cohen Milo notes, new arrivals also take advantage of the path forged by older generations,

utilizing the well-established reputation for excellence of Israeli jazz musicians among non-

45 My interview with Haggai Cohen Milo was conducted in English.

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Israeli musicians, promoters, jazz club owners, and critics. Or Bareket has experienced a

similar positive view of Israeli musicianship: “If you’re Israeli, people assume that you play

well, there’s a good name for Israelis here in terms of the level of playing, at least that’s what

Americans tell me” (Bareket 2015). Indeed, in addition to concrete support from their Israeli

colleagues, the existence of this reputation also helps those new to the scene musicians

establish themselves with non-Israelis.

Amos Hoffman, who as one of the “founding fathers” of Israeli jazz played a pivotal

role in establishing this reputation of Israeli prowess, reflects on his generation’s contributions

and the dramatic benefits that future waves of Israeli musicians have reaped from their early

efforts in the 1990s:

When we came, this generation of Avishai [Cohen], [Avi] Lebovich, Omer [Avital] and I, it was much more difficult for us than the guys today. Today you come and you say “I’m from Israel”, they say “come sit in! play!”. Folks are like, “you’re from Israel so maybe you’re a bad motherfucker”. But, we had to prove ourselves. (Hoffman 2014)

Indeed, assumptions of the great skill possessed by new Israeli musicians on the scene is deeply

indebted to the initial group of individuals to which Amos belongs and refers to. In addition, we

can attribute this reputation to the talent and success of each subsequent wave that followed.

Ultimately, the international success that numerous Israeli jazz musicians enjoy is

rooted in their ability to carve out an aesthetic and commercial niche for themselves within the

broader jazz world. In seeking to establish a viable place for their creative work and wishing to

“play their own voice” many of the aforementioned musicians are creating transcultural jazz

that blends together an array of already blended sources. Grounded in African-American jazz

traditions, each musician also weaves together a myriad of their own personal threads, both

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local and global. Exploring these threads and the various ways Israeli jazz musicians weave

them together is the subject of the next two chapters.

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CHAPTER FOUR

“ISRAELI JAZZ”: BLEND OF BLENDS AND THREADS OF INFLUENCE

I think the best definition of Israeli jazz is really the combination (shiluv) of things, because of the shiluv that we have with the edot here,46 and often times each artist wants to go to his own roots and to investigate something new, and to see where he came from and what the music of that place is. Israel is such an array of combinations (shiluvim), myself, I’m half Iraqi, half South African, so that shiluv is out there, Bagdad and Capetown. (Abro 2015)

I just search, like many jazz musicians or many musicians in general, I search for new ideas. And I found that there is room for improvisation in Andalusian music, improvisation under very strict criteria, but it is still a kind of improvisation in what is called istihabar which is the parallel for taqsim (in the East)…47 so I also learned to improvise istihabarat in plural on all these modes and then I said wait a minute! and then naturally I started playing more modal jazz pieces, pieces with one chord and all of a sudden I saw that I was putting these elements in. Then I took a specific melody that I had studied and I tried harmonizing it and then I tried improvising on the new harmony while staying loyal to the maqam,48 the original mode. And that’s how it was created. So the challenge here is to think dualistically or more than dualistically, to be simultaneously loyal to the maqam and the harmony in your solo. (Mor 2015)

As I argued in Chapter Two, much of today’s transcultural jazz practice is characterized

by what Herbert Hellhund (2012) calls Stylistic Pluralism. Increasingly, individual artists craft

their own voice out of a specific and personal blend of influences and styles that extend far 46 Eda (s), Edot (pl): ethnic groups within Jewish people 47 Taqsim is “an improvisational instrumental genre with an unmetred, or ‘free,’ rhythm, usually performed by a solo instrumentalist…according to certain conventional aesthetic rules. The taqsim is probably the most important instrumental genre of Arab music (Muallem 2010:233). 48 According to Arab Classical Music scholar David Muallem (2010), maqam which literally means “a place” in Arabic, has several meanings. 1) It can refer to the entire scalar system, such as the makamat a six scale system prevalent in Central Asian traditions (such as Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan). In Turkish-Arab traditions it is simply referred to as maqam. 2) It can also refer to a classical song form or structure such as the Iraqi al-maqam al-‘iraqi. 3) It is sometimes used to refer to the scale of a particular mode. “People that use the term maqam for a scale, actually refer to the group of notes in the framework of an octave and their tonic which are used for a particular maqam”. (56) 4) The particular way or organizing and demonstrating the melodic progression of the notes of a maqam scale by way of a well established system with performative rules and conventions, i.e. the way the maqam is “treated”. This is referred to as the sayr al-maqam. (57)

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beyond the jazz genre as conventionally defined. In many cases artists draw from influences

that come from their own cultural background or personal history. They also frequently draw

from sonic worlds that they were not born into but rather choose to “live in”, study or cultivate.

The degree to which this encounter with musical genres and cultures outside of their own is a

serious attempt to internalize them based on study or a more passive, indirect process varies

from artist to artist and influence to influence. Even “creative misunderstanding” (Lipsitz 1994)

of musical styles outside of a musician’s own background sometimes leads to fascinating

results. In today’s transcultural jazz landscape many musicians are constantly searching for and

sometimes randomly encountering and absorbing new influences that enhance their sonic

vocabulary.

This is certainly the case for the Israeli jazz musicians I studied. These artists create

original compositions that blend an array of sources and influences, both “local” and “global”.

Some of these threads of influence can be considered “Israeli”, or at least are particular to the

musical environment within which these artists grew up in and share. Others, such as jazz and

Latin-American musical styles, can be considered “cosmopolitan” or “global” influences.

While each musician I spoke with blends a unique and specific combination of influences to

create his or her own voice, it is possible to identify several significant shared threads of

influence. It will certainly not be the case that each individual artist draws from each and every

one of the threads identified below, however, many do draw from several of these influences

and there is a great degree of overlap, such that each artist has much in common with his or her

musical peers.

Indeed, along with their aim for and success in finding individual approaches, there is

still a sound associated with them, sometimes referred to as “Israeli jazz” by other musicians,

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critics, festival promoters and record producers. Some of the musicians I spoke with identified

with and even embraced such labeling, while others rejected the label as too reductive and

superficial. In the analyses of these artists’ original compositions that follow, I have identified

several specific threads of influence that contribute to this sound. While I do not aim to provide

a checklist for defining Israeli jazz, I do want to suggest that various combinations of these

threads as performed by this generation of Israeli jazz musicians, yields what musicians and

audiences alike have identified as the Israeli jazz sound.

In providing evidence for this thesis, my intention in the following pages is not to over-

generalize, codify, or freeze what are fundamentally individually crafted artistic practices and

pieces into essentialized categories. But, rather, to highlight the ways in which these artists all

draw from similar wells of inspiration and resources, while fundamentally sharing one

underlying thing: the musical practice of interweaving and blending these musical styles in

their own way.

This chapter focuses on original compositions that demonstrate most distinctly and

clearly the processes of transcultural blends undertaken by this generation of Israeli jazz artists.

Still, much more research can be done on areas such as improvisation and interaction,

dimensions that this dissertation unfortunately does not touch in great depth or detail.

THE COMPLEX “GLOBAL” PART I: THE JAZZ TRADITION

Before delving into the many important local influences that shape the particular blend

of jazz that Israeli jazz musicians produce, we must not lose sight of the central role that

African-American jazz traditions play in the training, approach, and music these musicians

create. As described in detail in Chapter Three, the “founding fathers” of today’s cohort of

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internationally recognized Israeli jazz musicians came of age musically in the 1990s New York

City downtown jazz scene. There, they focused intensely on absorbing and internalizing be-

bop, hard bop, and cutting edge straight-ahead styles that were characteristic of the scene at the

time. In fairly short order, they established themselves at key spots in the scene such as Smalls

jazz club, and they served as sidemen for internationally recognized jazz artists such as Chick

Corea, Herbie Hancock, Slide Hampton, Danilo Perez, Al Foster among others. Subsequent

waves of younger Israeli jazz musicians have followed suit. These younger generations partly

benefitted from older musicians who returned to Israel after years of study and performance in

the US. So they grew up in an environment with private teachers as well as high school and

college programs that emphasized intense study of straight ahead jazz vernaculars.

Chapter Three also highlighted the special role that musician/educators, such as Amit

Golan, Amos Hoffman, Erez Barnoy and others, played in engendering a strong commitment

and appreciation for African-American traditions by training younger musicians thoroughly in

the be-bop and hard-bop styles of the 1940s through 1960s. Such a hyper-focus on these styles,

with an emphasis on oral learning, can even be seen as “old-school” compared to leading

educational approaches that dominate the concurrent landscape of post secondary jazz

programs in North America, which have been trending towards stylistic pluralism and have

been highly influenced by the Berklee School of Music’s approach to jazz education. Thus, the

Israeli musical landscape can be characterized as being rooted in aspects of jazz tradition that

have passed out of favor in the US.

In addition to the training they received in Israel, there are numerous examples of the

new generation of Israeli jazz musicians citing the pronounced importance of apprenticeships

with American jazz musicians. For instance, trumpeter Itamar Borochov highlights pianist

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Barry Harris’ important influence: “Barry Harris, ‘till today is a kind of mentor to me, he’s an

authority…If someone truly taught me how to play jazz, its Barry” (Borochov 2015). Eli

Degibri noted how much he learned from playing in Herbie Hancock’s band for three years

(when he was 18) and later with drummer Al Foster. Avi Lebovich describes in great detail his

seeking out Slide Hampton’s mentorship and Hampton’s willing patronage:

I went to Slide and I told him, “I think I play like you, I would like to meet you, sir”, I said it to him using those words, and for him it was so ridiculous that he had to hear it, “OK, lets get together”. He has such a big heart! And he’s probably like, bihyat rabak,49 what are you coming to me from Israel for? I didn’t know, I didn’t understand, I had to see him, if he had said no, I would have gone to his home, I had to do everything [I could]…so I went, and he said “lets play”…and I start playing and he really got excited, really. Wow! And he took me under his wing, and I was with him all the time, in terms of practicing, learning arranging, composition, how to put my hands on the piano, how he harmonizes things…whenever I wanted, I would go to him…he would say “just come, don’t even call”. (Lebovich 2015)

Indeed, time and time again, most of the musicians I interviewed emphasized their rootedness

in African-American jazz traditions.

Even though much of the original music these musicians make blends Israeli and

Middle-Eastern influences, they put considerable emphasis on their internalization of The Jazz

Tradition.50 Considering the complex web of cultural and racial politics in jazz practice and

discourse, one can interpret this emphasis as part of an effort to stake out or, maybe, establish

legitimacy for their current transcultural musical activities. In this view, careful study of

canonic jazz performers reflects a desire to ensure that the blended styles of music that Israeli

jazzers are creating today are understood by critics and listeners as grounded in The Jazz

49 Bihyat rabak: Arabic slang for “come on”. 50 The vast majority of Israeli jazz musicians that I interviewed subscribe to a view that considers rootedness in The Jazz Tradition as rootedness in styles that begin roughly with Louis Armstrong and continue through swing, big band, be-bop, and through to the hard-bop and cool jazz of the 1960s.

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Tradition. Framing their work in a manner consistent with dominant notions of jazz authenticity

does considerable work toward establishing their legitimacy as real jazz musicians.

Nonetheless, it would not be fair to simply interpret their appreciation for jazz’s

traditions only from a cynical perspective. The affinity and love for jazz’s roots expressed by

the Israeli musicians I interviewed is genuine. Furthermore, starting with their early musical

upbringing and continuing with their formative years in the US, their personal histories reveal

the central role that jazz tradition as defined by canonic be-bop and hard bop musicians plays in

their own development as performers.

Take saxophonist Daniel Zamir, who has recorded several albums on John Zorn’s

Tzadik label and a separate set of records on Israeli labels. Among these is Amen (2006), one of

the best selling jazz albums in Israeli history. Zamir also holds the unique position of being the

only well-known orthodox Israeli jazz musician. His music, which he has labeled “Jewish

jazz”, reflects influences such as modern jazz, downtown NYC radical Jewish culture Avant

Garde (a la John Zorn), klezmer, Chassidic Jewish influences, and Israeli popular music.

Despite this eclectic blend, Zamir argues that the jazz tradition is the foundation upon which his

original music is built:

I am proud of the fact that I come from jazz…my entire musical foundation is jazz…I make Jewish Jazz, but first and foremost its jazz…What gives me the strength to do what I do is the fact that I have a jazz orientation, a most pronounced one. (Zamir 2015)

For Zamir, it all starts with Charlie Parker: “Charlie Parker first of all, that was the bread and

butter. That’s totally where I came from and I am still really close to it till today” (Zamir 2015).

Saxophonist Eli Degibri expresses similar indebtedness to classic jazz. In our interview, he

recounted how, from when he fell in love with jazz, at the age of ten he listened to nothing but

jazz, starting with the tapes that his teacher (Stu HaCohen) would give him during lessons:

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One tape had Charlie Parker on both sides, one had Cannonbal Adderley and Sonny Stitt, and I would listen to it nonstop, I’m telling you, and I’m not exaggerating, only to these tapes, every day on a loop…like a baby that’s learning a language…I didn’t listen to anything else, not Israeli music, not classical music, not musiqa mizrahit [trans. Eastern music], nothing, just this for years, and slowly I added another disc and another tape that he would record for me, but only this. (Degibri 2015)

Degibri finished the above thought by articulating his rootedness in the jazz tradition as a fully

internalized, digested musical language, going as far as to argue that his authenticity is no less

valid than a young man who grew up in Harlem: “It’s my mother tongue, and Charlie or I don’t

know who, who grew up in Harlem, it’s the same thing, there’s no difference” (ibid).

Amit Friedman expresses a similar sentiment when talking about African-American

trumpeter Nicholas Payton, an advocate for describing jazz as Black American Music (BAM):

You can’t mention me in the same breath as Nicholas Payton…but I can say responsibly that we listened to the same music, at least we have a lot a lot in common. I am not sure that he heard Sonny Rollins’ albums more than I have, and you know, when I play, I feel that I speak the language, when I play swing and I play standards, again, I try to get better at it and everything, but I feel that I speak the language and I feel that it sounds the way saxophonists that I hoped to sound like sound. (Friedman 2015)

It is clear that Israelis feel “at home” in the jazz vernacular because they feel that they have

done their homework, having internalized the language and made it a central part of their

musical identity.

Furthermore, some of the musicians I spoke with also seemed to be channeling the

North American jazz education doctrine of, “first prove that you can cut it in within The

Tradition, and then you are free to do your own thing”. Yuval Cohen’s comments similarly

emphasized the prevalent view that any Israeli take on jazz must be rooted in jazz traditions. He

clearly recoiled at the idea of bypassing it in favor of Israeli musical transculturation as a point

of departure:

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I don’t think you can look at jazz and say, OK, “I’m a jazz musician, but I only bring it in a fused version”…It’s not right, because first of all you can’t know jazz without knowing Louis Armstrong and New Orleans and Jelly Roll Morton… people don’t know who Louis Armstrong is and it drives me crazy…people who know Avishai Cohen’s albums, the bassist, but they say, “Louis Armstrong, remind me again, is that the singer?” So excuse me, stop right there, we have a problem. Someone’s saying I don’t know about Louis Armstrong but here I know the pieces of so and so, here, I play really well on 7/4 with this kind of groove and I’m a great jazzist. Okay, maybe you’re a musician, but something’s missing here, something is out of whack. (Cohen 2015)

The majority of Israeli musicians with whom I spoke hold to what Stuart Nicholson

(2005) describes as the prescriptivist interpretation of jazz: a tradition that is rooted in swing

and blues; a musical genre that is distinctly connected to the African-American tradition. Yet

they also simultaneously view it as a music that calls for and enables personal self-expression,

which ultimately leads them to create the particular kinds of transcultural blends that are the

focus of this dissertation.

Before discussing this path from jazz tradition to transcultural blend, however, it is

important to gain some insight into the way these artists view The Jazz Tradition. Amos

Hoffman told me that:

To me, jazz is African-American music that has a really strong element of rhythm and a big improvisation component. These are two things that are really important. Now, you’ll say that rhythm and improvisation are two elements that you’ll find in a lot of styles that aren’t jazz…but I personally I love the motive of really African-American music, of swing, the feeling of the bass and drums (demonstrates a swingin’ bass line with his voice). (Hoffman 2014)

Amit Friedman compares the internalization of The Jazz Tradition to speaking a language and

using its vocabulary in particular ways:

Jazz for me is work within a form…with an element of improvisation and an emphasis on rhythmicness (kitzbiyut), but you can pretty much say that about every kind of music. I think what makes it jazz is this language, that if you’re a pianist I’d like to hear some Wynton [Kelly] in there, Oscar Peterson, you

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know Red Garland, McCoy [Tyner], whomever you choose, [Charlie] Parker of course…what makes Hebrew, Hebrew? There’s someone who speaks the way they do in Ashdod and someone who speaks the way they speak in Kfar Saba, but within that, father is father and mother is mother, there’s the language, and if that doesn’t exist, even a little bit…well…there’s no shortage of improvised music. (Friedman 2015)

Yuval Cohen’s take on jazz traditions emphasizes a strong sense of respect towards African-

American ownership of jazz and the need for all musicians who are blending new styles and

influences into jazz to remember the origins of the art form:

Jazz is music that was created by African-Americans…without Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, Coltrane, Bud Powell, Art Tatum, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Count Basie there was no jazz. Period. Exclamation mark!...I think it boils down to respecting the tradition…if you call the music jazz, you have to remember and respect where the music came from. (Cohen 2015)

The rootedness in The Jazz Tradition as an African-American tradition valued among

these Israeli musicians contrasts to some degree with several indigenized jazz movements

emerging out of Europe and Scandinavia beginning with European free jazz and later, various

iterations of the “Nordic Tone” as represented most ardently by the ECM sound. While some

see this music and related discourse emerging out of Europe as open rebellion against the

notion of The African-American Jazz Tradition, it may also be viewed as assertion of an

alternative narrative of jazz authenticity. Neither grounded in swing and blues nor the rhythmic

vocabulary of African-American jazz, such “European jazz” stresses the ethos of freedom for

individuality and self-expression. At times, further, proponents of this alternative “European

jazz” narrative situate it within a broader political rejection of American hegemony (Jost 2012).

In contrast, the Israeli embrace of the African-American Jazz Tradition can be linked to

the powerful cultural influence by the United States on Israel and the strong ties between the

two nation-states. Indeed, the growing appeal of jazz in Israel, particularly since the 1980s, is

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connected to a broader trend of Americanization that has been unfolding in Israel since the

1960s, when the United States assumed the role of Israel’s central ally.51 Gilad Abro doesn’t

mince words on this matter:

[Israeli involvement with jazz is] a product of it being an extension of America. It’s no secret that Israel wouldn’t exist without America. America provided Israel with support in each war. There isn’t one thing that isn’t viewed through the American lens, and the connection between the Jewish community in America and Israel, I think, is really an influence. […] like when you hear the news [or when] commercials proclaim “just like America” […]This [jazz], too, is a tradition that came from America. It really influenced Israelis and the people that brought it from there. So you really hear this influence in players here compared to other places. I think this is why Israelis get a lot of respect in New York. […] much more than the Europeans, they really appreciated the American tradition. They didn’t take it lightly. There’s something really respectful in this attitude to the music. (Abro 2015)

Second, this appreciation of jazz as first and foremost an American art form, can be tied

in to a broader yearning towards the West, a desire to belong to an “elevated” cultural sphere.

This is also a way to escape, even metaphorically by way of listening and participating, from

the confines of a troubled region and the isolated position that Israel holds within it (Regev and

Seroussi 2004; Brinner 2009).

Interestingly, it may be argued that Israeli jazz musicians adopted two common jazz

narratives. They do position their music making as fundamentally grounded in African-

American music and culture, and their respect and appreciation for this notion of jazz tradition

is a central pillar to their approach. At the same time, most simultaneously embrace the view

that jazz is an art form that allows, and in fact demands, an effort to represent authentically who

you are with your music. Thus, while they spent time learning the vocabulary of jazz and

becoming comfortable playing in the American way, many feel compelled to incorporate and

51 For more on Americanization in Israel read Maoz Azaryahu (2000) “McIsrael? On the ‘Americanization of Israel’”; Tom Segev (2002) Elvis in Jerusalem: post-Zionism and the Americanization of Israel.

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integrate musical styles and influences from their background and childhood home as Israelis

born in the Middle East. Thus, their approach toward blend does not come as a rejection of

American jazz styles, but rather from a place of seeking their own authentic and honest

expression based on it.

Itamar Borochov, for example, feels that his involvement with jazz gave him the

catalyst and freedom to find his own personal voice as a musician:

It’s a tradition that I greatly appreciate. It’s even important for me to represent it respectfully. Yet it’s not mine. It’s a tradition of the black American man. Now, I’m not a black man and I’m not American. I just really love this music. So OK, I have been living in the US for eight years. I play with African-Americans. I am involved in this culture and I have been embraced. But this is why I do give myself the freedom, and some even say the license, to make original music within the world of jazz. Because jazz is a really honest kind of music…I didn’t grow up in a church, I grew up in a synagogue…and my “Love Supreme” won’t sound like John Coltrane’s “Love Supreme.” It’ll sound like something that ties it to some chazzan (trans. cantor) in Jaffa…there’s some way that you connect to yourself through the world of jazz. (Borochov 2015)

Pianist Omri Mor who lives in Israel (and who, unlike his colleagues, never lived for an

extended period outside of it) tends to approach things from a perspective that’s similar to

Borochov, emphasizing the connection between place (makom) and creative expression, while

also connecting his own inclination towards transcultural blend to broader trends in music

worldwide:

I think that music has to be connected to the place that a person lives in. I don’t know if it’s a must, but it is inevitable…To a certain extent, people like Wynton Marsalis are right, there’s the jazz tradition, standards, a certain language. Its true, it has a place and I really respect it….But I approach jazz also as folklore. The folkloric element is really important. So if a person from Bulgaria brings some Bulgarian music and wraps it in a jazz envelope or does something interesting that includes improvisation, but he brings Bulgarian roots and rhythms, harmonies and this fragrance it could be really interesting. It’s all a question of how you do it. That’s the trend and you can say that that’s also my direction. I try to play what interests me; and at the moment I am more interested in playing an Andalusian theme and improvising on it

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than to play Anthropology, even though I also really love playing on Anthropology. (Mor 2015)

For Ilan Salem the idea of performing music that blends Israeli, Jewish, and Middle-Eastern

styles with jazz and other musical genres is directly connected to the basic reality of where he

grew up, where he resides and where he comes from culturally, that is, the reality of his life.

Salem talks about jazz and explains why these various “Israeli” influences blend into his music

and the music of his contemporaries:

We didn’t grow up there, we learned the music, we basically acquired it, we got turned on by it and we learned to play it. But at the end of the day, we live here. We grew up here and these influences are a part of us. (Salem 2015)

Commenting on his reverence for African-American jazz traditions, on the one hand, and his

pursuit of transcultural blend through his original music on the other, Amit Friedman notes that

he doesn’t feel as though every piece has to “swing” in the narrow sense or comply with the

particular stylistic elements that characterized American jazz up until the 1960s. He also asserts

that incorporating influences from other traditions is actually quite consistent with the jazz

tradition itself:

Say you are building a set for a performance or an album. Let’s say the first song is going to be a ballad. So what if instead of a ballad it’ll be a Bolero, which is what happens on my album. So what’s the difference? Or, if instead of playing Latin the way that Dizzy played it, there’s a Latin that’s a bit different. Or if instead of playing 6/8 there’s a tune that’s more [North] African. Why is that different from what Dizzy and all those guys did? (Friedman 2015)

In referencing Dizzy Gillespie’s incorporation of Afro-Cuban elements into jazz in the 1950s,

as well as “all those guys”, Friedman is alluding to the history of jazz as transcultural music

from the start. This recalls my previous discussion of the complex history of jazz as a

transcultural music, one in which the blend of new and disparate influences has been a

constant.

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Friedman raises a key point, for as we move to examine the threads of local influences

that Israeli jazz musicians incorporate to create their particular individual transcultural blend,

we should remember that jazz in itself is a music of blend. Similarly, as will be discussed, soon,

Israeli and Jewish musical styles, too, are styles formed as a result of blend and transformation

through interaction and integration of diverse influences.

THE COMPLEX “LOCAL”

What influences us? The hummus and the za’atar and all these things…the music of the Bedouins, the deserts, the songs we grew up on, everything together, everything is a mix of the influence that comes from this place. We’re really close here to Arab music, its right next to us…another thing that I really think has an impact is the existence of the different edot here, each eda brings a certain style with it. The Yemenites, Moroccans and Romanians, etc…each eda has a music that it brings with it. (Salem 2015)

Speaking generally beyond the specific influences of one artist or the other, there seems

to be broad range agreement among many Israeli jazz artists that the sounds of their childhood

left a musical imprint:

The melody and harmony come from the history of what happened in Israel, and influential musicians, such as Matti Caspi, Shlomo Gronich, Sasha Argov, Ehud Banay, Margalit Tsa’anani. You know, everyone, including Zohar Argov […] We all came from this background. We all spoke this music. So, it’s a common language. (Ravitz 2014)

What Israelis think of as local influences extends far beyond Israeli music, and includes folk

traditions from across the Arab world, Mediterranean, North Africa, Eastern Europe, and

beyond. Several musicians cite the presence of Jewish ethnic groups that immigrated to Israel

from vastly different locations in the world. Folks belonging to these edot, as they are referred

to in Israel, brought with them the musical traditions from “home” and often preserved these

traditions despite decades of suppression or lack of support from official Israeli channels. In

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multiple interviews, Israeli jazz musicians referenced the influence of these musical traditions

by way of familial and communal contact, or more broadly through the general soundscape of

daily life in Israel. In addition, many artists connected the sounds of place, which include the

distinctly local sounds of communities living in Israel-Palestine:

The thing here is, that as you know, we are exposed to a lot of different kinds of music, because there are so many people from different places. So nothing is entirely foreign to us. Its not foreign even for a total Ashkenazy [European], who only listens to those kinds of things. We hear the muezzin.52 We hear all sorts of Arab music. All kinds of stuff. (Mor 2015)

The following pages describe several shared threads of influence and some of the ways in

which Israeli jazz artists weave these influences into their original compositions.

From Shirey Eretz Israel to Songwriters of the 1970s and Beyond

The first thread of influence that plays a significant role in the transcultural weaving

that Israeli jazz artists pursue involves songs belonging to the world of Israeli popular music

that is centrally connected to the tradition and legacy of Shirey Eretz Israel (Songs of the Land

of Israel, SLI).53 SLI is a canonical set of popular songs composed primarily from the 1920s to

the 1950s. Associated with and representative of Israel’s establishment and mainstream

narratives of cultural identity (i.e., secular Ashkenazy/European segment of Israeli society),

these songs dominated the Israeli airwaves until the 1970s. Indeed, they continue to hold a

52 According to Merriam-Webster dictionary the muezzin is “a Muslim crier who calls the hour of daily prayers”. 53 The Zionist enterprise of early Jewish settlers in Palestine was concerned with inventing and normalizing a new, “native” Jewish cultural identity centered around a new “Hebrewism”. This involved both a separateness from local Palestinians and rejection of the diasporic (galut) way of life. This invention of the new “Hebrew Culture” (Tarbut Ivrit) was particularly evident in three cultural spheres - the use of the Hebrew language in everyday life as well as in works of writers and poets belonging to the dor ba-aretz (generation in the land), and the invention of the Hebrew “folk song” by way of the SLI repertory. These songs served not only an artistic purpose but were viewed by political and cultural leaders at the time as key tools in the process of socialization for new immigrants and new generations of Israeli born sabras. (Regev and Seroussi 2004).

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place of central importance in contemporary Israeli society, are sung frequently in school

ceremonies and public gatherings, and have experienced various waves of resurgence since the

1960s (Brinner 2009). For example, the lyrical tradition of the SLI was extended by a second

generation of Israeli songwriters that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. Musicians such as

Chava Albertstein and Arik Einstein performed the SLI repertory in new arrangements that

incorporated aspects of jazz, rock, bossa nova, and other global influences.

Stylistically, the SLI repertory is very eclectic. This eclecticism mirrors the diverse

nature of the Jewish community before and after the establishment of the state. Ethnically

varied, immigrants arrived from all over Europe and the Middle-East, settled in a variety of

settings (urban, rural) and lived various lifestyles. As a result, they created music that drew on a

variety of traditions connected both to their “old land” and new home. Nonetheless, as many of

the composers of these songs came from Eastern and Central-European backgrounds, the

musical language was directly connected to Russian ballads, Eastern-European rhythms,

Western Art Music (WAM), as well as Yiddish music (Regev and Seroussi 2004). As part of

the broader effort to create a new Hebrewist culture connected to the place itself as well as to

the “return” to the land of Israel, SLI composers sometimes appropriated local elements from

the neighboring Arabs and newly immigrated Arab-Jews by utilizing melodic fragments that

invoked Arab Makams (Eliram 2006).

In her extensive study of 170 songs that belong to the SLI (following an elaborate set of

criteria), Talila Eliram reports on her discovery of a remarkable and noteworthy characteristic:

147 of the 170 songs are in minor mode.54 Eliram cites a study from the University of Essen in

Germany which details the ratio of songs in minor vis-a-vis those in major across six different

folk traditions. The Israeli SLI stands alone as the one tradition that has an overwhelming 54 Only seventeen are in major, and the remaining six are not definitive one way or the other.

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tendency towards the minor. That this has become a mark of Israeliness for at least some is

suggested by the comments of music critic Hanoch Ron, who says of Israeli songwriter Shalom

Hanoch, “Hanoch was born into a clear Israeli style, into the broad, epic of the Russian

sentimental song, into the aching minor, the melodic glow of emotion, that which envelops you

in a kind of elated minor” (in Eliram, 2006:67 and transl. by the author).

Flutist Ilan Salem believes that the songs of the SLI have had a considerable influence

on the musical palette of Israeli jazz musicians:

It’s a mix that really influences…the Israeli composers…Bracha Tzefira, David Zehavi, Yehuda Sharet, Mordechai Zeira, Nachum Nardi, Immanuel Zeira, Nachum Admon, you see? …you won’t believe what kind of material there’s in there…there’s no doubt that there is a very strong influence from these songs on Israeli jazz musicians. (Salem 2015)

The SLI composers that Salem cites above belong to the older generation of musicians who

wrote music in the pre-state days of the 1920s and 1930s. Other jazz performers cite composers

that contributed canonic songs in the 1950s and 1960s. For example, pianist Anat Fort spoke of

her love of Sasha Argov and Shalom Hanoch. Gilad Abro recounted his visits with bassist

Avishai Cohen, who according to Abro is similarly influenced by Argov specifically and the

SLI more generally:

He was really involved with the old Shirey Eretz Israel (SLI). Very much so. He has lots of collections and he knew it by ear, through recordings…when I would come over I would sometimes witness his process with this material, and it was incredible to see it. “Abro, come see what a beautiful song this is”, and he would sing it to me with all the words, on the piano, like some Sasha Argov song from a recording that you can’t even find. “dig this Abro, and here look, I’ve added a few chords” and then plays these chords that you can scarcely believe are real because they are so gorgeous. (Abro 2015)

Pianist Shai Maestro, who performed for several years with Avishai Cohen compares the deep

knowledge that he and his Israeli peers have of the SLI songs with the way in which some

American jazz pianists study standards originating from Broadway musicals:

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Our DNA, the DNA of all the things we mentioned, is from Arik Einstein, Shlomo Gronich, Yoni Rechter, certain harmonic and rhythmic languages. A certain feeling, that you want to impart when you write a song in the spirit that touches the world of Arik Einstein …Its like all the jamaa here [in NY] that play,55 there are some really heavy guys that play jazz, standards, they go to libraries and they check the Broadway scores. Brad [Mehldau] does it, Ethan Iverson does it…really heavy guys that sit down and play a standard…and its like a crazy world of oboes and flutes…and you hear the guys approach it, you hear the history behind it, even if they just hint at it slightly, but it comes from a place that’s real, from the source. And Avishai [Cohen] brings “Lo Bayom ve’lo Balaylah” or “Sahki, Sahki” or other songs we did…and I know [Mordechai] Zeira man. So you play with a different depth compared to someone who doesn’t know it and who didn’t grow up on it and doesn’t understand it. (Maestro 2014)

Many of the musicians I interviewed emphasized the influence of a new generation of

singer/songwriters that emerged in the 1970s and whose songs incorporated both the SLI

tradition and as well as “cosmopolitan” styles such as rock, jazz, bossa nova and samba. These

influential artists include Matti Caspi, Yoni Rechter, Shlomo Gronich, Shem-Tov Levy and

groups like Kaveret, and their music was widely adored for its ability to remind listeners of

home.

The list of players who cited Caspi, Rechter, et al. as influences is too long to include

here, but a few examples will suffice to convey their pronounced impact on the current

generation of Israeli jazz musicians. Saxophonist Eli Degibri cites American jazz saxophonists

Sonny Stitt, Charlie Parker and Cannonbal Adderley as his “holy trinity” but also lists his

Israeli influences as follows:

I am influenced more from the western side of Israeli music, most definitely I am influenced by Yoni Rechter and Matti Caspi. I am also influenced by Chava Albertstein and the arrangements of Menachem Wisenberg, from this romanticism. (Degibri 2015)

55 Jamaa: Arabic slang for guys.

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In fact, Degibri recounts how when he was young he had to choose between playing at the

Village Vanguard for the first time or appearing for a CD Release concert in Israel with Yoni

Rechter:

I was living in NY and pianist Eric Reed heard me play and asked me to join him for a week long stint at the Vanguard, which was a great opportunity obviously as I had not played there yet. At the same time, the album with Rechter was coming out and he [Rechter] was doing a CD release concert [in Israel] and he invited me to come sing this song with him. It turned out to be on the exact same dates as the concerts at the Vanguard. In the end, I chose to go sing the song with Yoni Rechter…from that point on I haven’t play with Eric Reed because he was so angry with me, but thankfully I played the Vanguard many times with Al Foster. But look at this decision, I don’t know. Brave, stupid…whatever you want to call it, an emotional decision. (ibid)

Similarly, Shai Maestro highlights the influence of singer/songwriters such as Arik Einstein,

Chava Albertstein, Yoni Rechter, Shlomo Gronich and particularly Matti Caspi:

Arik Einstein and the rest; it’s all there and it all comes out in the way that it does. I can’t point it out and tell you in what way I am Israeli. So I can’t pinpoint it in my recent compositions. But in my earlier compositions I can tell you, yes, it’s like all Matti Caspi. I guess as I become more mature it becomes more and more blurred, and it just becomes music. But it’s there, you know, everything is there. (Maestro 2014)

Drummer Amir Bresler, who has toured extensively with Avishai Cohen (bass) and pianist

Omer Klein, shares the same sentiment:

To this day, I can listen to Kaveret all the time. Matti Caspi, Yoni Rechter, too, but there are others like The Dudaim, Gesher Hayarkon Trio, and Sasha Argov. These are the ones I don’t get tired of listening to. (Bresler 2015)

Indeed, songs belonging to the SLI and songwriters of the 1970s left a big impact on

subsequent generations of Israeli jazz musicians.

This influence manifests in a number of ways, but perhaps most singularly in the strong

sense of melody and particular harmonic language used by many Israeli jazzers.

I don’t know if it’s conscious or not, but because everyone probably heard Naomi Shemer and Shem Tov-Levy on the radio. There’s something in these

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Russian melodies…there’s something in the aesthetic, in the harmonic moves. (Friedman 2015)

Time after time, the musicians I spoke with, described the paramount importance of and

reverence they feel for the song itself, whether they were creating original music or interpreting

songs belonging to the SLI or other repertories. Flutist Hadar Noiberg expresses the centrality

of the melody to her musical life in the following way:

Its just what moves me the most, a really strong melody, that’s what touches me the most. A melody that is really strong and good, and beautiful harmony that accompanies it or a line that accompanies it. At the end of the day I probably simply do what moves me the most. (Noiberg 2015)

Eli Degibri articulates the same sentiment, but in even stronger terms, “My god is the melody,

always. That’s the thing, and every piece that I’ll write, always what needs to be elevated is the

melody because in my soul I’m a romantic” (Degibri 2015). Saxophonist Jonathan Greenstein

expands on this line of thinking:

I think that a lot of Israeli jazz musicians really write songs, and if my non-Israeli friends will forgive me, much prettier songs. It’s as though there is great importance to a beautiful song with Israeli guys. The songs in jazz began as Broadway songs, but many of them were just an automatic springboard to solos and today that’s even exacerbated.[…] We [Israelis] somehow have less of that… somehow we come from a tradition of great song writers. (Greenstein 2015)

In addition to highlighting the importance of a strong melody, the musicians I interviewed also

outlined how their harmonic sense is rooted in the SLI, and the popular music of the

songwriters of the 1970s and 1980s:

I feel that I deal with melody first and foremost …and my melody is really influenced, sometimes, by Hebrew melody, in its simplicity, or in the coherence of a line that I try; and also in its basic harmony that can also be very Israeli in my eyes. (Cohen 2015)

When I asked Cohen to elaborate on what he thinks most characterizes this “Israeli” harmony,

he found it challenging to define it in purely musical terms:

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It’s usually diatonic, it usually seems really natural. It won’t be much of a surprise [and] it will transmit something familiar to you. It’s a bit problematic to say this because everything that I just said could also work on the harmony of a standard, for which one could also say it seems natural. There is something really accessible and simple in it…I haven’t defined anything…I don’t really know what Israeli harmony is. (Cohen 2015)

Bassist Gilad Abro also believes that one distinct characteristic of the Israeli jazz sound is the

prevalent use of harmonic progressions that are tied in to the harmonic language of the SLI:

The chords are often based on songs by composers like Sasha Argov, on the atmosphere he created in his writing and his use of chords. For example: i – V – VI – III – iv – V/V7 – V. That’s an example of a progression in minor. Many jazzists connect with these chords and worked with Musiqa Eretz Yisraelit (SLI). Not necessarily the stuff you hear on the radio but from the past […] it had a kind of innocence to which people found a connection through the harmony. (Abro 2015)

Like Cohen and Abro the artists I interviewed often alluded to a shared harmonic

language as a distinct characteristic of the Israeliness of the music created by many Israeli jazz

musicians. Yet, when asked to provide a specific description of what constitutes the “Israeli”

harmonic language it was difficult for them to pinpoint precisely what were its most distinct

musical characteristics. Nonetheless, almost all agreed that they could hear it and

fundamentally traced it to the continuum of Israeli popular music that starts with Russian

songs, western European classical music, continues through the songs of the SLI, further

continues with the music of singer/songwriters such as Yoni Rechter, Matti Caspi, and Shalom

Hanoch and finally culminates with the influence of the first and prominent generation of

Israeli jazz musicians such as Avishai Cohen, Omer Avital and the influential group Third

World Love.

One general characteristic that many of my interlocotours seem to agree on relates to

the high percentage of compositions by Israeli jazz musicians written in minor keys. Recall

Talila Eliram’s finding about the SLI songs and their exceptional tendency towards minor.

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According to noted Israeli critic, producer and festival director Barak Weiss the vast majority

of the pieces composed by Israeli jazz musicians that evoke this so called Israeli sound reside in

a minor harmonic realm.

There is a much more prevalent use of minor scales. The Great American Songbook is mostly in major, and these minor scales [that are used by Israeli jazz musicians] give the music that feeling of prayer, which can be like a piyyut or klezmer, and the old Hebrew, Russian songs [ed. referring to SLI] of Eretz Yisrael Hayeshana Ve’hatova (good old Land of Israel) which has lots and lots of minor in it. I think this is unique. (Weiss 2017)

Weiss makes the point that this language diverges substantially from the harmonic language of

the Great American Songbook, which often resides in major. Flutist Hadar Noiberg’s

reflections similarly focus on possible differences between the harmonic language of Israeli

jazz musicians’ compositions and that of the Great American Songbook and conventional

modern jazz compositions by American peers:

When you are born in Israel and you want to learn to play jazz, you really do immerse yourself in that tradition, but you can’t ignore what’s around you all the time - what’s on the radio or what’s around you at home…I think that there’s something in the Israeli songs, you know theow minor and major triads, which is something that I see in my music and in the music of many other Israeli jazz artists. There is something simpler in the harmony, but really beautiful; not the flat ♭9,♭13 (which is also beautiful) but something else. So I feel we bring - if I can use the term in a very general way - some sort of Israeli tradition along with the desire to be a jazz player. (Noiberg 2015)

Noiberg speaks in general terms, but does identify one characteristic, the use of triads, as a

marker of difference compared to the seventh chords and extensions so typical of conventional

jazz harmonic language. Similarly, other Israeli artists have pointed to the extensive use of

triads instead of seventh chords and the absence of extensions as a marker of the Israeli jazz

sound that is directly connected to the SLI song tradition and the music of the songwriters of

the 1970s:

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I have had the chance to work with pianists who are less connected to this music (ed: SLI). Yes, sometimes you need to tell them to simplify things. So you might have to tell the pianist: “No, it’s not in there (extensions), it’s just a triad”. (Friedman 2015)

The use of triads and specific inversions, coupled with a unison bass line between the left hand

of the piano and the bass is quite prevalent among Israeli jazz musicians. Not only do triads

dominate the harmonic landscape, but the composer often demands the pianist to play the triads

in a precise inversion and the bass player to play a specific line. Indeed, Israeli jazz

performance practice is often characterized by prescribed treatment of the compositions with a

fixed piano and bass part.

Again, this stands in contrast with more conventional jazz performance practice and is,

rather, more typical of pop or classical music.56 Saxophonist Amit Friedman describes how he

sometimes approaches directing pianists in his band about performing his own compositions:

Play the way it’s written. […] I don’t hold my piano playing in high regard, but what can you do, sometimes you play a chord in a dumb inversion…but that’s the way it should sound. (Friedman 2015)

An examination of the Head In for Amit Friedman’s composition “The Archeologist”

(Friedman 2012) demonstrates well the various points discussed above:

56 It should be noted that many contemporary jazz compositions are similarly characterized by precisely written bass lines, and even at times include fixed piano voicings. The point is not to suggest that Israeli artists are doing something that isn’t done at all by non-Israelis but rather to highlight a stylistic characteristic that seems to be shared and is pervasive among this generation of Israeli artists.

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Figure 4.1 Head In from “The Archeologist” by Amit Friedman

Friedman’s piece is an excellent example of the compositional specificity that Israeli jazz

musicians often employ in their original compositions. The entire Head In is through

composed. The piece opens with the piano solo playing the “A” section as written, and the

piano introduces the primary melodic “hook” of the tune. Its qualities are very song like, while,

at the same time, the changing meters add rhythmic complexity. At “B”, the soprano saxophone

carries the melody, while the left hand of the piano is doubled by both double bass and oud to

create a contrapuntal texture. As noted above, this piano/bass unison playing is a favored

texture among Israeli jazz musicians. This orchestration continues throughout the Head In.

The harmonic language is emblematic of the characteristics identified so far. The song

is in minor, utilizing triadic harmony, mostly diatonic with occasional secondary dominants.

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Throughout the entire Head In, Friedman uses inversions and voice leading extensively in a

manner that is indebted to WAM and the SLI canon.

Ultimately, the musicians I spoke to seemed to believe that much of the music they and

their peers create is imbued with an ephemeral, hard to define “spirit” (helech ruach) that

comes from the songwriting tradition of the SLI and the songwriters of the 1970s. Yuval Cohen

compares it to understanding the Blues:

Its like, what’s the blues? There’s the changes, there’s the blue note, but at the end of the day it’s also a feeling…there’s this line that Billy Taylor says about the blues. He says - “blues is in so many things, it’s there even without you asking for it, it’s in the spirit”. Maybe this is also true for Hebrew music. In some sense, its not a state of mind, it’s a state of being. (Cohen 2015)

The reverence for melody, the harmonic language at play, and the particular lyrical sonorities

that permeate the music of many Israeli jazz musicians can, I would argue, be traced directly to

the influence of the SLI and songwriters of the 1970s and 1980s. This melodic and harmonic

sense is so pronounced that several pieces by multiple artists could easily be classified as

“Songs Without Words” that sound very much like instrumental offspring of the Israeli

songwriting tradition.

Songs Without Words

As detailed above, the pervasive influence of the SLI and the songs of the 1970s

touches the music making activities of many Israeli jazz musicians active in the past twenty

years in a variety of ways. In some instances, the influence is subtle, perhaps even barely

perceivable. In other cases it is clearly evident in the melody, harmony, or texture of a song.

We can identify a type of composition that provides the most pronounced demonstration of this

lyrical tradition’s influence within the broader repertoire of original compositions created by

this generation of musicians. I propose viewing these compositions as the jazz equivalents to

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the WAM Romantic period “Songs Without Words” genre type.57 They are melodically,

harmonically, texturally and structurally rooted in the SLI tradition and the songs of the 1970s.

Furthermore, though the pieces by Israeli jazz musicians are instrumental, they usually behave

very much like popular music songs from the SLI and Israeli songwriting traditions. Among

their characteristics are: arpeggios (rather than blocked chords) in the piano, triadic harmony

that utilizes voice leading and inversions, bass and piano left hand doubling, pronounced

melody, straight eighths rhythmic language, limited soloing if any, and that particular

atmosphere—helech ruach.

On several occasions, my interlocutors highlighted their decision to limit soloing in

order to highlight an underlying approach that privileges “the song”. Here is flutist Hadar

Noiberg talking about her set list:

When I hear a song, even an instrumental one, I really love that I can remember its melody, and I can really feel as though it has words. […] This is something that’s really important to me. […] It’s a kind of combination of miniatures that don’t have any solos on them [like] a small piece for trio with pieces that are more open and jazzy. (Noiberg 2015)

Guitarist Gilad Hekselman goes even further in talking about his compositions:

It’s no secret that much of my music is songs without words, or in some cases with words. I think that to jazz it up, that is, to superimpose improvisations on it sometimes neuters it. There’s something really beautiful in a song that is simple, and it’s just a song. (Hekselman 2015)

We can find numerous examples of pieces that can be described as “Songs Without Words”

within bassist Avishai Cohen’s quite prolific output. One such example is his piece “Elli” from

his 2006 album Continuo. Performed by pianist Sam Barsh, Cohen on bass and Mark Giuliana

on drums, the piece prominently features many of the characteristics discussed above. Most

57 According to Grove Music Online “Songs Without Words” are short lyrical pieces. Felix Mendelssohn coined the German term and used it extensively in his piano music. In the WAM tradition the term usually refers to piano music (Brown and Hamilton n.d.).

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notably, the piece features right hand arpeggios in the piano part throughout, coupled with the

left hand root motion that is doubled by the bass. The piano/bass doubling is a signature

characteristic of much of Cohen’s original music. As with most Israeli jazz songs (and SLI), it

is in minor and the harmony is primarily triadic and diatonic. Here is an excerpt from “Elli”

(Cohen 2012):

Figure 4.2 Excerpt from Head In of “Elli” by Avishai Cohen

Cohen’s music, as noted, has had a tremendous influence on younger Israeli jazz musicians

(Friedman included) and thus his use of SLI harmonic characteristic reinforces the influence of

these traits. Taking a closer look at the “D” section of Amit Friedman’s “The Archaelogist”

reveals a similar distinct “Songs Without Words” texture:

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Figure 4.3 D Section from Head In of the “Archeologist” by Amit Friedman

Looking at the score we notice exclusively triadic harmony, arpeggios in the piano part, and a

lyrical melody which is first carried by the soprano saxophone (mm. 45-52) and then by the

piano (mm. 53-60). The harmonic progression for the eight bar phrase moves as follows: Gm -

Gm - Dm/F – Dm/F – Esus – E – Asus – A. The song is in the key of D minor, and the phrase

begins on the minor iv, moving to a first inversion i chord. Then the last four bars behave like a

WAM cadence that utilizes standard suspensions (4-3), first on the V/V (E triad) and then with

the V chord.

A key observation regarding both the excerpt from Cohen’s “Elli” and the Friedman

excerpt above is the significance of the minor iv chord. My analysis of numerous SLI songs

reveals that the prevalent use and significance of the minor iv chord is one of the distinguishing

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harmonic features of the SLI tradition. The iv chord holds an important place in and of itself

and is often the first move away from the tonic in many SLI songs. Additionally many SLI

songs modulate to or tonicize the relative major. The iv chord serves as a pivot chord, and

behaves as the ii in a ii-V progression that moves to the relative major key. This move to the

relative major occurs in a very high percentage of the SLI songs I analyzed and it is the primary

harmonic destination in terms of tonicization. The examples above are emblematic of the

prevalent use of the minor iv chord by Israeli jazz musicians’ compositions and thus a concrete

example of the influence of the SLI.

Thus far our exploration of the local threads of influence has focused on the influence

of the SLI and the music of popular songwriters starting in the 1970s. These influences

manifest primarily in the harmonic language, the privileging of the melody or the “song” and a

kind of ephemeral “spirit” (helech ruach). The next local thread takes us in a very different

direction, equally omnipresent in the same Israeli context, and similarly very much a part of

this generations’ musical consciousness.

Musiqa Mizrahit, Arab Classical Music, and Andalusian Music

A second umbrella of musical styles that significantly influences the original

compositions of Israeli jazz musicians is music belonging to and connected to the Arab world

and the Maghreb. These varied genres, include the Israeli musiqa mizrahit (a type of popular

music), Arab Classical Music, and Andalusian music from Algeria and Morocco. These

influences manifest in two primary ways: first, the wide-ranging use of grooves that are derived

from various Middle-Eastern and North African sources; second, the presence of a melodic

language that clearly references these sources through its styling and ornamentation.

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Translated literally to mean Eastern music, musiqa mizrahit refers to an Israeli popular

music genre that emerged in the 1970s, primarily out of the musical practices of Jews who

immigrated to Israel from Arab and Muslim countries, or what in Israel is sometimes referred

to as ‘edot ha-mizrah (the Eastern communities).58 The genre incorporates an array of musical

influences originating from various corners of the Near East, North Africa, and the

Mediterranean, including most notably Yemenite, Greek, Moroccan, Turkish, Arabic, Kurdish

and Persian influences into popular song forms and styling. The genre’s ascent from an

underground, marginalized “other” in the 1970s to a prominent fixture in the Israeli popular

music landscape (from the late 1990s to the present) parallels the broader cultural awakening of

Mizrahim [lit. Easterners] as part of the cultural and political challenge to the hegemonic

Ashkenazy [European] variant as defining of Israeliness.59

Numerous Israeli jazz artists noted in their interviews that they love songs by the early

pioneers of musiqa mizrahit, for example singers like Zohar Argov, Haim Moshe and groups

such as Tsliley Hakerem. Guitarist and oudist Amos Hoffman reflects this well:

I have to say that the whole thing of musiqa mizrahit [that] I call Israeli music - like Aharon Amram, Zehava Alani, Zohar Argov - you have things in there that I grew up on that I really love. And in that music you can hear Yemenite and Kurdish influences, lots of Kurdish influences. (Hoffman 2014)

When driving from Toronto to Montreal with Hoffman during a 2016 tour we were doing

together, I was amazed when he began singing from memory along with numerous songs from

an album of Zohar Argov classics. Hoffman included the particular inflections and

ornamentations (silsulim), and Argov’s famous nasaly tone. Hoffman also expertly displays in

58 As Regev and Seroussi note, Mizrahim (“Eastern” Jews) “were relegated by the dominant Western perspective to an ‘ethnic’ component of Israeli Jewish culture and typically occupy the less privileged socioeconomic position” (2004:191). 59 For more on musiqa mizrahit and its role as an agent for social change see Regev and Seroussi 2004; Nocke 2006; Saada-Ophir 2006; Horowitz 2010.

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performance electric guitar stylings, pioneered by musiqa mizrahit guitarists such as Aris San

and Moshe Ben Mush that imitate the Greek bouzuki.

Pianist Omer Klein, like Hoffman, has listened to a great deal of musiqa mizrahit,

though he notes that he didn’t care much for it when he was growing up; that is until the songs

of Zohar Argov drew him into appreciating this music when he was approximately eighteen:

It wasn’t part of my life when I was growing up, but thinking that was probably a mistake because apparently this Arab and North African rhythmic beat penetrated and somehow became a part of my blood cycle, just like the sun, the temperatures and the weather. Apparently it also harped on a string in me because after all half of my family are North Africans. After all, my mother’s parents immigrated to Israel from Tunisia and Libya. […] though I didn’t absorb this culture from them, something must have been there, because somehow around the age of eighteen, nineteen, I started discovering deeper things […] things that touched me not as though I am discovering something completely new like Schoenberg or Radiohead, but as though I am discovering something new that was already familiar. (Klein 2017)

In addition to Argov, Klein cites of the music of Avihu Medina and earlier songs by singer

Haim Moshe as favorites. In particular, he recounts how illuminating it was to transcribe

“Ahavat Chayai” [trans. “The Love of My Life”] by Haim Moshe:

I remember the process of transcribing this song with all of the details of the melody and to learn it, and I also played it with Omer Avital. I remember it as a formative moment, when all of a sudden I saw that it was like when I lift a solo by Herbie Hancock; it changes me and enriches me as a pianist […] lifting this [music] does the same. (Klein 2017)

Similarly, Bassist Omer Avital emphasized his great affinity for the music of Zohar

Argov and its influence on his own musicmaking:

From my perspective Zohar Argov is simply a genius, of the highest echelons of shaping culture…his songs are the songs of soccer, the mix of Spanish, little bit of Arabic music, Tunisian music, little bit Ashkenazy. I think it’s the most Israeli music there is, I don’t think there’s better Israeli music…I transcribed his songs and went really deep into it, into the intricacies because he really moved me, also because I am Yemenite, and I grew up on him as a child, and there’s something really direct from my own cultural lineage in it. (Avital 2017)

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Avital continues by underscoring the direct influence Argov’s music had on him while he was

recording and producing his album New Song (2014):

I’ll tell you a secret, during the recording of New Song I was literally obsessed with Zohar Argov…I would listen between [recording] sessions, I would listen to him, to the haflot with the guitar,60 and I really wanted to bring it to “Hafla” and “New Middle East”,61 I wanted to bring this clean vibe of the drums, this clean groove, and these direct Mizrahi melodies. You know, it really spoke to me specifically on this album, that entire time I would immerse myself in it, also emotionally, feel it, feel the pride of musiqa mizrahit…it was my spiritual foundation you know on the inside of the soul when I was doing this record. (Avital 2017)

In addition to the pronounced influence of musiqa mizrahit, Israeli jazz musicians also

cited an array of other musical genres and styles from the Arab world as direct influences. By

no means a comprehensive or definite list, these might include: 1) Arab Classical music, such

as music by Egyptian icons Oum Kulthum, Muhamed Abdel Wahab, Farid El Atrash or Iraqi

Jewish musicians such as Avraham Salman; 2) exposure through familial and congregational

upbringing to secular and liturgical music belonging to different congregations of Jewish

immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa; 3) Andalusian music as transmitted by

Algerian or Moroccan Jewish immigrants such as oudist Nino Bitton, pianist Maurice El-

Medioni, oudist Samy El Maghribi or paytanim such as Rabbi Haim Louk;62 4) music from folk

traditions that do not necessarily have a Jewish connection, such as Bedouin Haliji music,

Sudanese folk music, or Moroccon Gnawa.

Drummer Ziv Ravitz recounted how, after starting to work as the drummer for Omer

Avital’s band and the Omer Klein trio, he immersed himself, by way of intense listening, in a

myriad of styles of what he calls Arab music. Though he recalls listening to some of this music

60 Hafla (s), Haflot (pl) are “celebrations consisting of food and entertainment on various occasions” (Regev Seroussi 2004). Hafla is one of many Arabic words that is used as slang in Hebrew. 61 Two of Avital’s original composition from the 2014 album. 62 Paytan (s), paytanim (pl) translates into singer or reciter of piyyutim.

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growing up, for example, while visiting his grandmother’s house (his mother’s side of the

family immigrated to Israel from Egypt), it was his collaboration with Avital and Klein, two

musicians who actively integrated elements of middle-eastern and Arab music into their

original music, that prompted his focused study of these styles:

They [ed. Avital & Klein] gave me piles and piles of Arab music. These are things I listened to at home, at my grandmother’s, but to understand and to translate the rhythms, I had to study a lot by listening online, and I sat with people like percussionist Itamar Doari […] I listened to Oum Khultum which is classical, and to all sorts of contemporary people, like Taksim Trio from Turkey. Wow, I can’t remember names, but my iPod is full because of Omer [Avital]. Full of music, even random, like a singer from Morocco that only one hundred people in the world know. One of them is Omer, because he’s really deep into it. He knows it and so he exposed me to it. (Ravitz 2014)

Indeed, several musicians cited Avital’s comprehensive knowledge and intense study of Arab

classical music, Andalusian music, and other North African styles such as Moroccan Gnawa.

Speaking about Avital, Omer Klein notes:

He underwent a true process of academic study of this subject: He learned to play the oud, he studied makamat, he can play on makam and he has behind him hundreds of hours of listening to Arab and North African music. (Klein 2017)

Much like Ravitz, Klein also credits Avital for exposing him to this vast world of music that

grew to influence his work. The same holds true for trumpeter Itamar Borochov who

underscores not only Avital’s mentorship and professional support, but also the way in which

he “hipped him” to new musical styles such as Andalusian music:

He brought me to play with Rabbi Haim Louk in Israel and through that I learned a ton of Andalusian music […] we would always be listening to music, and he would always tell me “check this out, check this out”. (Borochov 2015)

Another important dimension involves direct exposure through family, congregation,

and one’s surrounding community to the musical traditions that Jews brought with them to

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Israel from their old homes across the Middle East and North Africa. Omer Klein recalls one

such experience that revealed his affinity and connection to this particular world of sounds:

I remember one formative experience in the Tripolitean synagogue near my parents’ house in Netanya,63 at my youngest brother’s Bar Mitzvah…I was twenty one. All of a sudden I heard them sing melodies that really, really touched me during his Bar Mitzvah portion. I came home and I played them from memory, and till this day I sometimes remember them and play them…and it opened in me a window that hasn’t closed since. (Klein 2017)

Itamar Borochov also thinks that the time he spent as a child in various Sephardic synagogues

during some Sabbaths and holidays, as well as the Bukharian songs his father sang at home left

an imprint that would resurface in his adulthood when he became interested in incorporating

Maqamat into his trumpet playing:

When I started dealing with this in a musical sense, say in the last five years, it just really penetrates the soul. And it was also really immediate for me. When I started playing makamat on trumpet, it was something that I never really had to work on very much. I mean, there was the year or two of figuring out technically how I do it on the trumpet. I became more and more interested. I listened and studied makam more – it was a kind of study period. I would go and sit with Victor Uda, a Kanun player, when I was visiting in Israel or I would sit with Baber El Maghribi in Jaffa…I don’t know how to explain it to you. It was like totally automatic. It was really easy for me to learn this music and perform it. Jazz is a music that I love and have been listening to my whole life, and I’ve worked really hard to learn how to play its language. Yet, somehow, makamat came to me totally naturally. Like I didn’t have to exert myself to do it, and I think it’s somehow related [ed: to early exposure as a child]. (Borochov 2015)

Other artists have been particularly drawn to the rich and varied musical styles emerging out of

the Maghreb. The past two decades in Israel have seen a revitalization of the Andalusian music

tradition, with several older master musicians who had immigrated to Israel from North Africa

decades prior finally receiving much deserved (and belated) recognition for their artistry.64 For

63 Synagogue for Israeli Jewish community of immigrants originally from Tripoli, Libya. 64 Jewish musicians were prominent carriers and contributors to the development of the Andalusian musical

traditions in Algeria and Morocco. Many of these musicians arrived as immigrants in the newly formed state of Israel in the 1950s. In their new country, which was dominated by Ashkenazy culture, many of

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example, jazz pianist Omri Mor’s original music and improvisations demonstrate the active

integration of Andalusian music. Mor mentored for many years under the guidance of

Andalusian music oudist Nino Bitton. Here he recounts how he got into this music in the first

place:

I don’t have a North African background or anything like that. But, when I was about fourteen years old, I met an oud player named Nino Bitton in Jerusalem and somehow I got sucked into this music. In the beginning there was this project that bassist Omer Avital played with Nino, and I simply started coming to rehearsals. I became enchanted with Nino’s playing, with his qualities as a musician, and with the sound of this music that I didn’t know. After a few years I found myself playing a lot of this repertoire. (Mor 2015)

It is not possible, nor even desirable, to identify and point to every possible way in

which these influences have affected the music made by Israeli jazz musicians. Nonetheless, it

is useful to highlight two particularly obvious features that reflect the impact these sources have

had on the Israeli jazz soundscape. The first dimension has to do with the rhythmic vocabulary

that is being incorporated and the second involves the type of melodic writing that permeates

the music.

Rhythmic Vocabulary/Grooves

As with every aspect of the original music created by this generation of Israeli jazz

musicians, the use of grooves and rhythmic vocabulary, usually derived from different Middle-

Eastern and North African sources, is incredibly varied and highly personal. Though my

interlocutors did identify a few grooves that were commonplace and shared by a wide swath of

these professional musicians (who in some cases were famous stars in their previous homes) had to give up their musical careers, and lived in relative anonymity and poverty. For more on the Jewish musicians’ involvement in the Andalusian musical traditions read the volume edited by Ruth Frances Davis titled Musical Exodus: Al-Andalus and its Jewish Diasporas (2015).

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players in this jazz scene, these generalizations by no means cover the entire gamut of grooves

and rhythms that Israeli jazz artists incorporate into their music making.

The malfouf, a groove that has many variations in the Arab world, was recognized by

several interlocutors as a kind of quintessential Israeli jazz groove. Some referred to it as

“groove falafel”. Here is the notated malfouf rhythm in its simplest form:

Figure 4.4 Malfouf rhythm

Ziv Ravitz, relates that there is a unique Israeli way of playing the malfouf that is discernable,

though hard to describe or define:

There’s some sort of breath inside the groove. Its not a drum machine…every culture that plays this groove plays it with a different breadth…and the Israeli groove has a very, very specific breath that’s hard to explain in technical terms. While it is really easy to show it, even after you show it, it’s not necessarily easy to play it, and that’s why a lot of Israeli players are attracted to play with other Israelis. (Ravitz 2014)

There are numerous excellent examples of Israeli jazz musicians utilizing the malfouf. Indeed,

it is featured prominently in many songs by the group Third World Love, bassist Omer Avital,

pianist Omer Klein and many other artists.

Another influence from North African and Arab music is the prevalence of 6/8 grooves.

As bassist Gilad Abro put it, Israeli jazz musicians play 6/8 in various ways according to the

specific influence from various traditions (i.e. Morocco, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria or

Turkey):

There’s more of an Arab association to the grooves…you can say the groove belongs there, and you have drummers that play even more exaggerated in that direction…you certainly hear this type of 6/8 in the playing of many guys. (Abro 2015)

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Odd meters are also common and, again, approached with subdivisions that are typical

of Arab and Turkish music. For example, the 7/8 dasa groove, which subdivides into 3+4, is

used in a number of songs. Or similarly, Amos Hoffman incorporates a 15/8 groove on his

composition “Hamsa” from the album Evolution (2008), as a variation on a Moroccan groove

that typically occurs in 12/8.

Though we can point to specific sonic markers, such as the malfouf, dasa or 6/8

grooves, the rhythmic influence of music from the Arab world and the Maghreb comes across

most clearly through the festivity that the music imbues. When describing the way in which

Israeli jazz musicians play middle-eastern grooves, drummer Amir Bresler refers quite directly

to their festive quality with the Hebrew word for celebration, hagiga. Other Israeli musicians

speaking on the same topic use the Arabic word for party hafla: “When there is this atmosphere

of hafla, there is this feeling of a party… and there is something in it that really brings hearts

together, and it has the association of family” (Abro 2015).

A festive feeling evoked in the music is also a direct link between Israeli jazz and

musiqa mizrahit, which emerged from performances by Mizrahi Jews at their haflot and

subsequent circulation of cassette tape recordings of these parties. Regev and Seroussi report

that some of the ways in which musiqa mizrahit has been described in conversation reveal its

festive qualities: “Native terms used to describe the music…kef (fun); toseset (effervescent);

malhiva (exciting); meshaga’at (drives one crazy); mefotzetzet (explosive)” (2004:208). Not

surprisingly, several Israeli jazz artists invoke the idea of festive celebration directly with titles

given to their original compositions. Hadar Noiberg features a song named “Hafla” on her 2010

album Journey Back Home while Omer Avital’s 2014 album New Song opens with a different

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song bearing the exact same name. Uri Gurvich has a piece titled “The Hagiga Suite” on his

2013 record BabEl while Alon Farber’s ensemble is called “The Hagiga Sextet”.

Several musicians not only highlighted the festive dimension of the music, but also

connected it directly to the Israeli temperament.65 Further, they explain that this warmth in the

music differentiates it from much of the jazz that they have come across in NY and Europe:

I think that its related to the Israeli temperament, which I, of course, have much criticism of...but let’s just say…I have a hard time connecting with European jazz, because it doesn’t have the warmth, and sometimes [this is true] in NYC too. You hear music and its just, you feel that its really really cold. I think that the key word is heat, there’s warmth in the music. (Friedman 2015)

Gilad Abro agrees:

It’s why you often see Israeli guys on stage look into each other’s eyes a lot, and smile at one another. In NYC, you may see this looking into the eyes a little bit, but it’s a little bit cold and alienating, you know. And that also has to do with the music. (Abro 2015)

Amir Bresler speaks of the same warmth and speculates that it is the place itself, with its

climate, topography, food, and people that drives the music in this direction:

I think there’s something about the Israeli desert-ness that has made the jazz here a little more ballsy…you know, hummus and there are all these hangs in bars where people are actually dancing…so suddenly you have to play something danceable, so you begin to blend it. I don’t know, I just think that something in the Middle-East really influences Israeli jazz, its edginess…that there’s Moroccans and Yemenites here…they come from certain cultures, or even if their parents were born here (ed. in Israel) it doesn’t mean that they don’t have a history or something that comes with them. (Bresler 2015)

During my fieldwork in Israel I attended a CD release concert by saxophonist Yonatan

Cohen. To close the concert, the ensemble performed a Cohen original titled “Waterfall”. The

Head In had several contrasting sections, including one passage that had an overt and obvious

use of the malfouf rhythm, which is often called the “falafel groove.” In the Head Out, after an

65 The implication is that the warm temperament is tied in to Israel’s locus in the Middle-East.

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exciting drum solo by Daniel Dor, the falafel groove reappeared and extended into a prolonged

Coda. Bassist Gilad Abro started dancing, bouncing up and down, his aura emitting unbridled

joy. It evoked for me the kind of celebratory dancing you might see at a Chassidic wedding or a

hafla. It immediately translated in my mind to Laasot Sameach (Let’s make it joyous).

Spontaneously, the audience clapping for the drum solo transformed into a rhythmic clapping

that synchronized with the groove the band was playing. All of a sudden – the joy, the

happiness, became spontaneously participatory in a way that today’s jazz concerts rarely do.

This rhythmic clapping also represents the enthusiasm that exists in Israeli concerts.

The joy and warmth emanating from the groove and the response it elicits from the audience,

evokes a dimension of Israeliness that may not be easy to capture with technical descriptions of

time signatures or melodic fragments, yet nonetheless captures something of the essence of the

experience of performing and listening to jazz in Israel. It’s built into the audience’s entire

approach to the evening. It helps explain a little bit about where this music came from and

where it grew. A little bit of the hafla has entered into the jazz club, much as it has entered

every aspect of life in Israel, for good or bad.

Melodic Language

The influence of various musical styles derived from the Arab world and the Maghreb

on original compositions by Israeli jazz artists is also indicated by the prevalence of melodic

language that is derived from Arab classical music, musiqa mizrahit and Andalusian music.

Amos Hoffman’s album Na’ama (2006) features an entire recording deeply indebted to Arab

Classical music, filled with examples of Taqsim and compositions using Arab Classical song

forms such as the Samai and Longa. Similarly, Omer Avital’s melodic writing is often imbued

with reference and influence of Arab music and musiqa mizrahit. Take as an example the “call

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and response” interlude of the composition “New Middle East” (Avital 2008) from the album

New Song that starts at measure 226 below:

Figure 4.5 Call and response interlude from “New Middle East” by Omer Avital

As Avital told me in our interview, this section, both in its melodies and in its call and

response, clearly references Egyptian classical music:

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It’s very Hijaz, which is an Arabic scale, here it’s really Egyptian music, really Arab music. It could be played by an [Arab] orchestra, super Egyptian music. Really like Farid El Atrash and things like that. (Avital 2017)

An oft shared melodic characteristic among Israeli jazz musicians is the frequent use of

silsulim. In their discussion of musiqa mizrahit, Seroussi and Regev (2004:204) translate

silsulim as “waves or spirals” and refer to them as “vocal inflections of long pitches”. I suggest

we use the term silsulim as the Hebrew word given to describe vocal or instrumental

ornamentations that are typical of performance practice of many musical traditions (folk and

classical) found across the Middle-East, North Africa and Central Asia.66

Trumpeter Itamar Borochov’s composition “Bgida” (trans. Betrayal) (Borochov 2010)

from his 2014 album Outset demonstrates well the use of silsulim by Israeli jazz musicians:

66 Instrumental silsulim can be thought to be imitating the effect created by the human voice.

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Figure 4.6 Excerpt from Head In of “Bgida” by Itamar Borochov

Notice the repeated use of the sixteenth note ornamentation, the silsulim, in mm. 9, 12, 17, 25,

and 28. The “Arab music” influence is also distinctly clear by way of the utilization of the

malfouf groove as indicated by the bass line (and drums in the recording).

Another great example of the use of siluslim comes by way of flutist Itai Kriss’s

composition “Sahadi’s Serenade”. Kriss provided me with the flute part (melody) for the piece

(Kriss 2012):

Figure 4.7 Melody excerpt from “Sahadi’s Serenade” by Itai Kriss

According to Kriss (2015), this melody is undoubtedly influenced by “Arab music”, and a first

read of the chart clearly reveals that sonic influence. However, my transcription of the actual

performance of this melody by Kriss and his group Televana demonstrates how the use of

silsulim propel the melody from referencing the sounds of Arab music to clear participation in

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performance practice associated with the style and tradition, thus giving the music a much

stronger Middle-Eastern “flavor” than the written chart indicates:67

Figure 4.8 “Sahadi’s Serenade” excerpt with silsulim

THE COMPLEX “GLOBAL” PART II: “WORLD” MUSIC

In addition to African American jazz and the myriad of local influences discussed

above, Israeli jazz musicians are also heavily influenced by classical, folk and popular music

traditions from around the world. While, the specific traditions and the degree of influence vary

from artist to artist, the incorporation of elements from musical styles beyond jazz, Israeli and

Mediterranean music is broadly shared among the three waves of Israeli jazz musicians who

stand at the center of this study.

Perhaps the most substantial and pervasive influence is derived from the world of Latin

American popular and folk music, particularly Afro-Cuban and Brazilian styles. These

influences can be understood as the result of both indirect and direct exposure to these

traditions. Various Afro-Cuban and Brazilian music practices are already interwoven into

several genres that have been discussed as having pronounced influence on these musicians.

Certainly, the presence of Afro-Cuban and Brazilian popular music in the jazz tradition is well

documented. Inevitably, as part of a broader jazz training and internalization of jazz traditions

and repertoire, Israeli jazz musicians were exposed to, investigated, and in some cases became

enamored with Afro-Cuban and Brazilian styles. The indirect influence of Brazilian popular

67 Performance of this composition by Kriss and his group Televana was published by the YouTube channel Congahead on July 23, 2017.

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genres such as bossa nova, and samba can also be understood as the result of their pronounced

presence in the music of influential Israeli popular music songwriters such as Matti Caspi and

Yoni Rechter and on the genre more broadly (including SLI of the late 1960s and 1970s).

You look at Matti Caspi…so many songs [influenced by bossa nova and samba] and these songs really influenced the mindset when you grow up here…also the innocence in the sound, the style of presentation, this feeling that you have a ground and the melodies are on the off-beat, so you hear this in Avishai’s (Cohen) writing and in Omer [Avital] and everybody. [demonstrates melody that’s on off beat]…you know in a Brazilian feel. (Abro 2015)

Anat Cohen echoes this reality when she reflects on possible reasons for how at home she felt

when she first started playing Brazilian music:

Growing up in Israel on a lot of Matti Caspi and the music that he brought, and probably other people too bringing music from Brazil in the most natural way …with Hebrew lyrics and I think you know, I grew up hearing those rhythms, so it always felt natural when I heard those songs and some of the samba feel on the radio.68 (Cohen 2017)

Complementing the indirect influence of Brazilian and Cuban music via jazz and Israeli

popular music, a substantial number of prominent Israeli jazz musicians became directly

involved in the New York Afro-Cuban and Brazilian choro music scenes. Such involvement

has played a central role in the professional growth and musical development of several artists

and has considerable influence on the original music that these artists compose and perform.

For example, during his first decade of activity in NYC, (a period of time that

contributed greatly to the development of his distinct voice), bassist Avishai Cohen was a

highly sought after bass player in the Afro-Cuban scene. Additionally, he worked for several

years as the sideman for pianists Chick Corea and Danilo Perez, both of whom play music that

often incorporates Afro-Cuban and Brazilian, and in the case of Perez, Panamanian influences.

68 My interview with Anat Cohen was conducted in English.

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Drummer Amir Bresler, who played in Cohen’s band for several years, comments on Cohen’s

connection to Afro-Cuban music:

He has a fluency in Cuban music at incredible levels…he played with the greatest [musicians]…one of the things that helps his music breath is his knowledge of Cuban music…they [Cuban tradition] see rhythm in a way that is really deep and wise, they, ashkara,69 know when and how to make you feel like your body is being stretched and then to give the right hit in the right place that will make everyone say yoaw (wow), its something that really drives complex music…its something that I think really glues a lot of his rhythms and combinations. (Bresler 2015)

Bassist Gilad Abro, who was taken under Cohen’s wing when he was seventeen and who has

spent a considerable amount of time hanging with and absorbing music from Cohen, also feels

that the Cuban influence plays a crucial role in a sort of rhythmic glue that unites and connects

his other disparate influences (SLI, Ladino, jazz, etc):

I know that in New York, Avishai was first call in the Latin music scene…even more than the Cuban bassists, so all these combinations in his music reach a place of how to push the music forward with a strong salsa vibe…and when he plays music you also see this vibe with kicks and this forward motion interpretation that’s like Salsa, its really influenced from there, and even when he plays time signatures like 9 or 7 and all those sorts of things, you see that often it also touches a bit of a groove tumbao in types of bass playing. (Abro 2015)

Cohen’s long running involvement in the Afro-Cuban scene in NYC and the influence

that these experiences had on his musical development might be also partially responsible for

the extensive use of ostinatos in his original compositions. Though Cohen rarely writes music

that directly evokes Afro-Cuban montunos,70 many of his compositions include lengthy ostinato

passages, with precise and repeating piano rhythmic figurations and bass lines that underlie a

69 Slang from Arabic for truly! 70 montuno refers to “the vamp or ostinato section of most styles of Cuban music. It has also been extended to refer to the vamp section of any or all styles genereally associated with Afro-Carribean music, so that the vamp of any style may be referred to as the montuno” (Mauleón-Santana 1999).

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soloist, serve as a transition, or as a contrasting section. One such example is the closing

passages of his composition “Dreaming” (Cohen 2012):

Figure 4.9 Ostinato from “Dreaming” by Avishai Cohen

Flutist Itai Kriss started playing Afro-Cuban music with the Israeli band Tipico even

before moving to the US. When he was ready to move to NYC, bassists Avishai Cohen and

Omer Avital told him that upon arrival he absolutely had to seek out Cuban musicians Ray

Santiago and Aivey Rodriguez and sit in with their band, telling him “They’ll be crazy about

you” (Kriss 2015). Indeed, Kriss sat in for several weeks and was subsequently hired as a

regular member, playing on a weekly basis for nearly six years at the NYC venue Forbidden

City. He continues to perform regularly in the Cuban, Latin and Latin jazz music scenes

(including collaborations with Puerto-Rican, Colombian, Venezuelan bands and musicians), in

bands such as Los Hacheros, Gato Gato and with Colombian pianist Edmar Castaneda.

Similarly, woodwind player Anat Cohen has been deeply invested in Brazilian choro

and samba for over a decade. She has explored numerous collaborations with Brazilian

musicians and has incorporated numerous choro compositions and other works by Brazilian

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composers such as Milton Nascimento in her albums. For example, her 2012 release Luminosa,

Portugese for luminous, features several choro and samba pieces alongside several originals,

including a tribute to Brazilian guitarist Baden Powell. Cohen remarks, “I flow between

modern and traditional jazz, between samba and choro – all maybe in a week’s time.” (Cohen

quoted in Bambarger 2017). In her early years in the US, she played in Brazilian ensembles

such as the Choro Ensemble and Duduka Da Fonseca’s Samba Jazz Quintet. Most recently,

earlier in 2017 Cohen released two of what she calls “Brazilian flavor” albums. One album

Outra Coisa is a duet with Brazilian seven-string guitarist Marcello Gonçalves presenting their

arrangements of music by Brazilian composer Moacir Santos. The second album, Rosa Dos

Ventos presents an array of choro pieces with her ensemble Trio Brasileiro.

Flutist Hadar Noiberg’s work also offers a striking example of an Israeli jazz musician

who has been heavily involved in both the Afro-Cuban and Brazilian music scenes of NYC.

Noiberg reports that she began playing Cuban music while still in Israel, playing some with the

Jerusalem Salsa Band, and that though she originally planned to focus solely on jazz in the US,

a chance encounter led to other results:

One day I was walking in the West Village and I heard Cuban music. I had my flute with me, and I asked to sit in. From there on my life flowed into a journey of intense playing of Charanga in Cuban music and Salsa for years. (Noiberg 2015)

A similar experience led to her involvement with Brazilian choro. As Noiberg tells it, on a

different occasion she was walking down the street in the East Village and heard some

Brazilian music. She walked in to the venue and it was Anat Cohen playing. Cohen told

Noiberg that she “had to come back on Sundays, there’s a choro ensemble, you’ll love it”.

Noiberg recounts that though she didn’t quite know why Anat Cohen said that, it turns out she

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was spot on. Noiberg subsequently came on Sundays non-stop and eventually formed her own

choro ensemble, Regional de NY.

Some Israeli jazz musicians see significant commonalities between the rhythmic worlds

of Latin-American music and various Mediterranean and North African styles that also have a

pronounced influence on Israeli jazz musicians:

Many times in musiqa mizrahit, so called Mediterranean, this rhythm of [demonstrates the malfouf] is a rhythm that is super danceable and super groovy. It connects directly with everything that has to do with Latin American music. It’s essentially a half of a clave…take Salsa, there’s a lot that’s connected to so called Mediterranean music. (Hoffman 2014)

Several other musicians note that the popular middle-eastern malfouf rhythm also resembles the

Northeastern Brazilian rhythm baião and that such similarities have eased and enhanced their

transcultural blending.

Flutist Itai Kriss’s band, Televana,71 is directly focused on exploring the

interconnections between Israeli, Middle-Eastern influences and Afro-Cuban styles. The band

is comprised of Israeli and Cuban musicians, and Kriss seeks to create original music that

connects these two musical worlds:

I started from the compositions. They had a bit of a middle-eastern flavor, not all the way, because I didn’t really study Arab music and I’m not fluent in the Makams but I have these things in my ear and I love that sound and the rhythms…So it started when I wrote a few songs, songs more in an Arab style. But when I write it, it turns out a bit Latin…These are songs you can play with a jazz quartet. But I thought that it would be cool to take it all the way and to play them with Cuban musicians and with a percussion instrumentation and it worked really well. Also, the thing about the middle-eastern rhythms, you know, its really rhythmic music. Cuban music is also rhythmic but with a different taste. I really love the blend (shiluv). Somehow these rhythms work together … middle eastern music and Caribbean music have a lot in common. (Kriss 2015)

71 The name of the group combines the name of two cities, Israel’s Tel Aviv and Cuba’s Havana.

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Going beyond the American continent, other Israeli artists are deeply indebted in the

development of their particular transcultural practice to study and influence originating from

other sources. For example saxophonist Oded Tzur has developed an innovative approach to

jazz saxophone playing that is the result of intense study of North Indian Classical Music with

master flutist Hariprasad Chaurasia. Saxophonist and vocalist Abate Berihun, who immigrated

to Israel from Ethiopia in the 1990s creates a wholly unique style of music that integrates

traditional Ethiopian modes and melodies with middle eastern rhythms, and jazz

improvisational structures and approach.

SUMMARY BY WAY OF A CASE STUDY: AMOS HOFFMAN AND MULTI-LOCAL MUSICIANSHIP

Thus far, the analysis presented in this chapter focused on selected key threads of

influence that shape the music created by Israeli jazz musicians. These complex local and

global styles of music are transcultural genres in and of themselves. Israeli artists blend them in

wholly personal ways, creating their own unique “blend of blends”. While endeavoring to

emphasize the individualistic nature of this process of stylistic interweaving, I simultaneously

surveyed their often overlapping, sonically perceptible and discursive characteristics.

Throughout, I sought to give as much space to the voices of the artists themselves.

Whereas the particular blend varies from artist to artist, what is fundamentally shared

among this generation of Israeli jazz artists is the blending itself. I return here to my

conceptualization of the multi-local musician whose multi-locality is reflected through his or

her musical “Rituals”, “Relationships” and “Restrictions”. The Israeli jazz musicians that stand

at the center of this dissertation are “locals” in several disparate musical homes spanning varied

geographies and historical temporalities. Their lives are colored by musical “Rituals” and

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“Relationships” that reflect this embrace of a cross-cultural and cosmopolitan “contact zone”

(Kun 2005) while “Restrictions” simultaneously limit their tangible realities. How does this

process of integration actually work? What might this multi-local musicianship look and sound

like? Answering these questions is not only essential for understanding the transcultural nature

of jazz, but doing so also serves as an excellent way to summarize the analyses presented in this

chapter. I chose to do so via a case study exploration devoted to the work of Israeli jazz oudist

and guitarist Amos Hoffman.

Hoffman’s original compositions integrate bebop, hardbop, Israeli popular music,

Bedouin Folk, Afro-Cuban, North African and Arab Classical music. His music clearly

exemplifies ways in which many Israeli jazz artists follow the commonly heard directive to

“play their own voice” to the tune of music blending diverse local and global sources.

Ultimately, Hoffman’s stylistic polyphony supports the case for transcultural jazz as an

audiotopia of multi-local cosmopolitanism.

Born in 1970, Hoffman grew up in Israel and moved to NYC in the early 1990s with the

hope of becoming “the most killin’ jazz guitarist in the world” (Hoffman, 2014). He established

himself as an in-demand sideman and a regular at the well-known Small’s jazz club scene in

downtown NYC, often playing in jam sessions with the likes of Brad Mehldau, Joshua

Redman, Peter Bernstein along with his Israeli compatriots Avishai Cohen and Omer Avital.

Hoffman is perhaps best known for his work as the oudist on many of bassist Cohen’s most

successful albums. Indeed, Hoffman’s oud is one of the defining and most recognizable

features of these recordings, and became synonymous with the emerging Israeli jazz sound.

Whereas Hoffman is recognized internationally for his innovative and distinctive oud

playing, his musical worlds can be viewed along a continuum. On the one end lies straight-

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ahead bop inspired music, and on the other is Arab classical music. Of his five albums, two (his

first and last) fall strongly within the domain of “straight ahead”, whereas his second release

Na’ama (2006) can be placed on the Arab classical music side of the continuum. His third and

fourth releases Evolution (2008) and Carving (2010), fall somewhere in between, or to borrow

Fellezs’s term, in the “broken middle” of transgeneric music. When I spoke to Hoffman about

these two different worlds, he relayed that he feels both are deeply a part of him:

I live both of these worlds. Perhaps for some people that sounds unnatural or doesn’t make sense but for me that’s who I am. I am the combination of the two, both musically and personally. I have both sides and I love them equally. That’s who I am, you can’t fight it. These past four months I had one performance on oud. I have no problem with that. I’m happy to play straight ahead, I love it, it’s a passion of mine. But, let’s say another time I will have a period that I only play oud, or only compose on oud. (Hoffman 2014)

In the context of transcultural music making, it is perhaps a bit surprising that Hoffman feels

the distinctions and polarities between the two worlds so strongly. Whereas much of his

original music clearly relays the process of internalization-transformation that is so

characteristic of various types of stylistic blends, his discourse articulates the pronounced

difference between these two musical worlds.

As noted above, Hoffman spent his earlier years cutting his teeth as a sideman and in

the jam sessions of NYC, and sought opportunities to play with the older masters of the straight

ahead jazz tradition. When American saxophonist Jay Collins urged him to start bringing his

oud out to gigs, he decided to dedicate himself to the study of Makam and Arab Classical

Music via lessons with Lebanese musician Bassam Saba and by making transcriptions of

recorded music:

You start something but you realize you don’t know anything about it. So that’s what motivated me to study, so I went and took lessons. I got into it really, really deep, learned the oud, learned the Makams. I started transcribing like mad, solos by Riad Al Sunbati, Abdel Wahab, you know all the Egyptian

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classics. I completely got sucked into this world of Arab Classical Music. (Hoffman 2014)

Serious study of these traditions is so important for Hoffman that he cannot help but criticize

younger Israeli musicians who create music that blends Middle-Eastern and jazz vernaculars

without having dedicated enough time to investigating them:

I think that sometimes people take shortcuts. Take for example Avishai Cohen or Omer Avital, take me for example, each one of these players is a jazz musician that can stand on stage…and if Roy Hargrove calls me for a gig, which unfortunately doesn’t happen, but if it did, I can play a solo after him on any standard, and I won’t say that I’ll kick his ass, but I’d be able to hold my own. You need to be able to do that before you release an album of Arab grooves…you need to be able to seriously play something with a tradition of its own, you can’t be a branch that grows without a tree underneath it. (Hoffman 2014)

Here Hoffman underscores his belief in the necessity of immersion and internalization of

musical traditions as a catalyst for stylistic blend and transcultural music making.

In order to contextualize Hoffman’s approach it might be useful to reflect on the

perspective of another guitarist with a history of transcultural genre blending and in fact, a

noted pioneer of transgeneric music – John McLaughlin. McLaughlin’s incorporation of Indian

classical music in his group Shakti is regarded by scholars, critics, musicians, and fans as truly

ground-breaking. He provides poignant commentary on the notion of stylistic polyphony when

he says that “fusion can only exist inside an individual” (In Fellezs 2011:145). In other words,

McLaughlin views effective transcultural fusion as a product of an internalized and embodied

blend of two or more musical practices. It is not sufficient to put together instruments from two

different cultures (or as McLaughlin puts it, a “saxophone and guitar and tabla and

blahblahblah”) and play some music together. Instead, a process of internalization and

integration over time may ultimately yield a “fused” musical expression.

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For Hoffman, the desire to go deeper and deeper into the source material exists

alongside and leads to the liberty to create anew using these internalized and processed sources.

To use his own metaphor, he continues to water the roots of his various trees, so that his own

branches may grow. On the one hand, he remains committed to the study of each musical

tradition. On the other hand, he views the creation of his original music as the most “authentic”

representation he can make. As he does so, he also aspires to record a straight ahead jazz guitar

solo album, to be able to play a concert of Takasim, to continue work on his traditional Arab

classic orchestral piece, and all the while allow himself the freedom to create his own music

without worrying about where it falls within generic or stylistic boundaries.

While acknowledging the limits of his aspirations and abilities within the traditional

world of Arab Classical Music, Hoffman is simultaneously aware of his contributions and

innovations in the incorporation of the oud into jazz:

There are masterful oud players in the world today. There have been many greats in the past, and there will be many more in the future…As an oud player who tries to play traditional music, I don’t know if I’ll reach that level. On the other hand, precisely because I come from the other world [ed. referring to jazz] I can play things on the oud that a lot of incredible oud players, players that are far superior to me on oud cannot play. I think that’s part of the sound, that the oud is somehow not in its usual place. (Hoffman 2014)

Thus, as noted previously, many Israeli jazz musicians share the practice of blending a variety

of already blended styles in their own way. In many cases, they draw from similar threads of

influence. These often overlapping and shared “localities” have contributed to growing stylistic

similarities among these artists. Yet, when describing any artists’ stylistic polyphony, it is

important to remember that they work with specific and particular sets of influences. It is not

adequate or precise to describe Amos Hoffman’s music as a blend of “Middle-Eastern”,

“Israeli” and “American jazz” influences (though these kinds of reductive labels provide a

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useful short hand when trying to promote one’s music to festivals, labels, and the general

public). Rather each of these monikers needs to be understood, as, diverse and complex musical

worlds—something that Hoffman himself stresses. So for example, the gloss “Middle-Eastern

influences” in Hoffman’s music might better be stated as the music of Egyptian masters such as

Riad Al Sunbati, Abdel Wahab, Oum Khulthum, Leila Morad, the music of Jewish-Iraqi kanun

master Avraham Salman, musiqa mizrahit, Bedouin Haliji music from Saudi Arabia and the

Sinai desert, Sudanese pop and Morrocan Gnawe. Of course, one can always increase the

resolution of inquiry and name specific artists, grooves, melodic, and harmonic moves and

motifs that serve as influences for any artist under examination.

Departing for a moment from our singular focus on Amos Hoffman, recall that the

many other Israeli jazz musicians whose voices have been heard throughout this chapter

provide evidence for the extent to which they reside in multiple musical localities. As multi-

local musicians, their rituals and relationships often involve musical traditions related to their

Israeli and middle-eastern roots, as well as, the various musical homes they adopted and

adapted to over the years. Almost all share an early and fundamental groundedness in the

African-American jazz tradition. For many, this is their primary adopted musical locality.

Second, each musician brings with them the specific locality of their Israeli and Mediterranean

roots. However, as we go beyond these two fundamentally shared localities, we discover that

the gamut of additional localities now expands and varies with each musician.

Take pianist Omri Mor, for example, whose intense internalization of Andalusian music

manifests in his original compositions and his improvisational language and has taken him not

only to new imagined geographies and temporalities but also to corporeal collaborations with

Algerian and Moroccan musicians in North Africa and in France. Or flutist Itai Kriss who has

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been a mainstay in the Cuban and Latin music scenes in NYC and whose daily musical rituals

and relationships involve regular collaboration with Cuban musicians. Take saxophonist and

vocalist Abate Berihun, whose multiple musical localities, in addition to jazz and various

middle-eastern influences include music (secular and religious) from his birth home of

Ethiopia. These are but a few examples that scratch the surface of this generation of Israeli jazz

artists.

Returning to Hoffman, we note that he is “at home” in several musical localities. He is a

local in the straight-ahead, post bop language of Horace Silver and Wes Montgomery, as well

as the cutting-edge downtown scene of the 1990s in NYC. He lives and breathes the African-

American jazz tradition. At the same time he is just as much a local in a wide variety of Israeli

pop from the 1970s and 1980s and the sounds of Egyptian classical music from Oum Khulthum

to Abdel Wahab. In this way, for Hoffman, as well as many other Israeli jazz musicians, the

audiotopias of multi-local musicianship cut across space and time.

Listen here as Hoffman responds to my question about whether he feels “at home” with

Arab classical music or whether it still feels like the music of a different culture; his response is

revealing:

When I engage with a musical tradition, and it feels very close to me, and I am really enamored with it, then it becomes a part of me. For me, maybe because I’m a musician, I can be moved by musical styles and traditions that I didn’t grow up with from infancy. For example, Afro-Cuban music; I can feel it, it can move me as much as the music that I grew up listening to since I was a child in Israel. It’s the same feeling. I can feel that it is also mine, even though it isn’t. Arab classical music is also not mine, and jazz is also not mine. None of these traditions are mine. Even classical music isn’t mine. So is only Arik Einstein mine? So either I am a lame imitator or they are all mine. (Hoffman 2014)

When Hoffman references Arik Einstein, he is referring to one of the most well-known Israeli

pop singers who sang canonical SLI songs since the 1960s that are synonymous with the

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dominant narratives of Israeli national culture. He is using Einstein symbolically, to ask

whether because of his ethnic and national background as an Ashkenazy Jew who grew up in

Israel, his own musical identity can be reduced to this one category and that is the only style

that he can rightfully claim as his own? Furthermore, a deeper investigation of Einstein’s music

itself reveals that it too is a blend of diverse musical influences: old Russian ballads, western

European harmony, early rock and Brazilian bossa novas, and of course each of the categories

listed above are mixtures and blends of their own.

I am not advocating the view that any musical style or tradition that an artist dabbles in

and chooses to incorporate into their sonic vocabulary automatically becomes another locality

in their bag. Rather, I am suggesting that we should consider seriously Selasi’s suggestion to

reflect on the parameters of “rituals, relationships and restrictions” in the lives of musicians.

Perhaps asking where a musician comes from is less important than what their “musical rituals”

are. What do they live, breathe, and dream of musically? What kinds of musical relationships

do they have?

This chapter has investigated the wide array of already blended, complex, local and

global influences that Israeli jazz musicians draw upon, each in their own way, to create their

original compositions. These original pieces are varied, diverse, individually crafted “blends of

blends” that draw upon particular sets of personal influences, experiences and histories. Still, in

examining the totality of the music making activities of Israeli jazz musicians operating in the

international jazz scene since the 1990s I have identified and analyzed several important

overlapping sets of musical influences and characteristics that are shared.

Furthermore, these successive waves of Israeli jazz musicians share the fundamental

practice of creating transcultural jazz pieces by blending already blended styles in their own

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personal way. As multi-local musicians these artists’ musical practices are grounded in intense

training, study and internalization of varied musical traditions and styles from multiple

localities. Each, in their own way, process these internalized styles and integrate them to create

their own unique expression, thus following the jazz imperative of “playing their own voice”.

The chapter that follows continues this analysis by shifting attention from original

compositions to an examination of the ways in which Israeli jazz musicians arrange pieces and

songs belonging to several “Israeli” and “Jewish” repertoire reservoirs to further expand their

own creative activities and practice of transcultural jazz music making.

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CHAPTER FIVE

THE SAND AND THE SEA: NAVIGATING THE ARRANGEMENTS OF ISRAELI JAZZ MUSICIANS

I always felt a profound attraction to Hebrew music. It has an infinite vastness and honesty; an innocence woven into wisdom and complete commitment. I remember myself as a child playing the pioneers’ songs from my mother’s sheet music and feeling an inexplicable connection to the simple, lyrical melodies that envelope gentle and heartfelt texts. David Zehavi’s music represents Israeli rootedness from which deep exhilaration of creativity, aesthetic beauty and perfection flow. Over the years I was exposed to more styles of music, and I especially fell in love with American jazz. Throughout, I continued to seek the feeling of being “at home” provided by Hebrew music [as it] enables me to stop momentarily, as a profound ease spreads throughout my body. This album is a personal effort to connect these two loves: the Hebrew music of David Zehavi and jazz, to create my interpretation for the feelings and possibilities that are contained within this music. I hope that this integration expresses even a modest amount of the beauty and pleasure that lives in David Zehavi’s music. (Cohen 2014)

In this excerpt from the liner notes to his album Hakol Zehavi, saxophonist Yuval

Cohen articulates the motivation behind his efforts to explore the integration of Israeli music

(what he refers to as Hebrew music) and jazz. Cohen cites his rootedness in and the

omnipresent influence of his early exposure to Israeli songs, while simultaneously affirming an

equal dedication to the traditions of American jazz. As noted throughout this study, many of

Cohen’s Israeli contemporaries share this love for a wide and diverse array of practices that can

broadly be labeled “Israeli music”. A recurring trope in interviews with artists is their

underscoring the ways in which they have been influenced by songs and genres that they

associate with Israel.

Whereas original compositions generally make up the largest portion of music

performed and recorded by these musicians, a second, smaller yet substantial portion involves

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arrangements of pieces that belong to various Israeli and Jewish repertoires. These consist of

songs included in the SLI canon, piyyutim, folk songs sung and performed by various Jewish

communities worldwide, and songs by popular music singer-songwriters, largely from the

1970s and on in Israel. Seemingly, in the constant search for new source material, Israeli jazz

musicians go to familiar and familial repertoires. In my conversations with a significant number

of these musicians, it appears to me that for the most part the decision to incorporate Israeli

music into their repertoires is not motivated by a desire to promote a nationalist discourse, but

rather as a solution to the ever-present need to more clearly define their individual voices and to

carve out a niche within a jazz world that favors “newness” and “uniqueness”.

As multi-local musicians, Israeli jazz artists are each “local” in their own set of musical

traditions originating from differing cultures, geographies and time periods. The variegated

Israeli and Jewish repertoires that these artists draw upon to create new jazz arrangements are,

in and of themselves, derived from transcultural sources: already blended musical practices that

come from many locales around the world. The creation and performance of these

arrangements is in fact a performance of multi-locality, the result of an internal musical

meeting in the audiotopic “contact zone” that Kun writes about. Taking a close look at how

these performers arrange Israeli and Jewish music by analyzing select examples provides a

direct route to better understanding the ways in which Israeli jazz artists seek to blend Israeli

and Jewish musical sources and influences with their jazz practice.

INDIGENOUS JAZZ STANDARDS: HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT

The impetus for performing and recording arrangements of Israeli and Jewish songs as a

way to expand repertoire should be seen in the context of broader developments in the jazz

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world since the 1960s. Jazz musicians worldwide have actively sought new source material and

various other ways to explore new directions in composition and improvisation. In doing so,

these artists draw from a wide array of inspirations including: western classical music and

experimental contemporary music; non-western folk traditions and “world music”; as well as

pop, rock, funk, r & b and hip-hop. While much of this influence comes to bear on original

compositions, many of today’s internationally recognized jazz artists in North America and

beyond complement their repertoires with choice arrangements of pieces derived from these

same types of non-jazz sources.

Moreover, the practice of Israeli jazz artists drawing upon local repertories has

precedent in other jazz communities around the world. Scandinavian jazz musicians are one

interesting example, as starting in the 1960s several leading artists localized jazz by drawing

upon local folk-music repertories. Up until the 1960s, most jazz artists’ repertoires worldwide

were primarily focused on presenting American based repertoires.72 In Scandinavia, Swedish

jazz musicians led the way. In 1964, pianist Jan Johansson released Jazz på Svenska (Jazz in

Swedish), an album featuring jazz arrangements of Swedish folk songs that remains, today, as

the best selling jazz album in Sweden.73 Featuring Johansson on piano and Georg Riedel on

bass, the renditions tend towards a quiet, spacious and pastoral re-imagination of the Swedish

72 According to Atkins (2003) the process of localizing jazz and transforming it in ways that suited the particular circumstances and conditions of each locale was happening across the globe as soon as the genre arrived in various new spots. Transcultural styles were developing long before the 1960s. This is evident in numerous examples, such as the development of the South African piano style Marabi (Ballantine 1993) or the guitar playing of Django Reindhardt in France. As Holt (2016) notes, initial efforts to indigenize jazz in Sweden for example began as early as 1936 with yodeling vocalist Alice Babs, but one cannot really point to a movement towards localization until the 1960s. Indeed, the pervasive mindset, particularly as it pertains to repertoire was a US centric, imitative approach. We can situate the beginnings of a concerted effort to incorporate folk and indigenous repertoire in Scandinavia, Japan and other countries as beginning in the 1960s.73 Johansson’s selections all came from an anthology of Swedish folk songs titled Svenska låtar (Swedish melodies) Interestingly, Holt argues that Johansson’s interest in Swedish folk songs was influenced by the American folk revival of the early 1960s (Holt 2016). Thus, one can argue that even this effort towards localization in Scandinavia was actually inspired by trends in the US.

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landscape, both external and internal. The folk songs are presented plainly, contrapunctally,

simultaneously utilizing WAM voice-leading and harmonic progressions, as well as blues

inflected melodic phrasing. Constant allusions to the Head melodies are woven into the

improvised passages. Johansson’s approach reflects the influence of Cool and West Coast jazz

in Scandinavia at the time and also foreshadows the “Nordic Tone” (with its evocative sound

painting of Scandinavian landscapes) that would in subsequent decades become a distinct

marker of the particular transcultural jazz practices originating from Northern Europe.

Johansson’s album was one of several released by Swedish jazz musicians in the 1960s during

a period that saw increased popularity for folk-jazz explorations (Holt 2016).

In the early 1970s, internationally celebrated Danish bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted

Pedersen released two duo albums (aptly titled Duo and Duo 2) with African-American pianist

Kenny Drew that featured mostly Danish folk songs. Pedersen’s approach differs from

Johansson’s, more clearly employing jazz harmonic language as part of the arrangement

process, and situating these melodies in a more straight ahead jazz style, such that the localized

element is reduced to the origins of the melodies but not necessarily their treatment. Operating

since the late 1960s, Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek has drawn on folk-music repertories

from diverse regions of the world, recording several albums featuring Norwegian folk

melodies. Garbarek’s incorporation of these local sources within his oeuvre does not receive

special treatment. His interpretation of these source materials is consistent with his broader

“global roots” approach and his particular and distinct tone on the saxophone and voice as an

improviser: a fairly complex web of circumpolar, medieval and global folk music influences

(ibid).

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This trend continued into the 1990s and 2000s with Scandinavian artists not only

engaging with indigenous folk materials but also relating to and referencing the pioneering

work of local jazz musicians such as Johansson. For example, Swedish pianist Jan Lundgren,

who recorded albums featuring all American standards, released a 1997 album of Swedish folk

songs entitled Swedish Standards. Similarly, Danish saxophonist Hans Ulrik released an album

titled Danish Standards in 2003 (ibid). In both cases, Lundgren and Ulrik present Scandinavian

folk songs as new kinds of “standards”, serving as vehicles for interpretation and improvisation

following conventional jazz practice for American “standards”. Folk tunes turned into jazz

tunes, simultaneously paying tribute to their Scandinavian predecessors and asserting the

viability of local sources as repertoire for jazz performance practice.

Around the same time that Jan Johansson released Jazz på Svenska in Sweden, Japanese

artists also began presenting jazz arrangements of Japanese folk melodies as a way to

indigenize jazz in Japan. Historian E. Taylor Atkins (2001) claims that these musicians, riding

a wave of cultural nationalism in the 1960s, were interested in carving their own niche both

aesthetically and economically. This led, in his view, to their advancing a distinct “Japanese”

jazz sound.

Interestingly, some groups performed more “Americanized” styles at home, but

featured primarily “Japanese” themed music and arrangements of Japanese folk-melodies when

performing overseas. According to Atkins, artists such as Shiraki Hideo and Hara Nobuo were

motivated by the idea of “creating something new that would earn esteem as a genuine

innovation within the modern jazz idiom” (Atkins 2001:240). Clearly they felt that rather than

presenting imitative pieces of well-established styles, showcasing a program of traditional

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Japanese songs would help their performance stand out and generate greater appreciation for

Japanese artistry.

In Israel, aside from a couple of attempts to indigenize jazz in the late 1960s and early

1970s there was no real momentum for such explorations until the late 1990s.74 Nonetheless,

starting in the 1990s, much like their Japanese and Scandinavian counterparts had previously

done, Israeli jazz artists began incorporating arrangements of choice songs from local

repertories. In exploring potential musical areas to draw upon, these artists sought to utilize

non-jazz musical sources and traditions that have impacted and/or “speak to” them, including

“their own musical heritage”.

ISRAELI SOURCES AND WHAT TO DO WITH THEM: KEY REPERTOIRE RESERVOIRS

Israeli jazz musicians draw primarily on three reservoirs of songs, which they arrange

according to their creative visions. Many select directly from the large repertoire of songs

belonging to the SLI canon. Yuval Cohen, for example, has included one or more arrangements

of SLI songs in most of his CD releases to date, and his latest album, Hakol Zehavi consists

entirely of arrangements of songs by composer David Zehavi, a musician whose music features

prominently in the canon.75 The excerpt from Cohen’s liner notes to that album that opened this

chapter reveals the degree to which this canon has been central to his musical life. His words

underscore a powerful emotional connection that is rooted in childhood experiences and

74 In Chapter Three I discussed two recordings, released in 1969 and 1972, by Israeli jazz musicians that showcased arrangements of traditional folk music and SLI songs. 75 The title Hakol Zehavi is a play on words, on the phrase “Hakol Zahav” which in Hebrew translates into “everything is golden”, or more colloquially, “Everything is good!”. Instead of Zahav, Cohen uses the last name of the composer David Zehavi.

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memories, yet his incorporation of the songs themselves reflects this connection through his

jazz vocabulary.

Like her brother Yuval, clarinetist-saxophonist Anat Cohen is also drawn to SLI songs,

as suggested by their presence on several of her recordings. Her album Poetica released in 2007

includes SLI classics: “Agada Yapanit” (Ariel Zilber), “Hofim” (Nachum Heiman),“Eyn Gedi”

(Dov Shalom Aharoni), and “Nigunim” (David Zehavi). Similarly, saxophonist Daniel Zamir

included SLI songs in his albums, including works by Moshe Wilensky and Heiman.

Other Israeli jazz musicians prefer to present their interpretations of traditional folk

melodies and liturgical songs from various Jewish congregations that immigrated to Israel from

the Maghreb, Arab world, Iran, Central Asia, and Ethiopia. Bassist Omer Avital includes

traditional Jewish Yemenite songs on both his albums as a leader and on his recording with the

successful collaborative group Third World Love, which he co-led with trumpeter Avishai

Cohen and pianist Yonatan Avishai. Pianist Omri Mor has created jazz arrangements for piano

trio of Moroccan Andalusian compositions. And, saxophonist and vocalist Abate Berihun has

been performing jazz arrangements of Jewish Ethiopian prayers in a variety of settings,

including in collaboration with Yisrael Borochov’s East-West Ensemble.

In addition to SLI songs and folk melodies, some artists also draw from the work of

Israeli singer/songwriters from the 1970s and on. For example, the Avi Lebovich Orchestra (led

by the trombonist himself) has been heavily invested in collaborations with well-known Israeli

singer/songwriters for several years. These projects showcase 12tet arrangements for much

beloved Israeli popular music and have included concerts and recordings dedicated to the songs

of Shem-Tov Levy, Matti Caspi, Shalom Hanoch and others. Guitarist Gilad Hekselman

recorded two songs by prominent popular music singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist

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Matti Caspi: “My Second Childhood” and “Dove Song” and saxophonist Zamir covered songs

by equally influential popular singer/songwriter Yoni Rechter and popular music artist Arkadi

Duchin.

A few of the musicians I spoke with focus on only one of these repertoires, but many

draw eclectically from several or all of them. On Wild (2011), flutist Ilan Salem presents two

songs by prominent SLI composers, Moshe Wilensky and Mordechai Zeira as well as an

Algerian prayer, “Zameru”, from his family’s own Passover Seder ritual feast. In our interview,

Salem explained his connection to and decision to perform this familial song:

It’s a prayer that we sing in the Seder, and for years we’ve been singing this prayer before I recorded it. I was really taken with this melody and I would sit at home the day after the Seder … harmonize it and go crazy (mitcharphen) with its beauty … and I come with my jazz background and I … harmonize it in a certain way and I enrich it … we always moved on and I always said, wait, you don’t understand what a gem this melody is. (Salem 2015)

Salem encapsulates the deep connections and feelings he and the other musicians I

interviewed feel for these songs and aim to express in their arrangements of them. Indeed, for

many, if not all, these ancestral melodies have been a part of their lives since infancy. Thus, the

wealth of material existing in these varied and culturally diverse repertoires are but another

source from which to cull pieces to which they feel connected, and for many, compelled to

arrange and perform. Though the vast majority of the pieces discussed to this point are songs

with lyrics, the instrumentalists discussed above generally perform them instrumentally. This

practice is consistent with jazz musicians’ treatment of songs from the Great American

Songbook or other popular music.

Though original works make up the majority of his repertoire and are the basis for his

renown, bassist Avishai Cohen like many of his Israeli contemporaries, also incorporates

arrangements of Israeli and Jewish songs into his recordings and performances. In doing so, he

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draws from a wide array of Jewish communities and musical traditions, including Yiddish,

Ladino, and the SLI. Seven Seas (2010), for example, features mostly original compositions but

is complimented by three arrangements: “About a Tree [Oyfn Weg Shteyt A Boym]” was

composed by early twentieth century Russian-yiddish poet Mark Warshavsky; “Two Roses

[Shnei Shoshanim]” by SLI composer Mordechai Zeira; and the traditional Ladino song “There

Were Three Sisters” [Tres Hermanicas Eran]”. Cohen seems to be particularly drawn to the

Ladino tradition, as other recordings have also featured Ladino songs such as “Morenika” and

“Noches Noches”. Aside from the Zeira song listed above, Cohen has also presented songs by

SLI composers Moshe Wilensky [“Southern Lullaby”] and Nachum Heiman [“Kefel”] on the

album Almah (2013).

Notably, Cohen is an exception to the general convention of creating instrumental

arrangements of vocal songs. The bassist has, in fact, sung arrangements of these songs himself

or in collaboration with other vocalists. Perhaps it is not a coincidence that his incorporation of

these songs into his repertoire has gone hand in hand with emergence of singing as a prominent

feature of his later recordings and concerts. In 2008, for example, he released an entirely vocal

album titled, in Hebrew, Shaot Regishot [Sensitive Hours].

The album features folk melodies primarily from the Ladino tradition and several

piyyutim. Each song in the album differs in instrumentation, moving from sparse

instrumentation (vocal, piano and bass) to larger ensembles featuring both a jazz rhythm

section, and select woodwind and brass instruments. The closing piece also includes a string

section. Sensitive Hours was released by Avishai’s own label, RazDaz Recordz, and appears to

be an attempt to expand Cohen’s audience and cross-over into the Israeli popular music market,

as the album is packaged and presented like a pop album. The songs are of shorter duration

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(“radio friendly”), with only a couple of the songs featuring improvised solos more typical of a

jazz album. The production is clearly rooted in a pop aesthetic. It is heavily layered, tightly

arranged and the vocal tracks are manipulated using various digital effects. The packaging is all

in Hebrew, with complete lyrics included in the liner notes. Unlike his jazz albums, which are

packaged in English and intended for mass distribution around the world, the audience for

Sensitive Hours is clearly Hebrew speaking and Israeli.

Similarly, prominent saxophonist Daniel Zamir integrates singing into his performances

and recordings. In 2003, five years before the aforementioned release by Avishai Cohen, Zamir

released an all vocal album titled Ha’zamir Shar (pop!) [Zamir sings (pop!)].76 Much like

Cohen’s release, this album clearly only targets an Israeli audience, as it employs Hebrew

packaging, song lyrics in liner notes and Israeli distribution. Most of the songs on the album are

originals, but Zamir also includes pop style arrangements of songs by singer/songwriter Arkadi

Duchin and Rabbi Chaim Hecht. In subsequent releases Zamir has continued to incorporate

vocal tracks in two primary ways: as lead singer and by collaborating with well-known

vocalists from the popular music world, such as: Yoni Rechter, Eviatar Banai, Barry Saharoff,

and Matisyahu.

THE POLITICAL-ECONOMY OF JAZZ IN HEBREW

ECM recording artist, pianist Anat Fort, primarily performs and records original music.

Her recordings are more clearly tied to jazz piano trio and “ECM sounds” than to any

distinguishable Middle-Eastern or Israeli influence. Yet, over the years she has also

consistently incorporated arrangements of Israeli songs into her performances and has even

dedicated complete programs and concerts to them (these include songs composed by Sasha

76 This is a play on words, as his last name “Zamir” is Hebrew for a songbird.

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Argov and Shalom Hanoch). In addition to these thematic concerts, Fort also incorporates such

arrangements into her piano solo and trio concerts, as well occasional concerts mixed with

classical chamber ensembles. While arrangements of Israeli songs are not the focus of her

work, Fort notably said they are nonetheless “with me all the time” (Fort 2015).

Like Fort, flutist Itai Kriss has also presented a complete program dedicated to the

songs of one SLI composer, songwriter Nurit Hirsh. The story behind this project is revealing:

Kriss was invited by Barak Weiss, an Israeli producer and festival director, to present a concert

in a series entitled Jazz B’Ivrit (Jazz in Hebrew). Sponsored and hosted by Beit Avi Chai.77 The

series, which ran between the years 2011-2016 presented thematic concerts dedicated to the

music of various Israeli popular music composers and songwriters. As Kriss explained to me:

Barak Weiss asked me if I wanted to do Jazz B’Ivrit, which is all about taking Israeli music and doing jazz arrangements for it, and I said yes, great (achla) … he said you have to come with a concept, focus on something, and so I looked around and searched and in the end we decided on Nurit Hirsh, together, I mean I kind of wanted to do Esther Ofarim but it was taken (laughs), someone else already chose her. (Kriss 2015)

So, it came about that in 2014, the series Jazz B’Ivrit featured a bevy of Israeli jazz artists

living in NYC returning to their homeland to present concerts dedicated to Israeli songs:

Saxophonist Uri Gurvich presented the songs of Sasha Argov; trumpeter Itamar Borochov

dedicated a concert to Ahuva Ozri’s music; and, as referenced by Kriss, guitarist Nadav Remez

performed his arrangements of Esther Ofarim’s songs. The album with which we started our

77 Beit Avi Chai located in Jerusalem was established by the American philanthropic organization the Avi Chai foundation. Their mission according to their website, “Beit Avi Chai seeks to collect and publicize the various facets of Israeli-Jewish society, provide them a forum, and let them influence Israeli society and culture… The Jewish People is the focal point of the story told by Beit Avi Chai: the Jews in Israel and abroad and the Jews with their various trends, stormy disputes, variations, memories, and dreams.” The foundation sponsors a wide array of cultural activities in Israel, including jazz, that showcase and promote the diversity of Jewish culture. For example, Beit Avi Chai has been a leading force in the revitalization of various musical traditions rooted in Jewish cultures from the Middle-East, North Africa and Central Asia, such as the piyyut tradition (Beith Avi Chai n.d.).

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discussion at the top of this chapter, Yuval Cohen’s Hakol Zehavi also came out of a Beit Avi

Chai concert commission. Cohen noted in our conversation that what started as an invitation to

prepare a program of jazz arrangements for a concert turned into a project of much larger

scope.

In addition to the various concert series and project commissions that Beit Avi Chai

supports, several annual festivals in Israel in recent years advanced programming with Israeli

and Jewish music at their center. Recent festivals provided a visible, high profile platform for

jazz artists to showcase their work. Among them are The Piyut Festival, Festival Ha’Oud [The

Jerusalem International Oud Festival], Mekudeshet [Sacred] and the prestigious Israel Festival.

Invitations to perform at these events often stipulate presenting concerts that engage directly

with “Israeli” and “Jewish” musical content, either by way of arrangements or original music.

While these festivals provide opportunities for jazz artists, they are also inseparable

from exploding interest in middle-eastern folk traditions and “ethnic music” in general in Israel

since the 1990s (Brinner 2017). The impact of ongoing revitalization of such music is not

limited to the festivals but has, rather, informed the practices of Israeli jazz musicians in terms

of entirely new projects and ensembles. For example, as part of a renaissance of Andalusian

music in Israel, bassist Omer Avital led the multi-year project Ahavat ‘olamim (Everlasting

Love), which was dedicated to presenting piyyutim from the Algerian and Moroccan traditions

inflected with elements of jazz among other genres.78 In the performances and recording, Avital

directed a cross-cultural ensemble, called The New Jerusalem Orchestra. The ensemble

78 Since the 1990s, as part of a broader cultural awakening and resurgence of Mizrahi Jews there has been a revitalization of Andalusian musical traditions in Israel by way of several orchestras dedicated to performing the music; transgeneric collaborations such as the project by Omer Avital detailed above or pianist Omri Mor’s jazz arrangements of Andalusian pieces; and renewed interest in the lives and music of these oft-forgotten musical stars from the Maghreb (many of whom are passing away) by way of print and digital media as well as growing audiences for live concerts and recordings.

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included Rabbi Haim Louk as the paytan and a variable group of Israeli and American jazz

instrumentalists, western classical string players, and performers of traditional middle-eastern

instruments such as ney, kamanche and kanun. The project, which developed out of a 2010

Israel Festival concert, was documented with a double-CD recording released in 2012 by the

Jewish Music Research Center at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Similarly, trumpeter Itamar Borochov teamed up with his father Yisrael Borochov and

brother Avri Borochov to present a concert at the 2015 Piyut Festival that presented all new

jazz arrangements of Bukharian sacred music (Shirat Ha’zohar). Itamar recalled that

preparation for this familial affair (the Borochovs are Bukharian from the father’s side)

involved a fair amount of research into Bukharian musical tradition:

The Bukharians have an entire genre of Zohar readings, and they have scales used only for this practice. Very strange scales. They are not part of the Bukharian shashmaqom… so our work involves research: including retrieval of various recordings from national archives, discussions with family members, and sitting in the synagogue in the Shapira neighborhood. (Borochov 2015)

Several of Anat Fort’s Israeli song projects were also instigated by commissions to participate

in jazz concert series with thematic programming relating to the music of SLI composers and

songwriters of the past. She told me that her concert dedicated to the music of Shalom Hanoch

came about largely out of an invitation by a jazz concert series in Tel Aviv called “Jazz

B’Mishkan”.

Fort’s example is especially illuminating in that it begins to suggest the complexity of

these types of jazz-Israeli/Middle-Eastern/traditional musical fusions as they relate to revivals

and related concert events. While Fort participates in them and benefits from doing so, she is

also critical of them. In particular, she expressed concerns about assumptions by promoters and

concert series directors in Israel’s jazz scene that in order to draw larger audiences every

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concert has to have a theme, either a tribute to a legendary American jazz artist or a tribute to

an Israeli composer or songwriter:

When I did Shalom Hanoch at the Mishkan, it’s the same thing. Now, Shalom Hanoch is, maybe, my favorite artist in the whole world so I had no problem with it. I was longing to do something with his music, but still […] this guy at the Mishkan, who doesn’t work there anymore, told me “I can no longer just bring your trio for you to do your own stuff, I can’t, they won’t let me. It has to be around a tribute” […] So I thought let’s do the person that I wanted to do the most, and luckily that’s what happened. But this is what is going on…in order to get a gig somewhere, in something that’s more than Beit Ha’Amudim it has to be a gimmick.79 (Fort 2015)

Indeed, as Anat Fort indicated in the quote above, some of the highest profile gigs available for

Israeli jazz artists in Israel are concerts focused on tributes to SLI composers or certain folk and

liturgical traditions from various Jewish congregations. And, they are well attended, which

speaks powerfully to a yearning, or perhaps curiosity, that attracts Israeli Jews to attend

concerts and purchase recordings that showcase these song repertories. It is equally interesting

to note that these same artists rarely perform these thematic concerts in their tours in North

America or Europe, where they focus more extensively on their original music or on their more

“regular” and continuous projects. In light of the fact that many of these thematic projects are

commissioned by the philanthropic organization Beit Avi Chai or prepared as one-time

concerts especially for a jazz concert series or festival, it is fair to ask whether the catalyst for

the engagement with these non-jazz repertories are less a matter of creative impulse, personal

connection to the music, or issues of identity and more pragmatic and opportunistic as a means

to make the most of the agendas and/or interests of funding agencies and festival promoters?

Regardless, there is no doubt that the repertoire of songs belonging to the SLI, the folk

and liturgical traditions of Jewish communities around the world as well as the music of

songwriters from the 1970s and 1980s has truly been influential and important for these 79 Beit Ha’amudim is a small jazz club in Tel Aviv.

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musicians. These songs left a distinct musical impression on them from a young age. Their

influence, in particular their harmonies and melodies, is ever present in a substantial portion of

the original music that Israeli jazz musicians compose and, as we will discuss later in this

chapter, also a powerful reference in their aesthetic preferences and related discourse. Indeed,

these musicians’ practices are not reducible to one thing, but instead a complex tangle of many

facets and considerations, internal and external, ranging from memories, identity, musical

training, and career pragmatics.

ISRAELI STANDARDS?

The practice and discourse surrounding the incorporation into jazz contexts of Israeli

and Jewish repertories, among the other sources from which they draw, differs among the

Israeli musicians with whom I spoke. Several of my interlocutors identified the songs from

Israeli repertoires as “our standards” while also juxtaposing them with songs from the

American songbook. They spoke of the deep respect and love they feel towards American

“standards”, but they admit that they do not fully identify with them in the same way that they

connect to the Israeli repertoire. For example, in speaking about his arrangement of the song

“Neula” by Mordechai Zeira, flutist Ilan Salem noted: “Americans have their standards, [but]

what are standards? Standards are basically American songs, like these songs, you understand?

They took them and turned them into standards and they play them. So, often we say, the Israeli

guys, we say why don’t we take our songs and do the same thing. And that’s what we do”

(2015). Anat Fort’s views about these Israeli repertoires and their place in her musical world

are equally revealing: “I’ve always viewed the Israeli songs as my standards. I’ve always

approached them that way” (2015). As she elaborates on her relationship, over the years, with

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this repertoire, we gain insight into the ways in which Fort views these “Israeli standards” as

different from the American “standards”:

When I came to the US and I had to play, actually even before that, when I had to play “How High the Moon”, “Stella By Starlight” and “All the Things You Are”, it was foreign. Today it isn’t foreign, but it will never be as familiar as, you know, Shalom Hanoch or Sasha Argov or whatever it may be. It is in my DNA, it so engrained. That is why I don’t see any reason not to do it. It’s the most basic and right thing. Just like an American does American standards…it’s totally organic for me to do. (ibid)

Pianist Omri Mor also considers his arrangements of Andalusian songs as “jazz standards”. In

liner notes attached to two of his songs that appear on the 2014 compilation, curated by bassist

Avishai Cohen, entitled All Original: Best young Israeli jazz, Mor stated: “I’ve chosen to

present on this album two titles that reflect the music I’ve been creating over the last few

years…both tracks are arrangements of Moroccan music. We have treated them as though they

were ‘jazz standards’, improvising, whilst keeping in mind the traditional sound, and trying to

do them justice”(Mor 2014).

In contrast to Salem, Fort and Mor, saxophonist Yuval Cohen does not view or refer to

these pieces as “standards” though he shares the others’ appreciation for the songs as repertoire

to be incorporated into his overall music making. His reservations are connected to his view of

“standards” in the jazz tradition, in general, as primarily vehicles for improvisation: “OK, I’ll

take [as ensemble leader] “Hevenu Shalom Aleinu” or “Shibolet Ba’sade” […] and let’s open,

lets play the song like a standard, and then play solos, yeah? Not really. So, OK, maybe let’s do

a reharmonization, let’s make the changes more interesting. OK, great, so it’s not really a

standard. It’s different” (Cohen 2015). As Cohen continued to elaborate, his thoughts seem to

center on the idea that to simply take these Israeli songs and play them in the formulaic manner

of Head In, Solos, Head Out would not work for him:

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So, don’t take “Shibolet Ba’sade”, as many people do … with the melody and then solos. This kind of bothers me. It’s simplistic in my eyes. If I don’t have the time to do something a little bit more interesting, to give it the right touch, then I won’t do it. That’s my opinion. So, to me, they aren’t standards. [Rather] I call it some sort of a musical DNA. It’s some sort of Israeli spirit (he’lech ruach) that lives in these melodies, in this sound, that is very specific to here. Even if originally … these songs are Russian, or something else, they are still imbued with something local through the transformation here. But to call it Israeli standards, I am careful about that. (ibid)

Cohen’s reservations about labeling repertoire choices as “Israeli standards” seems to hinge on,

first, a critique of applying a conventional approach – melody & solos – to these songs; and,

second, his view that these are interpretative opportunities to connect with their “musical

DNA” and interpret these songs, “standards” of an Israeli repertoire, via creative arranging. For

Omri Mor and others, treating the pieces as jazz standards, means that they are malleable

enough to serve as templates for improvisation, and in improvising on them the artists must

strive to honor their tradition and “do them justice”.80 Yet in expressing his reservations about

labeling these arrangements of Israeli songs as “Israeli Standards” Yuval Cohen focuses on the

function of the standard as a piece that belongs to a shared canon of songs among a group of

musicians.

Faulkner and Becker (2009) described ways in which professional musicians share

enough of the repertoire that they can complete a performance or a job: with little or no

rehearsal. Musicians “create and recreate the jazz repertoire as they play” at parties, hotels, and

restaurants (2009:2). This partial overlap allows them to then negotiate in real time the

constantly unfolding repertoire selections for that specific performance. Admittedly, the role of

the musicians’ work in the contexts that Faulkner and Becker studied is generally to perform

background music or provide entertainment for a party, a dance, or a meal.

80 Much as a jazz musician is expected to understand, and signify on previous renditions of standards as well as perhaps their original version.

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Paul Berliner (1994) analyzed the way standards have come to be learned and shared

among American jazz musicians, for several generations: Conventionally, American jazz

musicians study standards through recordings and in-performance, on-the-bandstand

demonstration versions of these shared songs, and over time often codified embellishments of

previous rendition/s into a fixed composition. Berliner cited the example of Thelonious Monk’s

composition “’Round Midnight” which was gradually transformed and codified by way of

incorporation of performers’ improvised embellishments and modifications. For example, it

was initially recorded by Cootie Williams in 1944. Later, Williams’s added embellishments

were included in published sheet music of the song. Dizzy Gillespie’s introduction and coda in

his 1946 recording were replicated by other performers, including Monk himself; and finally

Miles Davis further added an interlude that too became a formal feature of the composition in

renditions by future musicians (ibid). This self-referential process does not seem to be

happening with these Israeli arrangements.

American standards belonging to the Great American Songbook can be seen as shared

repertoire, including a large subset that has been canonized and agreed upon over decades of

practice by performers in the United States and beyond. Performers agree on a common base of

knowledge that allows these pieces to be performed spontaneously (and from memory) by

musicians whom have never played before together, thus improvising and playing together. In

contrast, Cohen made it clear that because of his conviction that Israeli songs demand

thoughtful arrangements, he does not want them to function per the American “standards”

template. Rather, his preference is for harmonic, metric and structural changes that the arranger

might produce to be idiosyncratic and thus require performers to know the ins and outs of the

specific arrangement in order to perform the pieces well.

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Cohen further asserted that more often then not, Israeli jazz musicians choose to put

their own arranging “touch” on these pieces, either by way of re-harmonization, changing their

meter, form, adding solo sections, etc. In this respect, these pieces’ arrangements are particular

to each performer or ensemble much as Cohen prefers. This draws attention to the fact that,

unlike typical jazz practice in the US as discussed by Faulkner and Becker (2009) for example,

in the Israeli scene when it comes to arrangements of Israeli or Jewish songs there is no

commonly agreed upon or shared repertoire, and even if there are overlapping songs, there are

no agreed upon arrangements of them.

A key point is that the reliance on shared standards and standardized arrangements of

them has diminished in recent years. Indeed, many American and European peers of the Israeli

artists I interviewed choose to put their own “stamp” on any work that is not original, whether

it comes from the American songbook or not. Thus, American “standards” tend to serve as a

common and shared repertoire in casual gigs, jam sessions, and spontaneous collaborations.

However, efforts to penetrate larger markets and become established as a high level artist tend

to privilege original music and personalized arrangements for any repertoire selection as a way

to create a “unique voice”. Thus, internationally renowned artists such as Brad Mehldau,

Joshua Redman, and the like do record and perform renditions of well-known standards, such

as “All The Things You Are” or “How Deep Is The Ocean”, but they often tend to explore the

very same kinds of rather extensive transformations that Cohen alludes to: reharmonization,

new meters, formal modifications, and so forth. Thus, in such a paradigm, where individuality

is championed and each artist seeks to develop his or her own repertoire, overlapping material

is less likely.

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Whether they consider Israeli songs as part of a collection of “Israeli Standards” or not,

the musicians I spoke with shared a commitment to honor them with their musical and aesthetic

choices. This is familiar discourse in the context of their more conventional US oriented jazz

training, tradition, and practice. Think of the recurring jazz tropes that encourage musicians to

“respect the music”, study in detail the different renditions of “standards”, learn lyrics and

verses of standard tunes (Faulkner and Becker 2009).

Both Cohen and Mor, in the quotes above, underscore this orthodoxy. For Cohen,

making sure that “there is a point” is centrally connected to the idea that the songs are already

gorgeous in and of themselves, and that unless the arranger has something to add, then he might

just as well leave them alone. His view is that these songs cannot simply be treated as “jam

tunes” (as some standards sometimes are, often nightly, by many jazz musicians), and rather,

that they require some thought and careful work in order to respect them. Mor’s attitude is not

far removed from this even as he sees the repertoire he focuses on in a manner more akin to

standards for improvisation. Thus, he seeks to ensure that his harmonization supports the

original Andalusian melody and that his improvisation stays true to the maqam.

While I encountered musicians with rather strong and differing positions, there are also

those whose views about the meaning and place of Israeli songs changes. After spending years

deconstructing American standards, Ilan Salem decided that the best way of honoring the

melodies of his Israeli songs is to not mess with them too much: “Today, I look at it differently.

I don’t like it when people do that [mess with the tunes]. I think that a song, it has its place and

you need to give it respect. So in Wild I did an homage to these songs. I didn’t touch them”

(Salem 2015). Nevertheles, when listening to Salem’s renditions of these songs, it is clear that

the melodies have been harmonized (in the case of “Zameru”) or reharmonized in the case of

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“Neula”. He did arrange the pieces, but his point remains true if not taken literally. His

arranging efforts did not alter the melody or obscure the underlying emotional intention of the

pieces as he understood them to be. The harmonization, or re-harmonization instead, helps the

pieces to translate more comfotably into a jazz realm especially by opening up doors for

improvisational exploration.

Whereas many of the musicians I interviewed share the practice of incorporating

arrangements of Israeli and Jewish songs, the practice of arranging and corresponding

discourse surrounding their work varies. The ways these musicians engage with their chosen

repertoire differs according to their view about the role such arrangements play in their own

output as artists. Furthermore, the aesthetic choices they make as arrangers reveal the views

they hold about the repertoire itself, its role in the jazz context and their own approach to

arranging. The following examples crystalize these issues while also showcasing two of the

repertoire reservoirs identified above.

ANALYSIS OF REPERTOIRE EXAMPLES

The two examples that follow demonstrate the various issues discussed thus far in this

chapter. In order to highlight the diversity of repertoire used for arrangements I analyze

representative pieces from two of the three key repertoire reservoirs identified. Ilan Salem’s

“Zameru”, originally a Passover prayer from the Jewish Algerian community serves as an

example of incorporating folk or liturgical music from Jewish congregations from across the

globe. Yuval Cohen’s “Eli, Eli” exemplifies the prevalent incorporation and arrangement of

SLI classics by Israeli jazz musicians. These two examples also contrast the differences in

approach to these “source materials” and the arranging process itself. Salem’s arrangement is

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fundamentally concerned with transforming a simple liturgical melody into a jazz tune, creating

a form that enables improvisation. As already discussed, this approach, shared by many others,

views these new sources of inspiration as “our standards”. In contrast, Yuval Cohen’s

arrangement of “Eli, Eli” exemplifies his (and others’) view that these pieces cannot be treated

like “standards” and must undergo more elaborate arrangement. It should be noted that there is

no correlation between the repertoire reservoir and the arranging approach utilized.

Ilan Salem’s Zameru

As noted earlier in this chapter, Ilan Salem’s decision to arrange the familial Passover

piyyut “Zameru” for his 2011 album was years in the making. Salem has memories of being

enchanted with the song as a child and notes that the melody would make a yearly appearance

in the opening stages of the Passover Seder ritual of his family home. According to Salem, his

family performed the Seder according to customs typical of Jewish Algerian treatment of the

ritual and “Zameru” is a distinctly Algerian prayer and melody that doesn’t occur in other

versions of the Seder as practiced by other communities.81

Salem stated explicitly that he “didn’t touch the melody” (2017), or in other words, he

was intent on not altering the notes of the tune. Similarly, he made no substantive alterations to

the overall structure of the song, stating that he preserved the AB (verse-chorus) form of the

song. Nonetheless, in transforming a single line melody sung communally into a jazz tune that

can serve as a catalyst for improvisation he employed four primary arranging tools: use of fixed

meter, harmonization, instrumentation and rhythmic feel. Here is Salem’s chart for this piece

(Salem 2011):

81 There are distinct variations of prayers, melodies and even text between different communities across the Jewish world.

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Figure 5.1 Head In for “Zameru”, arranged by Ilan Salem

According to Salem, when the piyyut is sung during Passover it doesn’t fit into a fixed

time signature, with length of notes or phrases varying and altering the meter from rendition to

rendition. In order to situate it within jazz performance practice, Salem settled on 3/4 Time

Signature, which he felt to be the natural fit, while also establishing fixed and repeatable note

and phrase lengths.

The harmonization that Salem employs is clearly designed to support the given melody

while simultaneously providing a comfortable springboard for improvisation. The piece opens

with two exact repetitions of a four bar melodic phrase. Throughout these eight measures,

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Salem utilizes a B♭ pedal point to create a sense of buildup in advance of the resolution that

arrives with the turnaround at measures 9 and 10. This turnaround utilizes a minor iv, minor v

cadence very typical of the SLI repertoire and Israeli jazz musicians’ original compositions.

Though the harmony of the A section, consisting of the first ten measures is entirely

diatonic, Salem’s use of the pedal point allows him to simultaneously avoid root position

diatonicism and invoke a more contemporary jazz sound by way of slash chords and inversions.

Particularly noteworthy in this context is the A♭/B♭ chord that occurs twice, at measure 3-4

and again at 7-8. This chord simultaneously functions as a diatonic passing pedal point chord

and a V/V, secondary dominant. Indeed, viewed in such a way, A♭/B♭ could also be spelled

as B♭sus13. The sus13 sound is quite open and self-sustaining in the jazz context, both

behaving functionally within a chord progression and working independently as an island of

referenced scalar and harmonic sounds. The harmony that follows in measures 11-14, A♭maj7

to B♭13 is designed to create harmonic relief from the building tension of the minor harmony

of the A section and again provides a nod towards more typical jazz harmonic language.

The melody for “Zameru” is a short, relatively simple melody that has many repeating

sections. In order to maintain interest for the listener and create a sense of unfolding narrative

Salem treats the melody with varied instrumentation. In the first A section of the Head In, the

tune is carried by flute and bass doubling with piano and drums accompanying. The absence of

low frequency roots from the bass, and its function as a melody-carrying instrument is

texturally spacious and leaves room for textural intensification. Indeed, the second A section

introduces the oud for the first time, joining the flute in carrying the tune while the bass

assumes an accompanying role laying down roots. The oud takes liberty with its rendition of

the tune, adding ornamentations idiomatic to the instrument as it is used in Arab classical

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music. Not coincidentally, the bass doubling of the melody and the oud’s presence are two

examples of instrumentation choices that are consistent with sonic features prevalent among

Israeli jazz musicians that have been discussed in Chapter Four.

Finally, the arrangement’s rhythmic feel, a compositional feature of Salem’s efforts,

plays a central role in transforming this piyyut into a jazz tune. The original piyyut would have

been sung a capella and without rhythmic accompaniment. Salem’s indicated rhythm for the

pianist and drums in measures 1-10 (A section) is as follows:

Figure 5.2 “Zameru” Rhythmic feel

Speaking broadly, this rhythm and the drummer’s interpretation of it situates the piece in a

straight eights jazz sonic realm. At the same time, the instructed off-beat piano accompaniment

evokes a texture reminiscent of SLI songs and WAM. Again, this is a stylistic nod to “Israeli”

sources of inspiration, consistent with both arrangements and original compositions by Israeli

jazz musicians.

Structurally speaking, the song form remains unaltered, though Salem makes one small

adjustment. He increases the number of repeats for measures 11-14 to four times from an

ambiguous yet smaller number of repeats. When we spoke about his arrangement he noted that

the B section has a “chorus” like function in the traditional rendition of the prayer. He couldn’t

remember exactly how many times it repeated when they sang it during Passover, but in our

interview he suggested that his choice to repeat it four times was a modification.82 In speaking

about his arrangement Salem also refers to this section as the “Bridge”, meaning that in this 82 As a point of reference, this passage seems to consistently repeat twice in a recorded version of this prayer sung by a Jewish-Algerian congregation that is available on YouTube (Gardaya 2014). Without having access to a recording of the variation that Salem’s family sang at their own Passover celebration it is not possible to say definitively how many times this section was repeated in Salem’s familial home.

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new jazz context it serves as a contrasting and connecting section (Salem 2017). Indeed,

Salem’s harmonic choices (already discussed) and the in-performance texture of these four bars

reveal a desire to create contrast. The pulsating off-beat infused groove that so typifies

measures 1-10 stops as both piano and drums play spaciously. The ensemble uses the ensuing

repeats of this four measure phrase to gradually build rhythmic propulsion and dynamic

intensity as they are readying to return to the top of the form.

The song is performed in a conventional manner: Head In --- Solos --- Head Out. The

form is never broken, with all repeats upheld throughout the solos. The solos are brief, and the

soloists’ vocabulary sits squarely within today’s pluralistic “jazz language”. In total, only two

choruses of solos are performed, divided between bass (full chorus), piano (Two A’s) and Flute

(B 4Xs). Salem’s choice to limit solos appears to be consistent with his overarching desire to

give the song itself a place of prominence in the listener’s ear. As noted in Chapter Four, many

of the Israeli jazz musicians I interviewed, highlight what they might refer to as “the

importance of the song”. Thus the tendency to have short solos in pieces that behave like

“Songs Without Words” is typical and reflective of such an aesthetic.

Yuval Cohen’s Eli, Eli

Among the renditions of well-known David Zehavi songs in his 2014 album, Yuval

Cohen’s arrangement of “Eli, Eli” is a particularly illuminating example of how Israeli artists

transform Israeli songs and folk melodies into elaborate transcultural jazz arrangements.

“Eli, Eli” [lit. “My God, my God”], also known as “Halicha L’Caesarea” (Walking to

Caesarea) is, arguably, among the most canonic songs in the SLI. The lyrics are based on a

poem written by Hanna Szenes, a Hungarian Jew, who immigrated to Palestine at the age of

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eighteen, in 1939, and lived next to the sea in Kibbutz Sdot Yam located next to Caesarea.

During WWII, Szenes volunteered to serve in a special British Air-Force unit. In 1944 she

parachuted into Yugoslavia to join Tito’s partisans, but was captured and executed by the

Hungarian police (Rothkirchen 2007). Written as a form of prayer, the song was composed by

Zehavi in 1945 using Szenes’s poem (Zeira 2013).

After Szenes’s death and in the period after WWII, efforts to commemorate her life and

valor resulted in some of her poetry being set to music. According to historian Judith Tydor

Baumel (1996), Zehavi’s “Eli, Eli” was quickly incorporated into the song repertoire of Israeli

youth movements. First, as Baumel noted, Szenes’s life and death were mythologized in several

stages throughout the decades following the war, and the pervasiveness of “Eli, Eli” was

certainly one prominent example of this process. “Eli, Eli” is taught to children in grade school,

sung in communal singing gatherings (shira betsibbur), and performed in public ceremonies

that commemorate the Holocaust. It is a powerful example of the way some SLI songs have

become so synonymous with Israeli national culture through socialization mechanisms that

they are deeply embedded in the consciousness of the broader public.

However, “Eli, Eli” wasn’t originally conceived as a “national song”. Szenes’s poem is

deeply personal and existential, as she marvels at the beauty and mystery of the world and

existence itself. Here is an English translation of the song’s lyrics:83

My God, my God May these wonders never end The sand and the sea, the rustle of the water, the light of the sky, the prayer of man

83 Author’s translation אלי אלי שלא ייגמר לעולם

רשרוש של המים, החול והים תפילת האדם, ברק השמיים

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Saxophonist Cohen related to me that the 2014 version of “Eli, Eli” was not part of the

original collection of arrangements that he premiered in a Beit Avi Chai sponsored concert. He

admitted that he was hesitant at first about dealing with it precisely because of how loaded it

was in Israeli society:

The recording needed another song, and I perceived Halicha L’Caesarea as a song that I wanted to do but I was a bit afraid to do so…because it’s a song of Holocaust Remembrance Day. And I definitely didn’t want to do it like [ed. the way its done] so I started playing with it and searching for what to do with this song. Basically, Hannah Szenes composes this poem, obviously, before she dies and before there’s a Holocaust. Her poem is in praise of existence more or less. So I went with that feeling. True, in the middle it gets a bit dark for a time [but] then it becomes optimistic again. It changed. And that was entirely out of choice and I worked on it for a really, really long time…it was clear to me that I was dealing with something explosive. (Cohen 2015)

Cohen makes several noticeable and significant modifications that fundamentally re-shape the

song into his own wholly personal statement. His work clearly reflects an effort to stay deeply

indebted to the source while also delivering an interpretation that situates canonic material in a

new framework.

His arrangement thus retains the profundity and melancholy of the original version, yet

also artfully positions it in a modern jazz context. First, the entire tenor of the song is

transformed from slow and solemn to vibrant and at times stormy. He performs the piece at a

faster tempo (quarter note equals from c.70-80 to 150) and moves it through several meters.

Cohen’s innovative treatment of the melody, modulating harmonic progressions, contrapuntal

interlude and additional narrated text - all demonstrate a wide-ranging, comprehensive re-

imagination of this Israeli classic.

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Undoubtedly the most recognizable and distinguishing feature of the song is the

melody. Here is a lead sheet for a typical SLI rendition of “Eli, Eli”:84

Figure 5.3 “Eli, Eli” Lead Sheet

Set to a much faster tempo than the original, Cohen takes the first three bars, changes the key

center (From E minor to C minor) and condenses them to fit into one measure of 13/4. Here is

that melodic fragment as it would appear in the key of C minor in the original Zehavi setting, in

4/4 time, played slowly:

Figure 5.4 “Eli, Eli”: first three measures transposed to C minor

Here is how it appears after its metamorphosis, from 4/4 to 13/4:

84 The lead sheet below is taken from the International Jewish Songbook (1994). Several other Israeli song collections have identical notated versions of the song.

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Figure 5.5 “Eli, Eli” melody transformed by Yuval Cohen to 13/4

The melody is still immediately recognizable as “Eli, Eli”, yet it has been transformed

from Zehavi’s prayerful melancholy to an energetic ostinato figure that references Afro-Cuban

montunos. Since the melody’s pitches are unchanged, the song’s longing quality is maintained,

yet it has now taken on additional emotional terrain that is far more upbeat and festive as a

result of the rhythmic propulsion and vitality that the ostinato figure provides. Pianist Gadi

Lehavi adds a small ornamentation (silsul) on the D natural that occurs on beat 10 of this 13

beat measure. This seemingly minute detail gives the ostinato pattern a middle-eastern flavor.

As some Israeli jazz musicians might say, he added a little bit of spice to it. The silsul is not

written into the score, and must have been an in-performance addition.

The ostinato pattern encapsulates within it three features that are fairly representative of

sonorities that Israeli jazz musicians utilize in their music: the use of odd meters, the influence

of Afro-Cuban music, and a bit of Middle-Eastern “flavor”. When we spoke about this

arrangement, Cohen agreed with such an assessment but resisted any hint that this might have

been calculated in any way:

I understand what you mean about its Mediterraneaness, and it also becomes a bit of a Salsa through that. But again, the idea wasn’t necessarily to stick a 13/4 in there, that’s what was demanded, it was a kind of compression of the melody into a sort of ostinato format, and that’s how it turned out. It wasn’t about how I can make it rhythmically interesting, but rather the opposite. You arrive at the rhythm by searching for what was interesting in there. (Cohen 2015)

The melody makes this first full appearance as an ostinato by way of the piano in m.13

but Cohen also expertly prepares its arrival in the preceding measures. The bass opens the piece

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with several repetitions (in rubato) of the first four notes of the melody. In this opening, which

includes the potent octave leap, the slow somber mood more closely resembles a more

traditional rendition of the song:

Figure 5.6 “Eli, Eli” - Yuval Cohen arrangement bass opening

At m.7 the trombone enters with the immediately recognizable and striking octave leap

that starts off the melody. When the tenor saxophone enters at m.9, the piece is in tempo and

additional fragments of the Zehavi melody emerge in the two-part counterpoint between

trombone and saxophone:

Figure 5.7 “Eli, Eli” tenor saxophone entrance

When the melody finally does appear, Cohen sets a bass line counterpoint that

foreshadows the vamp that will close the piece at letters K and L. The implied harmony of the

bass line, suggests the following chord progression: G7 – Cm – Cm/E♭– Fm – F♯dim7.

Ingeniously a resolution to the tonic occurs in the middle of the bar on the Cm chord; this gives

the phrase a sense of tension and a lack of closure:

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Figure 5.8 “Eli, Eli” piano and bass counterpoint

Indeed the entire song is set in a distinctly WAM harmonic language. It is replete with

minor triads and often situates the triads in second inversions (as 6/4 chords), an inversion type

that rarely occurs in standard jazz repertoire, and has a distinct WAM evocation. Cohen’s

harmonic choices are clearly in tune with the original spirit of the song, which is undoubtedly

rooted in such an aesthetic.

The octave leap that opens the song continues to play a central role in Cohen’s

arrangement. Cohen interpolates this fragment, utilizing a contrapuntal texture involving the

three horns on top of the repeated rhythm section ostinato, eventually modulating to a new

tonal center (B♭ minor) and settling on a six bar harmonic progression that serves as a

repeated section for improvisation. At the moment of arrival on the B♭ minor, the meter shifts

from 13/4 to 7/4. The harmonic progression that grows out of this melodic statement blossoms

into the first soloing section. This chordal template for improvisation alternates second

inversion minor triads with passing diminished7 chords. Once again, this progression is typical

of late nineteenth century romantic harmony but rare in jazz:

Figure 5.9 “Eli, Eli” first blowing section

™™ ™™B¨‹/F Aº7/F C©‹/G© Gº7 B‹/F© Fº75

11

15

19

23

27

31

c 74

74

&#

&#

&# ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑

&# ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑

&# ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑

&# ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑

&# ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑

&# ∑ ∑

œ ˙ ™ œ ˙b ™ œ œb œ œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ œ

+ + ™ + + ™ + + ™ + + ™ + + ™ + + ™

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Thus, the harmonic language of this first open solo section is clearly grounded in a

European aesthetic and deeply connected to the harmonic language of Zehavi himself and the

SLI in general. Nonetheless, this stormy progression for improvisation departs from the

harmony of the original song, and demonstrates Cohen’s interest in saying something as an

arranger, thus taking the piece to new directions. For example, the three horn players exchange

lyrical solos, alternating choruses on this cyclical and deceptively challenging six bar phrase.

The piano accompaniment further suggests a nineteenth century romantic aesthetic, as pianist

Gadi Lehavi accompanies the soloists with continuous, flowing, and rhapsodic arpeggios more

typical of a Chopin Etude than traditional rhythmically punchy jazz comping techniques.

After this solo section, we hear the piano ostinato in 13/4 after which Cohen presents

yet one more variation on the opening fragment of the melody. Here, a slightly different

ostinato is held by the piano and bass while the drums improvise soloistically around it:

Figure 5.10 “Eli, Eli” piano and bass ostinato for drum solo

After the brief drum solo, the piece undergoes another meter change, transitioning to

4/4. We now hear a new portion of the original melody, this time played by the bass, with

sparse accompaniment from the piano and drums. The melody of measures 5-10 of the original

Zehavi song setting is rhythmically augmented, contributing to the sparseness by creating a

stagnant feel. This hearkens to the mood of the song as it is most commonly performed. Still,

Cohen does not leave the conventional material unchanged, and instead alters the harmony with

a series of tense chords that resist calm and resolution:

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Figure 5.11 “Eli, Eli” melody quote in bass part

This iteration of the melody by the bass then leads to the second blowing section of the

arrangement, providing another harmonic progression that opens up, this time for a piano solo.

As the piano solo tails off, the rhythm section itself goes silent. Then, a seven measure,

contrapuntal, horn passage repeats in a loop as a sonic foil for the narrated text, which takes

center stage:

Figure 5.12 “Eli, Eli” three horn contrapunctal loop

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With distinct fragments of the melody heard in the soprano sax line, this contrapuntal section

references the solemnity and heaviness of the original version of the song more strongly than

any other section of the piece.

It is no coincidence, then, that this contrapuntal texture and tense harmonic background

accompany the additional Hebrew spoken text that Cohen inserts in dialogue with the words of

the original poem. The new text, shown below in Hebrew and English, is narrated by Itai Perl:

,אליאלי .האדםאחיואתהאדםשנאת,האדםאלימות,האדםצביעותבעולםתיגמרמתי .ודםהאדםוכאבהאדםסבלבעולםייגמרכברמתי

,אליאלי .היםאתוימלאהחולאתוימלאבעולםישפךעודדםכמה

.האדםיעליםאותוגם?והעולם .ותפילהברק,רשרושכלשמחרישותהכאבזעקות

?בסביבהאתה?מקשיבאתה,אלי,ליא

אליאלי לעולםייגמרשלא המיםשלרשרוש,והיםהחול האדםתפילת,השמייםברק

והעולםוהאדם

My God, my God, when will there be an end in the world to the hypocrisy of man, the violence of man, the hatred of

man of his brethren. When will there finally be an end in the world to the suffering of man and the pain of man and the

blood. My God, my God, how much more blood will spill in the world and fill the sand and the sea? And the world? It too, man will destroy. The cries of suffering that deafen any rustle, light and prayer. My God, my God, are you listening? Are you around?

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My God, my God That these wonders may never end, The sand and the sea, the rustle of the water The light of the sky, the prayer of man And man, and the world.85

The arrangement choices suggest strongly that the new text is a commentary on the

Szenes poem, through its use and reference to much of the same language. Distinctly

recognizable melodic fragments set in the accompaniment are “uncomfortable” and dissonant,

yet still evocative of the original song. This manipulation further enhances the perception that

the pleading mood of the original has been replaced by a forcefully worded lament.

This is a clear political message, particularly when considering the fact that “Eli, Eli”

represents one of Israel’s most central national narratives and rituals, namely the

commemoration of the Holocaust. Yet, Cohen’s subversive move flips the script, using one of

the most identifiable shared and “ritualistic” songs to ask when will such senseless violence and

suffering end. His cyclical, repetitious and contrapuntal texture underneath the narration seems

to highlight a kind of unending loop, which brings to mind the unending cycles of violence that

have so typified the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. When I spoke to Cohen, he confirmed the

political nature of his message:

It was part of a broader engagement with this song, to do something there, to go with a certain kind of gloominess and to still insert myself into this song. It [ed. the added text] is a sort of paraphrase on the original words…and yes to say what I think about the violence and the militancy. It’s political but it’s also universal, it stakes a position, it doesn’t address someone specifically. It can address all the actors in the field, and kind of tell them, guys, no violence here. (Cohen 2015)

85 Text by Yuval Cohen, translation by the author.

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After the narrated the text, we hear a brief reprise of the central ostinato line, and the

piece comes to an end with that most poignant octave of “My god”, ringing in the piano in the

form of an unanswered question.

SUMMARY

This chapter focused on the various Israeli and Jewish sources drawn upon and

incorporated by these musicians over the years even as the majority of their work focuses on

original compositions. Moreover, as important as Israeli and Jewish songs are, we must not lose

sight of the fact that they are one of several important repertoires to which Israeli jazz

musicians gravitate.86 As multi-local musicians who are local in various musical traditions,

many incorporate pieces from repertoires that extend beyond Israeli and Jewish sources. Some

draw upon standards from the Great American Songbook or “jazz standards” (compositions by

the likes of Monk, Ellington, Coltrane, Ornette Coleman) in their recordings and performances.

Others have drawn from diverse sources such as Brazilian choro, Bulgarian choir music, Afro-

Cuban, French Chanson and contemporary pop/rock. Thus, depending on the particular artistic

preference and direction of the individual, the repertoire combines original music, standards,

jazz standards, Israeli or Jewish songs and selections from an array of other sources.

Whereas the degree to which these artists privilege Israeli and Jewish repertoires and

influences in their music differs from musician to musician, hardly any advocate an approach

that privileges these repertories at the expense of other sources, jazz or otherwise. Their

86 For example, earlier we noted that on her album Poetica Anat Cohen recorded arrangements of four SLI songs. On that same album Cohen also performs John Coltrane’s “Lonnie’s Lament”, “Le Chanson Des Vieux Amants” by Jacques Brel, a choro piece by Brazilian composers Nelson Cavaquinho and Guilhereme De Brito entitled “Quando Eu Me Chamar Saudade”, two original compositions and a piece by her collaborator and album co-producer Israeli jazz bassist Omer Avital.

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discourse is generally inclusive, underlining simultaneously the importance of the jazz

tradition, their jazz training and vocabulary (as well as any other important influence, on a case

by case basis) and the influence of Israeli or Jewish sources. In this sense, they frame stylistic

expansion and the broadening of their sources as fundamentally rooted in the jazz imperative:

“find your own voice”. Thus, I found that their incorporation of Israeli sources is not pursued

due to a nationalist agenda or desire to make “Israeli jazz”, but rather it is, again, a by-product

of artists’ pursuit of their own unique expression as multi-locals operating in the global jazz

world as performers and composers.

In fact many of the artists that I interviewed highlighted the importance of the jazz

tradition as the foundation that allows them to re-visit and explore these localized sources. Ilan

Salem, for example, argued that his extensive jazz training gave him the tools to approach this

music with greater skill, maturity, and creativity:

When we come to treat these things with our jazz background, I think we come to it with tools that give us freedom to take it to other places and to use it as raw material. I think that if it was done in reverse it would be much more difficult: It is much easier for me to come with the jazz background and everything that I have learned and did in the jazz world, and to come back to these things and to treat them, to really give them their place, not to destroy them but to cultivate them, to preserve them, to imbue them with something else. (Salem 2015)

As discussed in Chapter Four, almost all of the musicians I interviewed highlighted

their rootedness in African-American jazz traditions, practices and vernaculars. Regardless of

their physical whereabouts they practice “rituals” and live “relationships” that demonstrate

their locality in this musical place. At the same time, they carry with them an intense locality in

an Israeli musical landscape, replete with its deep seated familial, psychic and identity forming

“rituals”, “relationships” and “restrictions”. Beyond this Israeli locality, these musicians, each

in their own way, are also local in a wide array of Jewish musical traditions, which are

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transcultural in their own right. Some artists have also become locals in additional musical

traditions that extend beyond jazz and Israeli/Jewish musical practices. As chronicled in the

previous chapter, these include musical traditions from Latin America, India, Ethiopia and

other locales.

In returning to our overarching concern with repertoire, at present, there is no shared

“Israeli Standards” repertoire to which we can point. Though, admittedly, there is substantial

overlap in the kinds of sources from which Israeli jazz artists pull their pieces (i.e. SLI, folk

melodies, singer/songwriters). Each artist draws from these varied sources and creates their

own arrangement for the pieces. Even in cases where artists have performed renditions of the

same pieces (which is a rarity) their performance shows no indication of referencing or being in

dialogue with one of their contemporaries’ renditions.

Since this practice of performing jazz arrangements of Israeli songs and Jewish folk

melodies is still in its infancy, it is possible that over time some shared repertoire might

develop, and circular self-referentiality might begin to occur. However, due to the relative

small size of the Israeli jazz community and the diversity of repertoire that is sourced and

arranged it is unlikely to ever reach the type of widespread pervasiveness as standards reached

in the jazz world of the US and the world, over the course of the twentieth and early twenty-

first centuries.

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CHAPTER SIX

CONCLUSION: “FALAFEL JAZZ” AND THE POLITICS OF GENRE AND CULTURE

I was in the audience for bassist Or Bareket’s performance at the New York jazz club

Cornelia Street Café where, in the summer of August 2016, he played with his band as part of

the monthly spotlight series on “Israeli jazz”. Bareket introduced one of his original pieces as

“Shosh”, a composition titled after his grandmother. In fact, Bareket revealed that both of his

grandmothers were named “Shosh”. He explained that one grandmother, named Shoshana

Bohlman, came from Poland and the other, who came from Iraq, was named Shosh Kahti.

Bareket pronounced the word Kahti somewhat humorously with an exaggerated Arabic/Hebrew

“Kachh” sound. He closed this brief spoken introduction for his piece by explaining that it was

dedicated to his Iraqi grandmother, and employs a 10/8 Iraqi rhythm called hibri. Later in the

evening, before playing an arrangement of a Matti Caspi song (“Eem Kol Haguf”), Bareket

provided some background information about the legendary Israeli songwriter who has been a

part of the Israeli music scene since the 1970s. That same night, however, the band also played

an Argentinian song. While this might seem out of place on a program dedicated to “Israeli

jazz”, Bareket, who now lives in NYC but grew up in Israel noted that he spent his very early

childhood in Argentina. That residence was not, however, the source of his familiarity with

what he called “wonderful contemporary Argentinian music.” Rather, he told us he discovered

it when he was on tour in Argentina with Israeli jazz guitarist Yotam Silberstein.

Performing on “Israeli jazz” night at a prominent NYC jazz club, Bareket reinforced the

Israeliness of the event on several occasions. He often did so in expected ways. For example,

he noted jokingly that he and the band spent all day together working on the music and “eating

hummus actually…it’s a stereotype … but stereotypes come from something”. At the same

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time, Bareket’s spoken interludes also revealed his multi-cultural and multi-local

autobiographical and musical roots, which align with the kinds of Israeliness I have been

associating with Israeli jazz musicians, and contemporary culture. Accordingly, his band’s set

expressed this multi-local sensibility in sound, referencing styles and influences ranging from

“North American” jazz to Iraqi classical music, contemporary Argentinian music and 1970s

Israeli popular music.

Much like Or Bareket, many of the Israeli jazz musicians discussed in this dissertation

live as multi-local musicians, through their “relationships”, “rituals” and “restrictions”. Their

music is rooted simultaneously in various jazz traditions, a diverse array of “Israeli” and

“Jewish” musical traditions as well as numerous other musical styles and influences. Their

Israeliness often manifests through multi-local cosmopolitanism, drawing simultaneously upon

a myriad of influences that shaped their multi-cultural upbringing and ancestral roots. By

focusing on the music making and discourses surrounding the activities of these Israeli jazz

musicians who have been thriving on the international stage since the 1990s, then, this

dissertation should be understood as a case study of musical transculturation in contemporary

jazz performance and composition. Like Bareket, numerous other multi-local jazz musicians

from Israel and, I would argue, many other nation-states, draw upon specific influences and

sources from diverse and already fused musical traditions to create their own unique personal

blend of transcultural jazz.

Perhaps more particular to the transcultural musical practices of the Israeli jazz

musicians discussed here is that their multi-localism manifests primarily through creation of

original compositions and arrangements (perhaps others drawing on different traditions might

lean more heavily on the blending of blends in their improvisations). While there was a great

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variety of approaches through which each creates his or her own musical voice by blending

disparate sources, they all share the act of blending itself. More particular to Israeli jazz too is

that all the artists I encountered draw upon musical traditions that connect to their childhood

home in Israel as well as a variety of other musical traditions that come from various parts of

the Jewish world.

Thus, Chapters Four and Five concentrated on these repertoires as a way to illuminate

and understand the “local” and “global” influences embraced by Israeli jazz musicians. As I

noted, they share an abiding respect for and solid grounding in African-American jazz

traditions. Simultaneously, they view the jazz ethos as one that calls for them to “play their own

voice”: an invitation, if not imperative, to express themselves as authentically as possible even

if that means deviating from more rigidly “traditional” approaches to jazz sounds, repertoire,

and performance practices on one hand and Israeli music on the other hand. Thus in the spirit of

multi-local music making and longstanding jazz traditions, they utilize “global” influences,

including Western Art Music, Brazilian, Afro-Cuban, Indian, and Balkan musical traditions and

specific local influences; chiefly, “Israeli”, “Jewish” and circum-Mediterranean reservoirs as a

way to express their Israeli jazz voices through their compositions and arrangements.87

To be sure, my interviews, analysis, and experiences demonstrated that original

compositions and arrangements were the primary ways in which Israeli jazz musicians found

and expressed their sound. This is why I focused my analysis on these aspects of their music.

Still, it is true that an important aspect of their music making activities and, indeed, jazz, was

left under-explored, namely their improvisations. While there would likely be much to gain

from analyzing various improvised solos, the more I explored various compositions and

arrangements by different artists the more it became apparent that focusing on them would 87 I use the term circum-Mediterranean following Brinner 2009.

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provide the clearest way to demonstrate the transcultural and multi-local nature of their practice

and that which largely defines Israeli jazz and an Israeli sound. In fact, with a few notable

exceptions,88 I concluded that most Israeli jazz musicians’ improvisatory language is

fundamentally rooted in more conventional jazz vocabularies and less in transcultural blends

that draw upon local influences from Israel and the Middle-East. Nonetheless, I believe that

there is likely much to learn from explorations and analyses of solos by Israeli jazz artists,

especially in relation to, for instance, the musical competences (Brinner 1995) necessary to

improvise on their compositions and arrangements.

Such an endeavor remains for a future project. In the remainder of this chapter, I

propose three additional areas for future research that might emerge from the foundations

established by this dissertation.

THE POLITICS OF GENRE: THE CASE OF FALAFEL JAZZ

In his book about jazz-rock fusion, Birds of Fire (2011), music and cultural theory

scholar Kevin Fellezs proposes we understand genre as culture, and transgeneric music as

“performance of transculturality”. He cites Fabian Holt’s ideas about genre formation, noting

that performers and listeners utilize genres to demarcate sonic and performative conventions,

musical boundaries and membership. Similarly, popular music scholar Keith Negus asserts that

genre can be usefully understood as sets of “codified rules, conventions and expectations, not

only as melodies, timbres and rhythms but also in terms of audience expectations, market

categories and habits of consumption” (1999:28 Quoted in Fellezs 2011:17).

88 A few musicians such as Amos Hoffman and Omri Mor often display improvisations that are simultaneously rooted in jazz and middle-eastern vocabularies.

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One of the predominant genre demarcation lines in the Israeli jazz music world revolves

around the label “falafel jazz”,89 a term used by some Israeli and non-Israeli musicians as well

as critics to describe the blended music made by Israeli jazz musicians. While no one I spoke to

knows exactly how the term originated or who coined it, most agree that it emerged at some

point in the early 2000s and was used as a denigrating way to refer to jazz performed by Israeli

musicians that has overt middle-eastern rhythmic and melodic characteristics. The term also

elicits strong responses as illustrated by flutist Ilan Salem’s comments:

I hate this label…I think falafel jazz is a term by Israeli jazzists who don’t like what we do…I have respect for every kind of music, if it’s good or wonderful. The connotations of falafel jazz I always thought came from a hard core group of jazz musicians that aren’t willing to compromise, who believe that jazz happened between 1940 and 1955…and that everything that happened after that isn’t as good. I can’t connect to that approach when it comes from a place of dismissal. I really think that when people do something and really do it from their heart you can’t disparage it. (Salem 2015)

As this quote suggests, the vast majority of musicians that I spoke with viewed the label

unfavorably and would not use it to describe their own music. Many also rejected its use to

describe the music of their Israeli peers. Discussion of this label was often accompanied by

laughter. Indeed, the physical and emotional reaction when prompted on the subject ranged

from mild embarrassment and discomfort to outright rejection. The much-shared sentiment is

that the term is reductive, simplistic, used too loosely and carries with it an air of

dismissiveness.

In Israeli society, falafel is commonly thought to be a cheap, simple, unsophisticated

street-food, a kind of food of “the people”. Equating jazz created by Israeli musicians with

falafel was perceived by most Israeli jazz musicians I interviewed as a dismissal, an assertion

that their music was too commercial and cheap. As flutist Hadar Noiberg told me: “I feel it’s a 89 Falafel are “Fried patties made of either garbanzo beans or fava beans and eaten with hummus. Israelis stuff pita bread with falafel to which tahini sauce and a chopped vegetable salad is added” (Gvion 2012).

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derogatory term…like you wanted to do music that’s deep but you settled for something light

that sells and is commercial” (2015). Gilad Abro articulates a similar view:

It’s really natural that everyone wants to be an individual. Nobody wants to be associated with a genre label, that’s natural. People want to say, “jazz” and that’s it. So what if its falafel jazz; so what if it’s hard-bop; it’s jazz. Somehow to define it as falafel, as a food, there’s something about it that is diminishing, to see it negatively… whereas it could be music that the composer is really serious about. (Abro 2015)

Omri Mor echoes the same point:

I dislike this label, maybe only because I don’t want to be included in it. But I am sure that there are lots of people that characterize what I do as falafel jazz. Look, it’s a matter of connotation and association. My association and connotation with falafel jazz is as something that is cheap and for the masses (laughs) and as such it’s not a good thing. But, let’s say someone comes from Germany and hears my music and music by someone else from what’s also called falafel jazz and he won’t see much a difference…he’ll put it under one label… I don’t like this term, but it doesn’t matter. There are also lots of people that don’t like the word jazz. Duke Ellington didn’t like it. From my perspective, I hope that what I do isn’t falafel jazz. I think at the end of the day what is important is the integrity of the music making and I strive to be faithful to that. (Mor 2015)

Indeed, as Mor rightly points out, the word jazz has long been mired in debate, often in relation

to its placement vis-a-vis binaries, such as “high” versus “low” culture, “art music” versus

“popular music” (Levine 1988; DeVeaux 1991; Porter 2002) that implicitly question its quality.

Similarly, the label “falafel jazz” seems to mark the accessibility of the style, its danceable

rhythms and catchy melodies as “too commercial” for jazz.

Yet, a few interlocutors viewed the term falafel jazz favorably. For example, in

speaking generally about this label, saxophonist Eli Degibri said:

Unlike the detractors I think it (falafel jazz) is nice. I think it’s the exact opposite of insulting. I think it’s another branch of jazz, not just Israeli jazz, but jazz. If today folks like Aaron Goldberg and Ben Street know what falafel jazz is then it’s good for us. I know of all those tiring folks who get angry

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when they hear it but I think it’s a very positive thing. After all, everything can be done well or poorly. (Degibri 2015)

Similarly, flutist Itai Kriss is comfortable with the label “falafel jazz” being applied to music

making by his band - Televana:

Falafel jazz…is like taking elements from musiqa mizrahit and combining it with jazz, something that you can clap your hands to (claps his hands) and jazz with a flavor of you know cumin, parsley, garlic, olive oil…I say this with affection. You can say falafel jazz, oh that’s something cute (mithanhen) but I like it. Yeah, it’s kind of a stupid label but I enjoy it, if the music is done right…Televana is very much falafel. It’s falafel with salsa. Empanadas with falafel inside (laughs). (Kriss 2015)

Other Israeli jazz musicians believe that the term is neutral and refers simply to a certain sub-

genre of jazz pieces that Israelis sometimes perform which have specific musical

characteristics. For instance, the Arab malfouf rhythm, which is frequently used in pieces by

Israeli jazz musicians is also known as “groove falafel”. In this usage “falafel” is a kind of

shorthand, a quick reference to a particular rhythmic language shared among many Israeli jazz

musicians. For example, one interlocutor noted that he can turn to his drummer on a gig in the

middle of a tune and simply say, “bring the falafel”. In response, the drummer will begin to

play the malfouf groove. Embracing both interpretations, drummer Amir Bresler described

“falafel jazz” as a groove and a style of music:

It has a certain kind of groove and a melody that has a kind of jazzy Zohar Argov-like sound…90 it has this borderline negative connotation when people say it but its not. It’s just this genre, with this groove and these Israeli-like simple melodies. It’s hard for me to explain. (Bresler 2015)

“Falafel jazz,” thus, elicited a range of perspectives; but so too did the label Israeli jazz.

First and foremost, the feeling among most was that such reductive labeling disguises the

immense diversity of stylistic directions and personal styles developed by each musician.

90 Zohar Argov is one of the iconic singers of the musiqa mizrahit genre.

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As Amos Hoffman told me:

One of the most beautiful things about the history of jazz is that it’s a music that is constantly evolving and changing… and the emphasis is on the originality of each artist. I think everyone needs to come from a place of finding their original voice. This is why the term Israeli jazz or Israeli sound doesn’t sit well with me.

I’ll give you an example: Compare Anat Fort (pianist) with Omer Avital’s sextet. They are so different from one another. If you asked me for advice, I’d say ״don’t belong to any club, just do your own thing”…

Maybe there is a kind of shared sound that I might be partly to blame for … and if you want to outline it musically, you can say that it’s music with a kind of harmony, with a groove, with lots of Latin American influences, African influences, funk. But, it also has middle-eastern flavors, and also references Russian and Ladino songs as well as Greek and Turkish influences.

On the other hand, I think that this labeling pegs a lot of things that don’t really resemble one another or that are different enough that they wouldn’t occupy the same spot. It’s like you’d say that jazz is traditional jazz. There are so many different styles. Like you’d put Art Blakey and Wes Montgomery under the same label. These are different people, they wrote a different style. (Hoffman 2014)

Much like their positionings with respect to the term “falafel jazz”, the overarching

concern I heard repeatedly expressed by these musicians was that they are chiefly interested in

creating their own individual sound, not in belonging to a shared stylistic direction. Most of

them are wary of being pigeonholed as “Israeli jazz” artists, even as they all mentioned the

significance of their rootedness and connectedness to jazz and its various styles and traditions.

However, they all stressed that their sound worlds and creative output encompasses many

influences and that their music extended beyond “Israeli music” and music from the Jewish

world. Each was careful to articulate that while “Israeli” and ”Jewish” influences might be

important or play a role in shaping the music they make and their identity, Israeli jazz cannot

account for all of what they do and in many cases isn’t even at the core of what they do.

Secondarily, these artists made clear that their incorporation of “Israeli” and/or “Jewish”

influences was not a result of a conscious attempt to be a part of an “Israeli jazz” wave, the

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creation of a new sub-genre, nor an effort to advance “jazz nationalism”. Rather their music

making is the result of their own individual process of searching for “their own voice”. Thus,

their incorporation of these sources is personal and individualistic and can be seen as a

response to the” jazz imperative” to authentically express themselves as jazz musicians. Bassist

Omer Avital encapsulates this aspect of this jazz ethos when he says:

I am disappointed when someone comes and says falafel jazz or hummus jazz and thinks that its something that’s different than jazz, when I am really a jazz musician. You know what I am saying? My ability to bring something different into jazz only exists because I can play “A Night In Tunisia” really well…and if I am able to find myself in it, it’s because I have a particular story. Mark Turner, too, has a different story, and everyone else has their own story. That’s art. You put your life into it. (Avital 2017)

Finally, the “Israeli” and “Jewish” influences must be seen within a broader more

nuanced understanding of the multi-local, cosmopolitan reality that is characteristic of the

Israeli musical landscape. These Israeli jazz musicians draw upon a wide array of influences

that come from the diverse musical cultures present within Israel and from the broader Arab

and circum-Mediterranean musical styles that have influenced Israeli culture and music for

many years.

Indeed, throughout this dissertation, I demonstrated how these artists, rooted in jazz,

construct their own individual blends that incorporate musical influences from a myriad of

stylistic and generic sources. Utilizing the conceptualization of the multi-local musician, I

outlined the ways in which these blends are grounded in deep immersion and practice of

musical traditions that originate from multiple locales and temporalities. Avital’s multi-local

musicianship illustrates this well; he is simultaneously rooted in African-American jazz

traditions, Arab music, musiqa mizrahit, Yemenite folk and liturgical musical traditions,

Andalusian music, Shaabi, Berber and Gnawa from Morocco, the SLI and Western Art Music.

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His music is the product of a long process of internalization, integration and transformation of

musical influences and materials, and results in a personal style that is immediately

recognizable as distinctly his even as it is steeped in other traditions, especially jazz:

You can’t label my album New Song or the tune “New Middle East” as falafel jazz. You can label it but you have to understand that it’s built on Dizzy Gillespie. Otherwise there’s some sort of mistake. You can’t separate me from jazz, because I am also jazz…and in the same breath my music is more than just Arab music, I am not just influenced by Arab music, I know it, I can play Arab music…you can feel the strong Arab, Mizrahi influence in my music, but I am also New York City jazz. I live in NYC, that’s how I live my life. All this blending is part of an attitude towards life. It’s less important to me whether it is Arab or not, whether its falafel or hummus [jazz]. Rather I care about what are the chords you write; how you relate to your band members; what’s the quality of the solos; does the music groove? Is it fresh? Does it move me? (Avital 2017)

Yet Avital’s music has also been very influential on the waves of Israeli jazz musicians that

came after him suggesting a certain degree of generic coherence in what I have been calling,

however problematically, Israeli jazz. Avital thus reminds us that while labeling and generic

demarcations play a role in the discourse surrounding their work, the overarching concern for

these musicians is with making music that excites them, fellow musicians and audience

members. He also illustrates, however, that certain musics resonate more with the musicians

and audiences with whom he is most interested in sharing that excitement.

With this in mind, it is clear that future research on genre politics and the meanings and

implications of labels such as “falafel jazz” and “Israeli jazz” could be quite productive. For

instance, how do Israeli jazz musicians navigate such labels surrounding their music and the

music of their peers? Are there generational differences in views about these labels? To what

extent do such designations and their accompanying associations of “high” and “low” impact

the ways Israeli jazz musicians seek to position themselves with their Israeli and non-Israeli

musician peers, audiences and critics? Such research could also include analysis of the

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contradictions between the rather outspoken rejection of the terms and the simultaneous usage

of these labels for PR and marketing purposes by these same artists.

FALAFEL, MUSIC, AND CULTURAL POLITICS

In addition to querying the implications of “falafel jazz” as a genre label, plumbing the

interrelationships between jazz and cultural politics, in general, and Israeli music making in

particular is another potentially fruitful avenue of research. The pairing of jazz and falafel, is

rich with layers of meaning related to ethnic and socio-economic dynamics within Israeli

society as well as the complicated relationship of Israel’s Jewish inhabitants with their non-

Jewish neighbors across the Middle-East.91

In her book Falafel Nation (2015), performance studies scholar and artist Yael Raviv

details the unique case of the falafel: its origin as a meat substitute during certain holidays for

Christian Copts in Egypt, its spread across the middle-east and into Palestine, its appropriation

by the Jewish settlers in the early twentieth century, through to its transformation into a staple

of Israeli cuisine. Raviv writes “It has not assimilated into Israeli society by a long, slow,

natural process; rather, its transformation into an icon-of-Israel status was rushed and

deliberate, groomed by the national movement as a signifier of Israeli pride. The case of falafel

also generated a unique controversy, since it became embroiled in the Arab-Israeli political

conflict” (2015:15-16).

In pre-state Palestine, interactions by newly arrived Ashkenazy immigrants with local

Palestinian culture yielded a complex, often troubled fascination with local Arab culture and

91 In addition to the already cited books by Regev and Seroussi 2004 as well as Brinner 2009 there have been quite a few articles and books written in recent years about musiqa mizrahit and cultural politics in Israel. These include Nocke 2006; Saada-Ophir 2006; Regev 2007; Horowitz 2010. Similarly, in food studies there have been several interesting and relevant works on cultural politics and food in Israel: Ariel 2012; Gvion 2012; Ranta and Mendel 2014; Raviv 2015.

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musical traditions. For example, one of the cultural tenants of the Zionist movement involved a

rejection of diasporic life and an embrace of life in Palestine. Raviv writes that early Jewish

settlers were drawn to the falafel as it represented a simple, unrefined food, not a product of the

bourgeois existence they sought to abandon in Europe. Similarly, the early settlers sought to

imitate “certain Arab models that they perceived as related to the Jewish existence in the

mythical biblical past” (Raviv 2015:17). Musically, this meant an effort to integrate and

explore various Arab melodic, rhythmic and orchestrational features despite longstanding

musical traditions from elsewhere and problematic relationships with local culture bearers

(Regev and Seroussi 2004; Brinner 2009).

However, an account of Ashkenazy Jewish engagement with the music and culture of

their new home provides an incomplete account of the newly arrived Jewish population in

Israel. Shortly before and after the establishment of the state, huge numbers of Jewish

immigrants from Arab countries arrived. For these Arab-Jews, musical traditions of their

previous homes such as Arab Classical music, Andalusian music, traditional Persian and

Turkish music were their very own. As Edwin Seroussi (2006) notes, for centuries up until the

establishment of the Israeli state, professional Jewish musicians played an integral role in the

performance and development of musical styles all across the Muslim world, and were often

among the most famous stars in the world of classical and popular Arab music. In my interview

with him, Amos Hoffman reflected on this part of Israeli history:

Because of the political conflict, and this is a very problematic issue…on the one hand, one half of the citizens of the country are Arabs, they are Jews from Arab countries. But the establishment is all Western, and this approach over years has turned this music into the music of ‘the enemy’. But for one half of us, this is their music…take the Jews that came from Iraq. They arrived with astonishing musical wealth - musicians known all over the Arab world, and they buried them. We lost this. We really missed out here. (Hoffman 2014)

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Indeed, for many, one of the great tragedies of Israeli culture is the way in which the diverse

traditions of music that Jewish immigrants brought with them when they arrived from the

Middle-East, North Africa, and Central Asia, have been “buried” or repressed by the

hegemonic Ashkenazy establishment that sought to create a new “Hebrewist” national culture

rooted around eastern and western European music and culture.

The conflict that erupted with the establishment of the State of Israel between the newly

formed Jewish state and its Arab neighbors turned the music of these diverse and large groups

of Arab-Jews into “the music of the enemy”. Furthermore, the political and cultural

“establishment” of Jewish society in Israel, particularly in the years leading up to the 1970s,

was dominated heavily by an Ashkenazy bloc that sought to position Israel as a Western-

European nation, advancing Euro-American culture and taste at the expense of middle-eastern

and Arab culture, which again was associated with “the enemy”.

Though maintained privately by individuals and communities, the musical practices and

traditions of Arab-Jews living in Israel were largely absent from public life for much of the

twentieth century. The emergence of the Mizrahi pop genre, musiqa mizrahit, starting in the

late 1970s, in parallel to a broader social, cultural and political upheaval in Israeli society,

started to change this. Starting in the 1990s, a renaissance of Mizrahi cultural identity surged

through Israeli society in parallel with the peace process and a greater openness of Israeli

society to its Arab neighbors (Regev and Seroussi 2004; Brinner 2009). While musiqa mizrahit

rose in status and became mainstream, the music world in Israel also saw an explosion of

“world music”, primarily by way of middle-eastern styles and traditions.92 Similarly, Israeli

society has seen a reawakening of interest in the liturgical musical traditions of Mizrahi Jews,

92 Benjamin Brinner’s 2009 book Playing Across a Divide provides a comprehensive account of the “ethnic music” scene in Israel, and in particular collaborations between Israeli-Jewish and Israeli-Palestinian and Palestinian musicians.

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the formation of several orchestras dedicated to Andalusian music and a growing

acknowledgment of the wealth of musical knowledge emerging from the Arab-Jewish world. In

2015, while I was doing my fieldwork for this dissertation, the soundscape of Tel Aviv’s cafes

and restaurants were distinctly marked by the sounds of Arab music.

In returning briefly to Raviv’s accounting of the falafel’s transformation from an

appropriated Arab street snack food to an important symbol of Israeli cuisine, she notes that

after the 1948 war and Israel’s establishment, falafel was detached from its Arab origins by

utilizing the immigration of Jews from Arab countries into Israel: “Since falafel could now be

linked to Jewish immigrants who had come from the Middle-East and Africa, it could shed its

Arab association in favor of an overarching Israeli identification” (2015:18).93

Within this broader, historical cultural context, the “falafel jazz” food analogy is

particularly spicy. Much of the music created by Israeli jazz musicians blends influences

derived from musical traditions that come from the Middle-East and North Africa. Yet, much

like the falafel itself, its roots lie firmly in Arab culture. Can we, then, speak of “falafel jazz”

simply as an appropriation of “Arab music” or can we also speak of the process as one of re-

connecting and representing musical traditions and practices that Arab-Jews have consumed

and practiced for centuries? Further, does “falafel jazz” not also reflect a further fusion of

additional transcultural influences?

There is certainly a problematic irony in the way in which “falafel” and “hummus” are

celebrated and marketed internationally as “Israeli”, as doing so masks the history of

Ashkenazy hegemony and attendant denigration and appropriation of Arab and Arab-Jewish

93 As Raviv notes in her book tensions and arguments about cultural ownership of the falafel have been raging on between Palestinians and Israelis for decades. Raviv cites a New York Times article “it appears that today most Israelis acknowledge the Arab origins of falafel, whereas some Palestinians concede that falafel is a regional food and therefore is not “owned” by any one nation” (24-25).

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cultural traditions and practices. Similarly, it is worth noting that much of the music made by

Israeli jazz musicians, and promoted by Israeli and Jewish festival promoters, embassy and

consulate representatives as quintessentially “Israeli” is steeped in influences that come from

Arab musical traditions. Whereas, these cultural influences are in fact part of the heritage of so

many of the Jewish inhabitants of Israel, there is also a cruel irony in the continued socio-

economic and political marginalization of the Arab population, both Jewish and non-Jewish,

that lives within Israel and beyond its borders.

Furthermore, as noted in my discussion about the politics of genre, the term “falafel

jazz” lightly conceals an attack on the music these artists make as “cheap” and of “low

culture”. Similar attacks have been leveled against musiqa mizrahit artists for decades. Thus,

such criticism appears to be at least partially rooted in still pervasive racial, ethnic and cultural

divisions within Israeli society. The lingering attitudes of institutions and individuals continue

to situate the cultural practices of Mizrahi Jews and non-Jewish Arabs as somehow culturally

inferior to the cultural practices of Ashkenazy Jews.

THE FUTURE OF ISRAELI JAZZ

Since my study focused primarily on the first two waves of Israeli jazz musicians, it

invites sustained engagement with the work of players who belong to the Third and subsequent

waves of Israeli jazz. Many of the younger musicians interviewed cited the pronounced

influence of pioneering First Wave musicians such as bassists Avishai Cohen and Omer Avital.

Yet it is important to recall that when Cohen and Avital began blending, they were simply

making their own music: There was no Israeli jazz sound, no “falafel jazz” label. In contrast,

musicians who “came of age” after Cohen, Avital, Hoffman, Zamir and others, who established

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themselves internationally creating these blended styles, grew up listening to and in many cases

admiring the music of their predecessors. As much as they drew inspiration from those who

came before, their examples also created challenges.

A dominant thread with these younger musicians then has to do, with issues of

influence, individuality, and genre. How do they relate to and position themselves in relation to

the music of Israeli jazz luminaries? How do they position their own music making vis-a-vis

the music of these musicians and the generic expectations of the Israeli jazz sound? Did the

success of these blended sounds mean that there was now a “stylistic target” that they aimed to

capitalize on or move away from?

In pursuing such questions, albeit briefly, with my younger interlocutors, I heard

multiple responses. Some aim to situate their own personal development in relative isolation

from the influence of the music made by First Wave Israeli jazz musicians. For example,

trumpeter Itamar Borochov states:

I don’t feel that I am a part of this Israeli jazz label in the sense that I wasn’t influenced by Avishai Cohen … nor by Omer Avital. I didn’t grow up on the style of music that these guys made. I had my own blend that came from home. I really loved Duke Ellington and I listened to Eyal Golan because it was on the radio and I loved it. So, somehow, my own blend emerged because I loved many different kinds of music. At a certain point I did become familiar with the music they were making and I loved it. When I listened to Omer Avital I loved him because he’s a great jazz player, the so-called middle-eastern side I had from home. My dad is a musician of traditional and world music and that’s what I was swimming in. So, this label [“Israeli sound”] doesn’t sit well with me. On the other hand it’s possible that every person who creates original music feel this way. I don’t really know. (Borochov 2015)

Others, like bassist Or Bareket, acknowledge the influence and feel they have a sense of

responsibility to find out what they have to add to the mix:

It’s a sound, its definitely a certain sound for better or for worse…. now my generation has to deal with the fact that there are these older guys that created

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this sound and made these substantial artistic and stylistic statements, and I have to understand what I have to add, if anything…I have to find the fine line between inspiration and imitation…lots of people, and I am one of them sometimes, won’t listen to a certain kind of music because its influence is really strong on your generation.

For example, lots of guitarists prefer not to listen to Kurt Rosenwinkel because so many guitarists lift everything from him. I don’t go to the extremes, but I do try to stay minded about my influences, and I am also aware of what influences my peers. At the end of the day, it’s really easy to recognize honesty and authenticity, and that’s what’s important. (Bareket 2015)

Ultimately, it seems that what is shared by all the musicians I interviewed is valuing the search

for honest and authentic musical expression. They privilege those values as the most important

markers of artistic integrity and success.

Pianist Shai Maestro is an interesting case among the newer group of Israeli musicians.

Maestro melded into the international scene at a very young age as the pianist for bassist

Avishai Cohen’s bands. Indeed, he contributed a great deal with his piano playing to the now

internationally acknowledged “Avishai” sound. Subsequently he has established his own career

in NYC as a leader of the Shai Maestro Trio as well as a sideman for various bands. Maestro

argues that for him authentic music making cannot be about aiming to line up with some

stylistic target, but has to be an honest process:

I am not a huge fan of decisions. If now I said to myself - I want to create Mediterranean music. Jazz that is this kind of fusion. So, okay, you decided. You go to the piano, you start writing. What happens if you don’t feel it? What happens if you’re feeling a really beautiful chord that comes from the world of Stravinsky rather than from Nehama Hendel or Arik Einstein? You’re not going to write it cause you decided that you were going to be Mediterranean?

I believe that music honestly expresses who you are as a person, with your entire history and your history isn’t just music. It’s the parents you grew up with, the food you’re used to eating, the mentality of your nation’s people, the things you watched on TV, how you deal with sickness, and I don’t know, everything that comes with being a human. And if out that comes a phrase that goes “na na na na nai” that sounds Mediterranean, so go for it, if it comes from a real and honest place. But, you know every time I decide I want to

219

make music that will sound like something… or any “decision”, it never proves itself as something that can last. I end up throwing it out, cause its not coming from a real place. (Maestro 2014)

Here Maestro is highlighting the importance of the personal search for one’s own voice and the

creative imperative to express oneself as honestly as possible through one’s music.

This is a thread that has been woven throughout the pages of this dissertation. My

reading of the prevalent view among Israeli jazz musicians is that ultimately, if such a search

leads to a musical expression that is infused with the sounds of their childhood home, their

adopted homes, their “imagined” ancestral homes and creates a blended, fused result then they

embrace it. If not, interestingly, such a result is most welcome too.

In summary, as I outlined in Chapter Three, younger Israeli jazz musicians who arrived

in the last ten years in North America or who arrive today benefit tremendously from the

outstanding reputation for excellence that the First and Second Wave musicians established in

NYC and around the world. They also enjoy the support of older musicians and utilize

professional and social “Israeli” networks built over the past twenty years. Still, artistically, the

waves of Israeli jazz musicians that follow in the footsteps of icons such as Avishai Cohen and

Omer Avital each have to contend in their own way with the powerful stylistic statement these

musical pioneers created. Like generations of alto sax players who followed Charlie Parker and

had to contend with his profound influence on the genre and their instrument, these younger

Israeli jazz musicians are challenged to find their own original voice in the context of

expectations among audiences and other musicians rooted in established stylistic expectations

and genre demarcations.

Thus, research focused on younger Israeli jazz musicians might address issues such as

the pedagogical impact of the return of First Wave musicians to Israel; the benefits and

220

challenges that arise from having grown up listening to and being influenced by First and

Second Wave musicians; the advent of greater exposure to a variety of styles and modes of

instruction via YouTube; and based on initial impressions that I had from my fieldwork, how

changing times might have changed understandings of NYC as the center for jazz.

AN AUDIOTOPIA FOR THE MIDDLE-EAST

Within complicated, painful and problematic pasts and presents, as well as interesting

futures, I believe there remains much to be said about the multi-local musicianship of Israeli

jazz musicians and the effects of their music. Beyond the general case for transcultural jazz as

an audiotopia for a cosmopolitan view of humanity, the dedication of Israeli jazz musicians to

Arab Classical music, musiqa mizrahit, and North African idioms such as Andalusian music

suggests a particular audiotopia that has more localized implications in the political sphere of

the Middle-East. While Israel as a nation continues to be mired in conflict with its neighbors,

these Israeli musicians, many of whom have mixed Ashkenazy and Mizrahi roots, embody a

reconciliation of Jewish heritage along with a wholehearted embrace of Arab and Arab-Jewish

musical traditions.

Take for example Amos Hoffman, an Ashkenazy Jew and son of a Hungarian holocaust

survivor. He embodies this contradiction and offers us an audiotopic model of reconciliation,

both in terms of internal Israeli divisions and an embrace of the “enemy’s music”. Or consider

bassist Omer Avital, whose original music integrates post be-bop jazz vernaculars with

influences derived from Arab classical music, the SLI, Andalusian music, musiqa mizrahit,

Yemenite and Moroccan folk and liturgical traditions. Whereas we know that Jewish musicians

have been deeply immersed in practicing Arab musical traditions for centuries, the

221

circumstances of today’s omnipresent political conflict means that the audiotopias that

Hoffman and Avital’s music can create might have especially broad implications.

Much like Hoffman and Avital, the many Israeli jazz musicians at the center of this

dissertation have answered the call of “playing their own voice” to the tune of music that

blends often diverse and at times divisive sources from the world over in a wholly personal

way. Many of the most innovative and exciting developments in jazz today continue to happen

in the “broken middle” (Fellezs 2011) of transgeneric music. This transcultural, stylistic

polyphony not only produces exciting sounds, but offers a vision of an audiotopia for a post-

nationalist world that embraces the multi-locality of identity, and strives to go beyond the

privileging of national identification. It provides a space and “place” for cultural exchange to

occur. While particularism and local affiliations may retain their significance and influence,

multi-locality as practiced by Israeli jazz musicians promises the possibility of engendering

increased empathy and compassion for cultures other than one’s own and thus “a better way of

living” (Levitas 1993). I cannot think of a region in the world that needs such utopian yearning

and practical possibilities of realizing it more than the Middle-East.

222

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