It's been a long time since I did a "Shirim Ivri'im" post. (The thread was introduced here, and the whole series is tagged with the "shirim I'vri'im" lable). Well, last week we went to hear Idan Reichel, easily one of Israel's most talented and popular musicians, at Cesarea, where there's an open-air theatre built by the Romans about 2,000 years ago. I don't know how large the crowd was - five thousand, perhaps. There were grade-school kids there, and retirees, and everyone in between. Reichel and his group pun on a wonderful show as usual with him, the music was very diverse. Here's an i-phone recording by someone who was seated close to the stage. The quality isn't particularly good, soory, but if you listen carefully you'll see that, yes, the lyrics and the music are... Arabic.
Israeli society is more complicated than it's made out to be.
One of the more touching songs was Maya Avrahams rendition of Ya Mama. However, since I can't find a Youtube version of reasonable quality, here's a recording of the same popular song by Shimon Buskila.
Yes, also Arabic.
And since we're on the topic of Reichel's multi-lingual recordings, here's one of the most famous of all
For any readers who are in the United States, the Idan Raichel Project will be performing in multiple cities in the US in October. Their concert schedule is here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.idanraichelproject.com/en/on-tour
And, yes, they really do give outstanding performances, as my wife and I found out when we saw them in Denver several years ago. Do get tickets well ahead of time -- the concert we attended was completely sold out in a large venue.