Israeli Mediterranean Music: Straddling Disputed Territories Author(s): Amy Horowitz Source: The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 112, No. 445, Theorizing the Hybrid (Summer, 1999), pp. 450-463 Published by: American Folklore Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/541372 Accessed: 10/05/2010 01:12

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=illinois and http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=folk.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

University of Illinois Press and American Folklore Society are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of American Folklore.

http://www.jstor.org AMY HOROWITZ

Israeli Mediterranean Music StraddlingDisputed Territories

IsraeliMediterranean music is a contemporaryhybrid music genre createdby Mizra- him-African and Asian IsraeliJews with rootsin Islamiccountries. Israeli Mediterra- nean musicintegrates the disparatemusical styles thatflourished in the new state. The musicmade its retaildebut in cassetteform amidstvegetables and householdappliances in 's outdoormarketplaces. Initially rejected by the EurocentricIsraeli music industrybecause its Arabicsound violated prevailing national and artisticcategories, the musicinfiltrated the Israelimainstream in the 1990s and helpedto resetthe boundaries of nationalidentity. Using Israeli Mediterranean music and musiciansas itsfocal point, this articleexamines hybridity as a deliberateartistic process through which Mizrahi musicianscreate musical products as well as institutionsthat can challengetheir margi- nalizationby the mainstreammusic industry and the widerIsraeli society.

THIS ARTICLEEXPLORES HYBRIDITY as the process by which musicians combine preexisting, and often seemingly disparate,genres in their creativepractice. For musi- cians, this hybrid composition involving their choice of musicalforms and poetic lyrics is a conscious, strategicact. Hybridity is thoroughly intentional-an aspect of artistic interactionsin a multiculturaland multivocal social field. Hybrid musiciansin , the focus of this study, also have made tactical use of technological innovation, particularlythe cassette recorder. Used in conjunction with the multiple cultural resources on which they draw, the cassetterecorder has empowered hybrid artistsin profound ways. That emergent genres are composites of preexistingforms has long been understood by students of folklore. However, previous ways of describing this phenomenon- diffusionand creolization,for example-were item oriented. These approachessought to atomize, codify, or classifysongs, stories, food, and craftsas a means of unearthing their disparatehistorical origins. While such analysisidentifies constituent parts and perhapsartistic wholes of culturalproducts, it failsto illuminatethe human agency that supportsthe creative act of transformingconstituent parts into a coherent and aesthetic whole. Moreover, tracing the geographicaljourneys of cultural products through

Amy Horowitz is Directorof theJerusalem Project of the SmithsonianInstitution's Center for Folklifeand CulturalHeritage

Journalof AmericanFolklore 112(445):450-463. Copyright ? 1999, American Folklore Society. Horowitz, IsraeliMediterranean Music 451

history too often teaches little about the social and political forces that shaped the consciousnesscreating and appreciatingthem. As an analytic perspective, hybridityshifts the focus from artisticpieces and mixed wholes to the performing artist'sagency; it explores her or his aesthetic, social, and political intentions in selecting and conjoining particularcompositional elements. This approachgrounds the inquiry in the interplayof human actions and aestheticsin local communities ratherthan in ideal abstractionssuch as regionaltypes and communicative codes. Attending to agency, one sees that artistsworking in multicultural,multivocal settingsstruggle to create their own lives, culture, and history. Hybridity theory presumes from the beginning that cultural forms are complex, unlikely, and of diverse origins;it asks not so much where the forms (or their parts) came from but why performerschose to create these particulargenres. Hybridity also presumes that cultures are in contact, most likely on unequal terms, that some tradi- tions are dominant and others are marginalized, and that musical institutions are controlled by a dominant culture. The work of students of hybridity is to describe these historicalconditions and show how artistsdevelop forms that thrive in them and bring economic and cultural rewards.Just as American Indians developed hybrid variationsof corn to meet differentconditions, creative artistsfashion vital new forms that flourishin local environmentsand help their communities thrive. In the context of AfricanAmerican creativepractice, Bernice Johnson Reagon uses the notion of "straddling"to describehybridity. She says,

For those of us who straddle,there is a third place we go and in that place, the rules and the structuresof both cultures are suspended. We negotiate a new system, which itself is usually a moving and shifting system. It is a hybrid system. So we don't move totally from one place to the other place, but we constructa new network of rules,regulations, and standards that are a shiftingblend. We walk inside of that network for the rest of our lives, if we stay sane. [1991:115]

For Reagon, straddlingproduces something more than new forms;it createsalternative institutionalpractices that will support culturaldiversity and foster an environment of creative collaboration.Reagon's contention seems to be that negotiating new systems and constructingnew rules to walk inside is a prerequisitefor sanityin heterogeneous, sometimes disputedterritory. Straddlingconjures an image of simultaneouslybalancing on two gallopinghorses, a stance Reagon envisions as central to surviving the disjuncturesbetween African and American cultures and the asymmetriesexperienced by African Americans in the United States. The third, constantly changing place, won only by risking the race, describesa dynamic equilibrium, feet positioned adeptly on a pair of horses running againstthe wind. As will be seen below, the same image describescertain Israeli artists. I apply Reagon's notion of straddlingto African Israeliand Asian Israelimusicians whose struggleagainst cultural hegemony in Israelexpressed itself in the formulationof IsraeliMediterranean music, a hybrid music genre that made its commercial cassette debut in the 1970s on cassettessold among the vegetable and household appliancestalls in Tel Aviv's central bus station marketplace.Labeled culturally inferior and "too ,"the music was rejected by many Ashkenazi (EuropeanJewish) radio editors, 452 Journalof AmericanFolklore 112 (1999) record companies, and listeners.Yet North African and Middle EasternJewish musi- cians continued to produce the cassettes,which sold by the hundredsof thousandsin their neighborhoods in the 1980s and, by the 1990s, infiltratednational airwavesand mainstreamcultural institutions. This articlefocuses on hybridityas a processby which African and Asian Israelimusicians and producers created not only the music but the conditions in which their emerging hybrid music could flourish. Africanand Asian Israelis- from Islamiccountries-are often referredto by the panethnic marker Mizrahim,or "Easterners."In the late 1960s, Mizrahi musicians began creating a hybrid music genre, IsraeliMediterranean music. Rooted in both Arab and Jewish cultures,Israeli Mediterranean music challengedthe dominant Euro- Israelimusic styles that were the designatedheirs to Shirey Erez Israel("Songs of the "),the carefullycomposed, official soundtrackof the Jewish ingathering. Israeli Mediterranean musicians straddled the disputed cultural territories in Israeli society by juxtaposing the repertoire of state-sanctioned Shirey Erez Israel and its successorswith vibrantand somewhat contentious Middle Easternstyles. They recon- figured dominant Euro-Israelimusics with marginalizedArabic aesthetics,straddling the disputedterritory of Israeland, to a degree, redrawingits culturaland historicalmap. When understood as a form of musical straddling, Israeli Mediterraneanmusic subverted the carefully defined Euro-Israelisoundtrack. The music's Arabic voicing suggestedthat at least some Israeliswere indigenous to the Middle East.As the Middle East peace process reconfiguresIsrael's geopolitical relations, the music's capacity to perform across still-volatileregional and culturalterritory signifies that hybrid musical forms can provide insight into the dispute over territory. Music also is a kind of territorywhere incongruent and contesting culturalforms can meet. This convergence could produce a healthy coexistence whereby diverse forms flourishin mutual respect and creativeinteraction. But more often the outcome of such meeting is not so benign.

MusicalStyle

IsraeliMediterranean music's aesthetic heart is the ornamentedvibrato of the vocal line which focuses the interaction between Western and Eastern instrumentation, rhythms, and bridges. Mizrahi musiciansinvert European Israelicomposition practice whereby Easternmusical motifs are often sprinkledwithin a Western musicalstructure. Insteadthey arrangeselected Western elements-electric bass,guitar, and synthesizerat the margins-around a Middle Eastern vocal center. The voicing of ornamented vibrato (mellisma or slisulim)invokes the quarter tonality characteristicof Middle Easternmusic. Quarter tones (notes that lie between the half tones in Western scales) are a central feature of many scales (maqamat).Very few Mizrahi singers or composers are fluent in the theoretical underpinningsof the maqam system that is the foundation of Arabic classicaland liturgical musics. There is no formal training availablein this musical system in Israel'smusic conservatories.But Jewish liturgical traditions flourished for centuries in the context of Middle Eastern societies whose liturgy is rooted in maqamat.Most Mizrahisingers come from traditionalfamilies and have chanted these scales since childhood. In addition to the sacred repertoire,they heard Arabic music on the radio and the recordsof their parentsand grandparents. Horowitz, IsraeliMediterranean Music 453

European Israelis find the vocal line in Israeli Mediterranean music most difficult to listen to because their ears are accustomed to the less wavering, more linear pitches of European major and minor scales. While European Jewry's liturgical traditions are melismatic, especially the prayers for somber occasions such as Yom Kippur and Tisha B'Av, they do not contain quarter tones. The choice of language in Israeli Mediterranean music is no less problematic for European Israelis than are its melodies, which are drawn from Arabic, Hebrew, Mediterranean, Eastern European, and Western sources. Its lyrics combine literary Hebrew with Hebrew and Arabic slang, describing both sacred and secular themes. The multivocal combination of archaic Hebrew literary forms and current street language diverges from usage in previous genres such as Shirey Erez Israel or even recent Mizrahi genres. While mainstream Ashkenazi singers also utilize linguistic styles ranging from slang to literary Hebrew, the particular formulation found in Israeli Mediterranean music, in which archaic, poetic language is contiguous with street slang, is identifiable by native Israelis. In fact, juxtaposition of texts, tunes, and themes from multiple sources on a single cassette is a distinctive feature of the genre. The cassette becomes a tool for artistic straddling with which performers voice religious, ethnic, national, and generational loyalties. Mizrahi musicians record sacred prayers with both traditional and modem arrangements to honor the liturgical tradi- tions of the "father's house." Songs in Arabic, Persian, and Kurdish languages evoke nostalgia, touching parents' and grandparents' or in some cases the composer's own memories of daily life in , Morocco, Kurdistan, or Iran. Greek, Turkish, Spanish, and Italian songs reference Israel's Mediterranean location-a site for musical straddling that sits between Europe and the Middle East and mediates Eastern and Western music styles. Rock instrumentation and rhythms attest to competence in the Western styles of contemporary youth culture. The inclusion in Israeli Mediterranean music of the Shirey Erez Israel repertoire, with its Eastern European melodies and romantic nationalistic lyrics, signifies national belonging and competence in the sentimental soundtrack of the socialist-Zionist ethos. In this emerging Mizrahi genre, the Shirey Erez Israel repertoire could not be isolated from the African and Asian styles of Mizrahi neighborhoods, nor were French, Spanish, Italian, and Greek popular songs and rock 'n' roll considered inappropriate by the composers. As Mizrahi artists gave intention and shape to Israeli Mediterrean music, the vocal line, the patchwork of genres, and the commingling of literary and biblical Hebrew with street slang undermined the prevailing tendency to create clear national and artistic categories. It was labeled inferior by the mainstream music industry. Indeed, this new panethnic style revealed the ingathering and subsequent blending of Diaspora Jewish communities as a patchwork of overlapping neighborhoods rather than a homogeneous national whole.

The Ingathering

The magnitude and pace of post-1948 immigration to Israel presented a puzzling rubric for the original Eastern European socialist designers of the new state, who had to 454 Journalof American Folklore 112 (1999)

translatelofty principlesinto viable social programswithin a now culturallyheteroge- neous context. Israel's ethnic problems were rooted in the shortcomings of this absorptionprogram and the unequal treatmentand culturalinsensitivities experienced by North Africanand Middle Easternimmigrants. The ingatheringcreated the conditions for intensified musical interaction between North Africanand Middle EasternJewish musiciansthrough their new proximity and attendantmarginalization by the Eurocentric power structuresof the new state. Be- tween 1948 and 1953, Israel'sJewish population more than doubled, swelling from 650,000 to 1,500,000. This population explosion was complex not only in sheer numbersbut also in terms of ethnic and ideological relationships.Against the backdrop of recent independence, internationalcensure, economic crisis,and a state of war, Israel absorbed over 700,000 immigrants divided equally between European Holocaust survivorsand Jews from Islamiccountries. Today over 50%of Israel's5 million Jewish citizensare of Middle Easternand North African ancestry. Many are of multiethnic heritage. Socioeconomic discrimination coupled with culturalaffinity gave rise to a loosely bound and not universallyaccepted North African and Middle Eastern panethnic marker, Mizrahi ("Easterner").The Mizrahi construct can be partiallyunderstood as a consequence of the unanticipated mass encounter between East,Eastern European, and West in the newly formed state.

The Developmentof IsraeliMediterranean Music

Middle Easternand North AfricanJews arrivedin Israelwith a rich musical history. In Mizrahi neighborhoods and development towns that grew from the originaltransit camps, new innovations emerged as Western, Mediterranean,African, and Asian urban and rural musics were reshaped through concentrated and intensified interaction. Weddings, births, bar mitzvahs, and religious holidays became occasions for musical transformationas well as community celebration.Renowned Iraqi qanun(zither) and oud players performed at Iranian, Libyan, Egyptian, and other Mizrahi community weddings. Yemenite singers became fluent in Iraqi and Kurdish folk songs. The interminglingof styles inspiredthe creation of new panethnic formulationssuch as the liturgicalJerusalemite-Sephardic cantorial style (Shiloahand Cohen 1983:236). Alongside these regional musical dialogues,new immigrantsencountered the domi- nant national soundtrack, Shirey Erez Israel, a popular music genre that emerged during the large waves of EasternEuropean immigrationfrom the 1880s until the late 1940s. This genre featureda Western structureand EasternEuropean ethos along with selected Middle Easternand Mediterraneantextures and tunes. Israeliethnomusicolo- gist Natan Shahar (1989) notes that the Songs of the Land of Israel emerged in a homogeneous albeit transplantedEuropean society with a shared sense of national purpose-creating a new Israelisociety on reclaimed land. Thus, the songs are most often characterizedby romantic nationalisticHebrew lyrics idealizing worker, land, and communal mission, most often set to EasternEuropean tunes, although at times Yemenite, Bedouin, and even local Palestinian melodies are employed (Shahar 1989:5-6). Horowitz, IsraeliMediterranean Music 455

By the early 1960s, when IsraeliMediterranean music was emerging, the Songs of the Land of Israel repertoire had alreadybegun to shift its ideological and musical meaning. It became a nostalgic device through which Israelisociety preservedmemo- ries of its founding. However, for the children of recent Mizrahi immigrantsgrowing up during this period, the music became a symbol of what Israeliethnomusicologist Amnon Shiloah defines in sociomusicologicalterms as Israelization.He says,

[TheSongs of theLand of Israel]represents the expression in the field of musicof theprevailing official ideology--themelting pot-and theconcomitant effort to createa uniformnational Israeli culture.... ForMizrahi immigrants it expressed an attempt to realizethe ideal of "integrationof the diasporas" by assimilatingtheir traditional musical styles to the predominantstyle of Israelifolk music. [Shiloah and Cohen1985:202]

While Mizrahimusicians were eagerto contributeto the nationaltask of formulating an Israelimusical style, their lack of Western training and notation skills were often seen asjustification for their exclusion. Moreover, the hybrid genre that was emerging in the Mizrahi neighborhoods was perceived as a challenge to the culturalpolicies of the new state, which aimed at forging a coherent national identity by subsuming Diaspora ethnic traditions.Thus, Arabic and other Middle Easternsounds were rele- gated to radio-broadcast-time-ghettosand to holiday performancesby officialfolklore ensembles. Only Middle EasternIsraelis whose Europeantraining framed their Eastern vocal elaborations,such as Yemenite singer Bracha Zefira (Flam 1982), entered the mainstreammusic establishment. It is not surprisingthat IsraeliMediterranean music became visible in the early 1970s, as Mizrahi neighborhood youth challenged the hegemonic state policies, which by then had been renamed "the mistakes of the 50s" (Horowitz 1985). The Mizrahi culturalrenaissance and social revolution attempted to redefine the artisticas well as political boundariesof Israelisociety during a period of deep nationaland international transformations. The 1967 and 1973 wars alteredthe balanceof power in profound ways. While the 1967 war appearedto be a victory for Israel,it presenteda fundamentalcontradiction for a society that had fashionedits politicalphilosophy on a supposedlyegalitarian ideal. After the Yom Kippur War (1973), the Ashkenazi power grip was shaken by an anti-LaborParty outcry from Israel'sMizrahi underclass. While a Mizrahialliance with the right-wing Likud Party appeared contradictory, their vote voiced decades of frustrationwith the Labor Party'sdiscriminatory policies. Their anger was fed by an experience of continued oppressioneven afterrisking their lives in the recent war. Mizrahiactivism was intensifiedby the impact of the culturaland politicalrevolution in the United States representedby Black power, antiwar, and student rights move- ments. Israelinews brought images and sound bites featuring U.S. activistsrising in protest againstnational policies of exclusion and imperialismat a time when Mizrahi Israelishad just begun to exercise their politicalmuscle againstIsrael's European power structure. The name Pantarim Shorim ("Black Panthers")selected by one Mizrahi activist group testifiesto the impact of these U.S. movements. Because Mizrahivotes 456 Journalof AmericanFolklore 112 (1999) were vital to the Likud victory, Mizrahi voices expected to be reconfiguredin the mainstreamequation.

Cassettesand MassMedia

The emergence of Israeli Mediterraneanmusic can be partiallyexplained as the musical consequence of the possibilities demonstratedby national and international political movements of the early 1970s. Yet the opportunityto realizemusical self-de- terminationwas createdby a technological invention by the Philips Corporation.The portablecassette recorder allowed Mizrahientrepeneurs to massproduce and distribute music excluded by the mainstreamindustry. As Wallas and Malm note, the affordabil- ity and plasticityof the cassettefacilitated commercial and musical growth, empower- ing community-based music and altering local soundscapes forever (1984). Using homemade cassettes, Mizrahi musicians were able to sidestep the state-controlled media and other mainstreamchannels that had rejectedtheir raw method of combining Middle Easternand Mediterraneaninfluences with Western popularmusic. Israel,like many African, Asian, and European countries that gained independence after World War II, establisheda state-controlledmedia. There was an ideological as well as an economic rationale for this. Nation-building goals were furthered by broadcastinga particularmusical repertoire to the entire population. By controlling access to the airwaves,ethnic variationcould be minimized while new nationalsongs helped shape a common nationalidentity. As Israelinational radio and television and a local recording industrydeveloped, the gap between emerging Mizrahi neighborhood traditionsand national folk, popular, and art music intensified. Arabic and Mediterraneansounds were relegatedto specific radio time slots, with the Oriental Ensemble holding the position as the officialvenue for classicalMiddle Easternmusic (Shiloah 1992:206). The arrivalof renowned Jewish musiciansfrom Islamic countries in the early 1950s might have provided an opportu- nity to broaden the local soundscape by fostering a mutually respectful dialogue between Easternand Western music masters.But these rich and ancient EasternJewish traditionsbecame reduced to motifs and local texture within a nationalmusic industry governed by European tastes. Yet the development of the media--radio, television, and the record industry--ulti- mately undermined musical homogeneity. Responding to commercial rather than entirelynational incentives, the media began to introduce Greek, French, Spanish,and other Mediterraneanpopular musics, which came to influence the Shirey Erez Israel repertoire(Shahar 1989:109). In Mizrahi neighborhoods, these songs as well as Arabic music were copied from LPs and radio programsonto magnetic tape and distributed widely. By challenging dominant channels of communication and empowering grass- roots distribution,these technological and media innovations fuirtherdistabalized the nationallysanctioned music genre and made way for the emergence of IsraeliMediter- ranean music as a viable commercial network. There are several key episodes in this development rememberedby its active agents. Horowitz, IsraeliMediterranean Music 457

Key Episodesin theHistory of IsraeliMediterranean Music

The Origin Myth: Technological Revolution and Self-Determination

The widely acceptedstory of how IsraeliMediterrean music became consolidatedas a commercialnetwork combines post-Yom KippurWar sociopoliticswith the cassette recorder at a Yemenite wedding party. Community musicianshad long been thrilling their audienceswith live performances-sometimes they even recordedthe music onto reel-to-reel tapes for limited dissemination.With the cassette recorder, they saw the possibilityof massreproduction and createdtheir own market. For Asher Reuveni, who was to become one of IsraeliMediterranean music's most successfulentrepreneurs, the origin myth was a very personalstory:

"Itall started with my wedding,"says Asher Reuveni, "I didn't have a realwedding with a bandand dancingand drinking till the morning. My wife's only brother was killed in the[1973 Yom Kippur] War. Ourhappiness was shattered and we marriedin a quietway in theoffices of theRabbinate. My friends promisedthat when the daycomes, three months later, they will make it up to me witha realhafla ["party"].They brought the original Oud Band from Kerem Ha'Teymanim, with Daklon [Yossi Levy] andBen Mosh [Moshe Ben Mosh]. Close to sixtypeople squeezed into my mother's little living room, threeby fourmeters, and Daklon and Ben Mosheplayed and sang songs from our fathers'home." [Horowitz 1984]

Asher and his brothers, Iranian owners of a record and electronics shop in the Yemenite neighborhood of Skhunat Ha'Tikva, recorded the party. Using a new four-way duplicatingmachine they made souvenir cassettesfor their guests. The sound mix was poor, but the capacity to mass produce the cassettewas revolutionary.The Reuvenis were inundated by requestsfor the wedding tape. When someone offered them 100 lirot, they took notice. Asher'sbrother Meir said,

This was '74, when a lira was a lira, and don't forget, it was a "partisani"[grassroots] recording, very unsophisticated.So I said,"What's happening here?" My friends don't know how to readnotes but they playand sing 'alakefak ["great"] because it comesstraight from the heart. It's good to knowthat music in thiscountry finally runs according to ourtap! [Horowitz 1984]

The story's marriagesetting is not surprising;Mizrahi neighborhood singers were primarilyemployed as wedding entertainers.While most were Yemenites, they pro- vided multiethnic vocals appropriatefor each wedding. They rearrangedTurkish, Yemenite, and Kurdishsongs with rock 'n' roll and Mediterraneanpopular styles; and they reworkedEuropean songs using Middle Easternelements. For example,in a Mizrahi rendition of "HanaleHitbalbela," a well-known song thatjoins ShireyErez Israellyrics with a Hasidic melody, the Yemenite band Zliley HaKeremmoved the piece east of its alreadyEastern European origin with guitar and basslines playing in a Greek popular style. The guitars'occasional augmented seconds and bended notes are both reminis- cent of 1960s rhythmand blues and createa sense of quartertonality. In addition, a live darbeka (goblet-shaped drum) player juxtaposed with a simple drum machine line-played in halftime-deepens the Easternfeeling. The music is counterpointed 458 Journalof AmericanFolklore 112 (1999) with Hebrew lyrics by Natan Alterman, a renowned poet of the Shirey Erez Israel period. The poem recounts the parodic love story between an Ashkenaziboy and a Mizrahi girl. As the performersnegotiate Greek, Arabic, rock 'n' roll, Yiddish, and Hebrew elements, their melismaticMiddle Easternvocals center the sound weave. Wedding bands such as Zliley HaKerem were adept at such ironic juxtaposi- tions-in fact their livelihood depended on this multivocality. Economic motivation brought an expansion beyond the summer wedding season into the nightclub circuit. However, despite increasingvenues, this music remained almost unnoticed by main- streamchannels until the rise of Zohar Argov.

A Mizrahi SuperstarBrings IncreasedVisibility in MainstreamInstitutions

When in 1980 the Reuvenis releaseda tape by an unknown Yemenite singer, Zohar Argov, they were alreadypositioned as a prominent Mizrahi cassettecompany. The new tape Elinor(Argov 1980) sold by the hundredsof thousands,taxing their produc- tion operation. They quickly developed a distributionnetwork by negotiating with severalIranian and Georgianmerchants in Tel Aviv's open-air marketplacenext to the old centralbus station. Soon they entered other outdoor marketplaces:Tel Aviv's Shuk Ha'Karmel,Mahane Yehuda in ,Ramle, and . In 1982, Argov won firstplace at FestivalHa'Zemer Ha'Mizrahi("The EasternSong Festival"),a nationallytelevised Mizrahi song competition. Moroccan-born ethnomu- sicologist Abraham Amzaleg, who served as a festival judge, reflected on Argov's power to move even those, like himself, who found elements of the new musicalstyle distasteful.For Amzaleg, most Mizrahi singers overelaboratedthe melismatic vibrato (silsul).This occurred especiallyin the opening segment of the song, or muwal,a vocal prelude usually sung with a simple utterancesuch as yalelor leleleto set the mood and introduce the scales in the forthcoming composition. Amzaleg contends that this exaggeratedsilsul is not true to the Easternaesthetic:

The music itself has nothing in it that can explain the phenomenon of Zohar Argov. ... The direct and authentic way in which Zohar sings that song and puts that muwalinto it gives the song an enormous power,even though its melodyis simple.We arenot talkinghere only about the combinationof wonderfulmuwal pieces.... We aretalking about a wisesinger who knew the right dosage. The real Mizrahelements together with the "socalled" Mizrah elements. Other singers from this genre lacked proportion.With all the silsul the melody gets lost. Argov had a wonderfulvocal instrument, clear and emotive.[1987:283]

With Argov's commercial successes, IsraeliMediterranean music gained increased airtime. The army's official station, Galey Zahal, and Israel Radio's (Kol Yisrael) popular music channel, Reshet Gimel, each added a two-hour weekly Mizrahi seg- ment, 'Al Ha'DvashVe'A1 Ha'Kefak and Agan Ha'Yam Ha'Tikhon. While these were significantadvances, Argov claimed ghettoization:

Over 55% of Israelis my audience, but to hear me on the radio they have to wait until 2:00 pm on Wednesday in the Mizrahicorner. We live in 1981 and those programswere old ten years ago.... We are fed up!!!This is insulting. They play ten black singersin a row.... Why are we being locked in a... Horowitz,Israeli Mediterranean Music 459

I didn'tsay ghetto-that's your word! I onlysaid it hurtsand it's humiliating. Scatter us on allthe hoursor don'tplay us at all. [quotedin Ohad1981:17]

Increasing Print Media Coverage Does Not Bridge the Gap

By the 1980s, newsprint became an ironic meeting place where Ashkenazi and Mizrahi performers met, betraying the ghetto that kept them socially distant in real life. Ashkenazi journalists "covered" Mizrahi singers-they coexisted in column inches of the major dailies. Yet when Yemenite singer Jackie Makayton suggested a duet with Nomi Shemer during an interview in one of Israel's major dailies, Yediot Ahronot, Shemerreplied,

With me?!You thinkit wouldbe appropriate?I think that things like thisare a bit artificial.They smell too muchof a gimmick.I don'tlike those things when the kuntzstarts. Before the ageof "gimmick"they calledit "kuntz."If we hadknown each other and spoken on the television,and sometimes sang together, thensome joint venturewould have emerged naturally. [Shemer and Makaytan 1985:18]

Makayton and Shemer exposed their proximity as an ephemeral, cosmetic media moment. Closeness was a gimmick, an artificial construct for most Mizrahi and Ashkenazi singers. Yet the honesty of their disclosure was in itself a challenge to the ghettoization that it portrayed.

The Music's Growing Popularity among Arabs

The impermeability of this ghetto was soon to be shattered in unexpected ways as a new Mizrahi song sung by a Yemenite Israeli singer named Haim Moshe transgressed the borders of Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan. Although Moshe's rendition of a popular Arabic song, "Linda, Linda," did not result in increased Mizrahi airtime on Israel radio, fan mail from Arab listeners testified to the music's ability to blast through geopolitical ghettos and touch the hearts of Israel's enemies. With Moshe's sweet, melismatic vocal style, Arabic lyrics, and non-Hebrew love object, Linda, the song also attracted an audience among Palestinians in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank. Bags of fan mail from Arab listeners were stacked in the office of Israel Radio deejay Salamon Shafik. In one letter to Haim Moshe from a young Syrian girl, it seemed that the spelling of Hebrew names and dates had been copied from an old Jewish tomb- stone in Allepo. She wrote somewhat naively,

If the Syrianpeople requested, do you thinkIsraeli singers would come to performfor us personally?I am trying to learn Hebrew so I can understandthe words to all your beautiful songs. I ask God that an agreement will be reached between our two countries so that we will be able to see you. What do you feel when a Syrianperson writes to you? [Horowitz 1988]

A Mizrahi Crossover Artist Gains a Foothold in Mainstream Territory

Though the Arabic text of "Linda, Linda" and the aesthetic features of Moshe's Hebrew repertoire could touch a Syrian listener, they seemed remote from mainstream Israeli 460 Journalof AmericanFolklore 112 (1999)

taste. Nonetheless, by 1986, a refashioned "Linda, Linda" entered the and became the first Israeli Mediterranean music song choreographed for Israeli folk dance. With "Linda, Linda," Haim Moshe had infiltrated the symbolic center of Israel's ideological heartland (Moran 1986:19). By the late 1980s, Moshe's mainstream successes included appearances on prime- time television, in the Arad Festival (the largest Hebrew music festival), and in official state and religious celebrations. He drew crowds at New York's Towne Hall and entertained 1,500 Israeli and Palestinian visitors to Donald Trump's Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City. Canada, , , and even the royal palace of the king of Morocco filled his itinerary. More than any other practitioner of this emergent genre, Moshe had succeeded in straddling mainstream, Mizrahi neighborhood, and Arab tastes. When Haim Moshe added "Ashkenazi" repertoire to his artistic offering, he was accused of Ashkenazification (in Hebrew, l'hitashknez, which refers to a Mizrahi trying to pass for Ashkenazi). Moshe claimed, "In another twenty years this music will be known as the real Israeli music-not eastern or western but the authentic sound" (Horowitz 1984).

Parody or Co-optation

There were other indications that by 1985 Mizrahi singers had begun to penetrate mainstream popular music territories. Established Ashkenazi singers began quoting the Mizrahi style. The most popular of these songs was Dani Sanderson's "Ma Dawin Shel Lakh?" (What's Your Shtick?) (1984). (Dawin is an Arabic word that has come into use in Hebrew vernacular to refer to someone trying to impress and attract attention.) "Ma Dawin Shel Lakh?" evoked a mixed reaction. On the one hand, Asher Reuveni saw the song as an attempt by Ashkenazim to co-opt 's success and profit from its market (Horowitz 1991). On the other hand, such a song was seen as parodic reflex-part of a broader Israeli cultural reflexivity that pokes fun at its own hybrid character.

Crying Songs: "Heading East" and the East as a Device Employed by the West

Counterpointing both Sanderson's parody and charges that Moshe had sold out to Ashkenazi pressure, some young North African singers headed east. They exchanged the Greek tunes favored by Israeli Mediterranean composers for royalty-free Turkish melodies circulating in the public domain. Although Greek melodies contained West- ern elements that appeal to European Israeli ears, obtaining licensing agreements was often expensive and time consuming. Turkish tunes, on the other hand, were free because Israel and Turkey had not yet established any copyright agreements. Although Turkish songs were available in the public domain, their more Arabic ethos guaranteed that they would remain in Mizrahi neighborhoods with little possibility of crossover potential. The sudden influx of repertoire with anonymous Turkish melodies was ridiculed by Ashkenazi journalists. One well-known writer, Yonaton Gefen, joked that the Horowitz, IsraeliMediterranean Music 461

overwhelming popularity of Turkish tunes was a sign that the Ottomans really won World War I and still maintained control of Tel Aviv's airwaves(1992:26). Gradually these songs were tagged with a pejorative generic label, Shirey Bekhi ("Crying Songs"), and became subject to parodiessuch as "The Festivalof DepressingSongs," a skit rendered by the acclaimed comedy troupe Ha Gashash Ha Hiver (1992). It is possible that, for the Ashkenazi ear, Turkish vocals evoked the melancholy scales of somber religiousservices such as Kol Nidre and registeredas inappropriatelymournful outside of the liturgicalsetting. On the other hand, Meir Reuveni noted that while the melismaticstyle could also be heard from AfricanAmerican singers,the same prestige was not forthcoming:"Stevie Wonder does silsulimas much as he wants, and no one in Israeltakes issue with this because Stevie Wonder sings Black music in English. Stevie Wonder is allowed to sing like this on Israelradio, while I have to come to my singers and tell them not to sing what they feel" (quoted in Ohad 1981:17).

Documenting the Struggle in Film

While Mizrahi singers were ridiculed for these crying songs, embedding this aes- thetic in a Western rock frame was not only palatablebut could garner success. In 1992, a popularrock band, Etnix ("Ethnics"),invited a risingMoroccan woman singer named ZehavaBen to perform on their MasalaKetouma recording (1991). In her guest appearance,Zahava Ben shares the vocal lead with Zev Nehama, the band's lead singer. Their shared performance is a call and response between East and West. Nehama sings the verses in a Western style and Ben answerswith Arabic-stylerefrains in which she demonstratesmastery of Easternforms, including proper use of quarter tones. While Ben's vocals temporarilyexplode the song's aesthetic,the final instrumen- tal phrasesre-situate it squarelyin a Western frame. In 1992, this musical collaboration won first place in the prestigious Miza'ad Ha'Pizmonim ("IsraeliHit Parade"), a nationalcontest whose winners often enjoy increasedcelebrity. While growing visibility did not gain Ben new standingin Israelipopular music, it did empower her to comment on culturalmarginalization itself through the produc- tion of a featurefilm. Ben's film recounts the painful experience of North Africanand Middle Easternimmigrant musicians in Israel.Ben traveledto Morocco to recover the musical legacy of one such musician, her father, Shimon Benvenista. Benvenista had been a well-known performerin Morocco before immigratingto Israel.His daughter's film, TipatMazal ("A Drop of Luck") (1992) is a posthumous expos6 of the oppressive conditions he found on his arrivalin Israeland of the continuing strugglesof Mizrahi musicianstoday.

Taking the Case of Music Discrimination to the Knesset

In the early 1990s, Mizrahi cassette company owners and performers,who had previously competed fiercely for what little turf they had, joined together to bring issues of unpaid performanceroyalties, broadcasting discrimination, ghettoization, and illegalmonopolization before a specialKnesset committee. To maximize their credibil- ity, they established two official organizations, Hapil, the "Elephant" (the Israeli 462 Journalof AmericanFolklore 112 (1999)

Federation for MediterraneanMusic), and Amutat Zemer Yam Tichoni (AZIT, the Associationfor MediterraneanSong) (AZIT 1991). In the process of creating an official framework, they claimed and renamed their emergent genre, replacinglargely pejorative or inaccuratedesignations such as Musikat Kasetot ("cassette music"), Musikat Ha'Tahana Ha'Merkazit ("Central Bus Station music"), Musika Mizrahit ("Easternmusic"), Musika Etnit ("ethnic music"), and Musika Shkhora ("Black music"). The new name, Musika Yam Tikhonit Yisraelit ("IsraeliMediterranean music") reflected both a national and a regional location. While the music also encompassesArabic, Judeo-Yemenite, and Western elements, it is, like the Mediterranean basin, a crossroadswhere cultural forces meet and are reforged.

Conclusion

IsraeliMediterranean music, like all hybrid culturalforms, is an intentional process through which Mizrahi artists combine memories with innovations in a complex scoring of emotional and social life. Their hybridity is more than a culturaloffspring that somehow reproduces characteristicsof its parent forms. In its hybridness,Israeli Mediterraneanmusic is an intricate, interconnected practice with national, ethnic, emotional, and social dimensions. It is a tool constructedby and for the music makers themselves with which they fashion a livelihood and a culturalidentity. IsraeliMedi- terraneanmusic singer Ofer Levy personifiesthese dynamics, proclaiming himself an "Iraqi,Turkish, SyrianIsraeli" (Yermi 1991:48). Levy's Israelinationality, mediated by a trinity of contentious ethnic qualifiers,illustrates the complex equation of strad- dling-he not only lives in but comprisesthe disputedterritories. Israeli Mediterranean music is a soundscape in which the contentious borders between Arab ethnic and aesthetic affinity and Israelinational loyalty are performed together. In the process, Israelinessis reshapedfor both Ashkenaziand Mizrahi citizens. Hebrew lyrics commingle with Arabic,Persian, Kurdish, and Turkish tunes and texts, attestingto a regionallyindigenous Israelipopulation whose music drawson Egyptian, Jordanian, Lebanese, Syrian, and Palestinianlisteners. At the same time, the use of Shirey Erez Israelsignifies national belonging and competence in the nostalgicsound- track of the socialist-Zionistethos. By the mid-1990s, this homespun genre had been elevated to a new position in mainstreamIsraeli national imagination. The posthumous consecration of Yemenite singer Zohar Argov is expressedin an uptown avant-gardetheater piece, Ha'Melekh ("The King") (1992); a feature-length film entitled The King; and a prime-time television documentary, Zohar, Ha'Melekh("Zohar, the King") (1994). Indeed, the increased acceptability of Israeli Mediterraneanmusic may be part of two national trends:facing and embracinga hybrid Israelisociety and engaging its Arabicdimension not only as Palestinianswithin its bordersbut as a significantpart of its veryJewishness.

References Cited

Amutat Zemer Yam Tichoni (AZIT). 1991. IsraeliMediterranean Music Association:Participant Portfolio. Hebrew. Tel Aviv: AZIT. Amzaleg, Abraham. 1987. Cassette Music-Not EasternMusic. Hebrew. Music9:283-285. Horowitz, IsraeliMediterranean Music 463

Argov, Zohar. 1980. Elinor.Ref. no. 43/1. Tel Aviv: Reuveni Brothers. Flam, Gila. 1982. Bracha Zfira's Attempt at Fusion of Traditions. Hebrew. M.A. thesis, Department of Music, Hebrew University ofJerusalem. Gefen, Yonaton. 1992. SadnessIs Ashkenazi. Hebrew. Ma'ariv,Weekend section, 15 May: 3. Ha GashashHa Hiver. 1992. FestivalHa ZamarHa'Dikaon. Hebrew. Call no. 15546. Tel Aviv: Hed Arzi Records. Ha'Melekh(The king). 1992. Hebrew. Written and directedby Shmuel Ha'Safari.Beit Lessin Theater, Tel Aviv. Horowitz, Amy. 1984. Interview with Haim Moshe and Asher Reuveni. Israel Field Tapes. Shkhunat Ha'Tikva, Tel Aviv, 8 May. . 1985. Interview with Jeff Halper. IsraelField Tapes.Jerusalem, 10 August. . 1988. Interview with Salman Shafik. IsraelField Tapes.Jerusalem, 15 November. . 1991. Interview with Meir Reuveni. IsraelField Tapes. Tel Aviv, 11 January. "Ma dawin shel lakh?" (What's your shtick?). 1984. Written and produced by Dani Sanderson. On Haf Mi'Pesha(Innocent). Tel Aviv: CBS Records. Masala ketourna.1991. Lyrics by Zev Nehama; composed by Zev Nehama and Tamir Klisky. Call no. HL8085. Helicon Records, New York. Moran, Merav. 1986. Linda Goes to the Kibbutz. Hebrew. Haddashot:19. Ohad, Michael. 1981. My Heart Is in the East. Ha'Arez, 25 September:16-17. Reagon, Bernice Johnson. 1991. Nobody Knows the Trouble I See, or, By and By I'm Gonna Lay Down My Heavy Load. TheJournal of AmericanHistory 78(1):111-119. Shahar,Natan. 1989. The Erez IsraeliSong 1920-1950: Sociomusicaland MusicalAspects. Hebrew. Ph.D. dissertation,Department of Musicology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Shemer, Nomi, and Jackie Makaytan. 1985. Questions from Jackie Makaytan to Nomi Shemer. Apirion 45:18. Shiloah, Amnon. 1992. JewishMusical Traditions. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Shiloah, Amnon, and Erik Cohen. 1983. The Dynamics of Change in Jewish Oriental Music in Israel. Ethnomusicology27:222-251. . 1985. Major Trends of Change in Jewish Oriental Music in Israel.Popular Music 5:199-223. Tipat mazal (A drop of luck). 1992. Videotape. Produced by Sirtey Noah (Noah Films). Tel Aviv. Color, 90 min. Wallis, Roger, and KristerMalm. 1984. Big Soundsfrom SmallPeople: The MusicIndustry in Small Countries. New York: PendragonPress. Yermi, Amir. 1991. There Is Almost a Kilo of Gold on Me. YediotAharonot, 8 November: 48-50. Zohar, ha'melekh(Zohar, the king). 1994. Produced by Dafi Kaplansky;directed by LminaChaplin. Israel Television, Jerusalem.Color, 58 min.