Citizen Azmari
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Citizen Azmari Ilana Webster-Kogen CITIZEN AZMARI Making Ethiopian Music in Tel Aviv Wesleyan University Press Middletown, Connecticut Wesleyan University Press Middletown CT 06459 www.wesleyan.edu/wespress © 2018 Ilana Webster-Kogen All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Designed by Mindy Basinger Hill Typeset in Minion Pro Grateful acknowledgment is made for support from the AMS 75 PAYS Endowment of the American Musicological Society, funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Webster-Kogen, Ilana, author. Title: Citizen Azmari: making Ethiopian music in Tel Aviv / Ilana Webster-Kogen. Description: Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, [2018] | Series: Music/culture | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018003966 (print) | LCCN 2018008560 (ebook) | ISBN 9780819578341 (ebook) | ISBN 9780819578327 (cloth: alk. paper) | ISBN 9780819578334 (pbk.: alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Music—Social aspects—Israel—Tel Aviv. | Ethiopians— Israel—Tel Aviv—Music—History and criticism. | Jews, Ethiopian—Israel—Tel Aviv—Music—History and criticism. Classification: LCC ML3917.I77 (ebook) | LCC ML3917.I77 W43 2018 (print) | DDC 781.62/92805694—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018003966 5 4 3 2 1 Cover illustration: Shooting Stars by Fikru Gebremariam. CONTENTS List of Illustrations vii Acknowledgments ix Note on Transliteration xiii INTRODUCTION Symbolic Codes of Citizenship 1 ONE Afrodiasporic Myths: Ester Rada and the Atlantic Connection 22 TWO Ethiopianist Myths of Dissonance and Nostalgia 51 THREE Zionist Myths and the Mainstreaming of Ethiopian-Israeli Music 79 FOUR Embodying Blackness through Eskesta Citizenship 104 FIVE “What about My Money”: Themes of Labor and Citizenship in Ethiopian-Israeli Hip-Hop 133 SIX Levinski Street, Tel Aviv’s Horn Mediascape 162 Conclusion 182 Notes 191 Bibliography 209 Index 229 Audio files can be found at http://wesleyan.edu/wespress/citizen_azmari/ for this book. Files available at that address are labeled consecutively through the book as (Audio file). ILLUSTRATIONS FIGURES FIgure 2.1 Site of Habesh restaurant, 2017 54 FIgure 2.2 Skeletal melody for tezeta 67 FIgure 3.1 “Tew Semagn Hagere” melody, performed by Alemu Aga 97 FIgure 3.2 “Tew Semagn Hagere” in “Bo’ee” 97 FIgure 6.1 Graffiti in the Tel Aviv Central Bus Station 164 FIgure 6.2 Concert advertisements at the Red Sea Internet Café 165 FIgure 6.3 Construction boom in Tel Aviv 167 FIgure 6.4 Interior of the Tel Aviv Central Bus Station 171 FIgure 6.5 Nahum Records from Levinski Street 175 FIgure 6.6 Tenät Restaurant by day 180 TABLES TABLe 1.1 Funk, soul, jazz, Ethio-jazz, and gospel characteristics in Ester Rada’s songs 33 TABLe 1.2 Comparison of African American musical elements 43 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The majority of my research partners remain anonymous in this book because of issues connected to religion and migration in the state of Israel. I wish I could thank them individually, but hope it will suffice to offer this book in gratitude and mutuality. I name musicians with public profiles like Ester Rada, Axum, and Dejen Manchlot, and artists connected to the community like Dr. Ruth Eshel and The Idan Raichel Project. Many thanks are due to the musicians, audience members, and community workers who gave me their time. I gratefully acknowledge the institutions that have funded my research since 2008. The Jewish Music Institute (JMI) in London supported my PhD fieldwork, the basis for four chapters. Special thanks go to Geraldine Auerbach and Jennifer Jankel, past and current chairs of the JMI. The University of London’s Central Research Fund and the Israel Institute offered further research support that made it possible to complete this work. Chapter 3 is derived, in part, from an article published in Ethnomusicology Forum on March 11, 2014, available online: http://wwww.tandfonline.com/ 10.1080/17411912.2013.879034. I also thank Marla Zubel of Wesleyan University Press for her work on the manuscript in its early days, Jaclyn Wilson, and Suzanna Tamminen for seeing the project through with utmost patience, as well as the anonymous reviewers whose comments I greatly appreciate. Susan Abel at the University Press of New England made the editorial process extremely smooth, together with David Hornik, whose meticulous work has so greatly benefited this project. I have presented the material in this book across the uK and Europe, the United States, Israel, and Ethiopia. I have workshopped chapters at the SeM, BFe, and AAA annual conferences, and at the Universities of Oxford, Manchester, Birmingham, and Cardiff (special thanks to John O’Connell), as well as at King’s College London and at SOAS’s School of Arts, Anthropology Department, and Centre for Jewish Studies, and I thank the participants in each forum for their suggestions. I completed most of the book’s new, post-PhD material during a year at New York University, at its Abu Dhabi campus, and in New York. I owe special thanks to Judith Miller for enabling this to happen, to Zev Feldman and Carlos Guedes for welcoming me into the Music Department, and especially to Nasser and Laila Isleem for their friendship and hospitality in Abu Dhabi. Many thanks are also due to Virginia Danielson, who was so helpful as a mentor there. I have benefited greatly from reading some outstanding works on Jewish music and music in Israel/Palestine, and I thank Amy Horowitz, Edwin Seroussi, Jeffrey Summit, and especially the formidable Kay Kaufman Shelemay for important efforts that I admire. Special thanks go to Francis Falceto and Ben Mandelson for helping with many and sundry questions about the Ethiopian recording industry. Most of this project was completed during my time at SOAS, and I thank everyone who was involved there. First and foremost, Abigail Wood supervised my dissertation and supported the project from the beginning. Angela Impey has been my most important mentor, and Lucy Duran and Rachel Harris are dear colleague-friends. Caspar Melville and Simon Webster read significant portions of this book, and I am extremely grateful for their editorial eye. I have benefited from guidance and collegiality over the years from Carli Coetzee, Yair Wallach, Mehmet Izbudak, Jaeho Kang, Gil Karpas, Richard Widdess, Owen Wright, Nick Gray, Keith Howard, Tom Selwyn, and Miia Laine. Many thanks go to Yoseph Mengistu for Amharic lessons. I was fortunate to have a distinguished group of people in or around my PhD cohort—Moshe Morad, Sabina Rakcheyeva, Chris Mau, Shzr Ee Tan, Chloe Alaghband-Zadeh, and Joe Browning are dear colleagues, as are Anna Morcom, Oliver Shao, and Phil Alexander, with whom I almost overlapped. I am always inspired by the energy and creativity of my wonderful PhD students Clara Wenz, Robbie Campbell, Rasika Ajotikar, and Vicky Tadros. Special appreciation goes to Mehryar Golestani (Reveal), working with whom has been life-changing. I am grateful as well to those who helped make fieldwork and writing run smoothly. Sam Thrope has been my launchpad in Israel for many years, and Joyce Klein has always made me feel more comfortable in Jerusalem. I always look forward to meeting with Tamar Warburg, Varda Makovsky, Navah and Seffi Kogen, and Herb Rosenblum when we overlap in Tel Aviv. I would not have embarked on this project without the crucial music education I received from Isaac Malkin. Closer to home, Katherine Williams and Tim Schaap, Virina Laskaridou, Vanessa Springer-Treiber, Arash Yomtobian, Brian Lobel, Tina El- x Acknowledgments liott, Ben Mandelson, Donna Aranson, Barbara and Ish Rosenblit, and Howard Ellison have been supportive throughout this project. I am particularly grate- ful to Katie Allen and Stephanie Wells for taking such good care of my young daughter Mika during its last stages. And finally, thanks are due to my family. My grandparents David and Dina Kogen and Eugenia von Valtier were instrumental in my education; my grand- father understood better than anyone what it took for immigrants to succeed. Catherine and Richard Webster, Anthony Webster, and the late Louise Harries tolerated my working on this project through many visits over the years, and accompanied me to hear a lot of Ethiopian music. My cousins Mira and Josh Resnick, Dov Kogen and Rebecca Shapiro, William Schlanger, and Karl and Fritz von Valtier know this project extremely well by now. Aunts and Uncles Bill and Cheryl von Valtier and Herb and Sheila Rosenblum have been constant sources of encouragement in my life, especially in the areas of music and Hebrew. Isaac and Shaya Woloff have been wonderful companions, and Isaac made my last week of fieldwork especially memorable. My father, Rabbi Judah Kogen, has always been ready to offer assistance on this project, driving me to an interview at an absorption center, and instilling in me a love of ancient text. My mother, Lisa Kogen, has been my lifelong role model in curiosity, resilience, and empa- thy. Together they have been my most important teachers, and my sisters Shira Kogen and Abigail Woloff have been my dearest friends. Simon Webster has shared his life with this project and with me since the project’s inception, and I am so grateful for his editorial contributions and moral support, for sharing my interests, for helping with the book title and tracking down sources when I need them, and for always finding new music for me. It’s hard to believe that this research was completed before Mika came into the world, and I’m so delighted that she already loves books! Acknowledgments xi NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION In transliterating Hebrew, I have generally adopted the Library of Congress system. In the case of proper nouns for people, places, and musical ensembles, I use their preferred nonstandard spelling.