I fell in love with Arabic music when I was 23 -years- old and riding a bicycle across North Africa. In a four month long journey that took me through many Arab countries I reveled in the swirling cadences of the oud, the rabab and the tabla. Until this day I cannot hear Arabic music without associating it with the fresh aroma of saffron and the hum of life in a Moroccan Casbah. Even the muezzin?s call to prayer, often amplified from minarets in tiny Tunisian and Egyptian villages, can cast its intoxicating spell, so reminiscent is it of palm fronds, star filled nights and bubbling couscous.
As I completed the journey, with a final push across the northern Sinai (returned to Egyptian sovereignty only one year before) and into Israel, I conjectured that if a traditionally oriented Jewish boy from Australia could be moved by music to embrace Arabic culture, there must be hope for Middle East peace. In my na?ve universalistic outlook, I assumed that the world could be united by music, which should know no borders and should be open to the building of bridges between cultures.
I couldn?t have been more wrong. Ten years later, following the explosion of Western interest in international music, I bought a copy of travel publisher Rough Guide?s compendium of world music, one of the first of its kind. In its pages I found detailed descriptions of many forms of international music, with extensive coverage of the Arab world. But when I looked for Israel, there was nary a mention. In its place was a section on Palestinian music titled Music of the Intifada. It was little more than a diatribe against the Jewish State, a perverse trick on the reader that masqueraded as serious musical commentary. Furious at this hijacking of art for politics? sake, I returned the book to the bookstore and wrote a scathing letter to the book?s English publishers. I never received a reply.
Since that day I have become increasingly aware of Israel?s isolation in the music world. Today the largest commercial distributors of world music - Real World, Shanachie and Putumayo between them offer a total of three tracks originating with Israeli artists, from among the hundreds of compilations and thousands of tracks they carry. This is despite the enormous and eclectic range of music in Israel which offers a melding of Sephardic, Ashkenazi, Ethiopian music, while drawing from a variety of other influences.
Real World?s founder, the rock musician Peter Gabriel, has gone so far to declare Israel off limits until its treatment of the Palestinians reaches acceptable humanitarian levels. No one seems to have reminded Mr. Gabriel that his virtuous label carries musicians from a range of such well known humanitarian regimes as Sudan, Somalia, China and Myanmar. One could be easily forgiven for wondering in what part of the universe Mr. Gabriel?s real world actually exists.
The inherent irony of the absence of Israeli representation on the world music scene is that it has been those at forefront of the Israeli peace movement who have been its most consistent victims. Convinced that peace with their Arab neighbors is just around the corner, Israeli musicians have, for most of the past decade, riddled the Israeli airwaves with songs of peace. In addition, and perhaps in anticipation of an imminent opening of the world community to Israeli artists, such ethnically diverse Israeli bands as Bustan (a mixed Arab/Israeli ensemble) and Shlomo Gronich?s Sheba Choir, have sprouted prodigiously. The Arab answer to this buoyant optimism is typified by the current Egyptian hit ? I Hate Israel? - a loathsome attack on Israel and Zionism, yet reportedly the biggest selling single in Egyptian history.
So much for bridge building. But while we can certainly bemoan lost opportunities, the lessons of the failure of the world to respond to Israeli peacemaking and music-making, cannot be ignored. Here, at the beginning of the 21st century, are signposts that should be read carefully for Israel?s future relations with the international community. If an art form so benign as music can be treated with such disdain, how are other aspects of Israeli and Jewish culture to be regarded? What other conclusion can be reached but that the cancer of anti -Semitism, so assuringly dismissed by our European and American friends, still lingers in world consciousness and metastasizes in places we least expect it to be found.
All of this may be a little more alarmist than any one is willing to accept. Yet while we may not be on the verge of pogroms anywhere in the world, there is good reason to be on our guard. And as for me, it is my hope that I can one day listen to a warm Arabic song and not be nagged by a paranoia that the haunting melody is a mere front for lyrics that promote jihad and death to the Jews.
Avi Davis is a writer based in Los Angeles whose book The Crucible of Conflict: Jews, Arabs and the West Bank Dilemma, will appear in the Fall. isdev@ix.netcom.com
As I completed the journey, with a final push across the northern Sinai (returned to Egyptian sovereignty only one year before) and into Israel, I conjectured that if a traditionally oriented Jewish boy from Australia could be moved by music to embrace Arabic culture, there must be hope for Middle East peace. In my na?ve universalistic outlook, I assumed that the world could be united by music, which should know no borders and should be open to the building of bridges between cultures.
I couldn?t have been more wrong. Ten years later, following the explosion of Western interest in international music, I bought a copy of travel publisher Rough Guide?s compendium of world music, one of the first of its kind. In its pages I found detailed descriptions of many forms of international music, with extensive coverage of the Arab world. But when I looked for Israel, there was nary a mention. In its place was a section on Palestinian music titled Music of the Intifada. It was little more than a diatribe against the Jewish State, a perverse trick on the reader that masqueraded as serious musical commentary. Furious at this hijacking of art for politics? sake, I returned the book to the bookstore and wrote a scathing letter to the book?s English publishers. I never received a reply.
Since that day I have become increasingly aware of Israel?s isolation in the music world. Today the largest commercial distributors of world music - Real World, Shanachie and Putumayo between them offer a total of three tracks originating with Israeli artists, from among the hundreds of compilations and thousands of tracks they carry. This is despite the enormous and eclectic range of music in Israel which offers a melding of Sephardic, Ashkenazi, Ethiopian music, while drawing from a variety of other influences.
Real World?s founder, the rock musician Peter Gabriel, has gone so far to declare Israel off limits until its treatment of the Palestinians reaches acceptable humanitarian levels. No one seems to have reminded Mr. Gabriel that his virtuous label carries musicians from a range of such well known humanitarian regimes as Sudan, Somalia, China and Myanmar. One could be easily forgiven for wondering in what part of the universe Mr. Gabriel?s real world actually exists.
The inherent irony of the absence of Israeli representation on the world music scene is that it has been those at forefront of the Israeli peace movement who have been its most consistent victims. Convinced that peace with their Arab neighbors is just around the corner, Israeli musicians have, for most of the past decade, riddled the Israeli airwaves with songs of peace. In addition, and perhaps in anticipation of an imminent opening of the world community to Israeli artists, such ethnically diverse Israeli bands as Bustan (a mixed Arab/Israeli ensemble) and Shlomo Gronich?s Sheba Choir, have sprouted prodigiously. The Arab answer to this buoyant optimism is typified by the current Egyptian hit ? I Hate Israel? - a loathsome attack on Israel and Zionism, yet reportedly the biggest selling single in Egyptian history.
So much for bridge building. But while we can certainly bemoan lost opportunities, the lessons of the failure of the world to respond to Israeli peacemaking and music-making, cannot be ignored. Here, at the beginning of the 21st century, are signposts that should be read carefully for Israel?s future relations with the international community. If an art form so benign as music can be treated with such disdain, how are other aspects of Israeli and Jewish culture to be regarded? What other conclusion can be reached but that the cancer of anti -Semitism, so assuringly dismissed by our European and American friends, still lingers in world consciousness and metastasizes in places we least expect it to be found.
All of this may be a little more alarmist than any one is willing to accept. Yet while we may not be on the verge of pogroms anywhere in the world, there is good reason to be on our guard. And as for me, it is my hope that I can one day listen to a warm Arabic song and not be nagged by a paranoia that the haunting melody is a mere front for lyrics that promote jihad and death to the Jews.
Avi Davis is a writer based in Los Angeles whose book The Crucible of Conflict: Jews, Arabs and the West Bank Dilemma, will appear in the Fall. isdev@ix.netcom.com