Reflecting the struggle of this young country.

Reflecting the Struggles of this young Country

Music is seen as art and a way of telling your story. It’s used to interpret and letting out a lot pent up emotions such as anger, sadness, love, and happiness. The rhythms, harmonies, melodies, and poetry of music relate to and help to define personal characteristics, social customs, and rituals, national religion, as well as national and personal identity. Majority of nations and societies has had hundreds and thousands of years to develop national music; the State of Israel has only had since 1948 to assert its political, social, and cultural entity of music.

The early history of music in Israel was discovered by two major forces: the Zionist movement, whose participants encouraged the creation and dissemination of Israeli folk music; and the political struggle opposing Fascism. Jewish immigrants to Palestine brought with them music of their various host countries. The leaders of the Zionist movement sought to inspire and unite this new olim with a common cultural identity. To that end, Zionist musicians composed hundreds of short and simple folk songs for dissemination among the immigrant communities and among Jews abroad. The songs’ lyrics spoke of the experience of living in the Holy Land, from stories about the agricultural cycle to lullabies to stories of love.

The folk tradition dovetailed into a new form of national popular music represented above all by Naomi Shemer. From the 1960s to the 1980s, Shemer sang of the uniqueness of the land of Israel. After Jerusalem’s unification, Shemer famously modified the lyrics to reflect Israel’s accomplishments in the war. Israel also has cultivated a rich tradition of classical European music.

The Palestine Orchestra was founded in 1936 by Bronislaw Huberman, who anticipated the coming war against the Jewish people in Europe and took scores of other Jewish musicians from Europe with him to Palestine. Classically trained Jewish artists from Israel and abroad–Koussevitsky, Bernstein, Heifetz, Rubinstein, Arrau, and many others–were naturally drawn to participate in the orchestra’s activities from its inception. It is no coincidence that the Philharmonic’s first recording project was of symphonies of Mahler, a Jewish composer. Together with music departments in Israel’s various universities and institutions such as the Jerusalem Music Center, the Israel Philharmonic continues to cultivate the country’s interest in European classical music.

In addition, the Rimon School of Jazz and Contemporary Music, located in a suburb of Tel Aviv, serves as a hothouse for growing a new generation of musicians, creating a unique and contemporary Israeli sound. The school counts among its graduates the popular Achinoam Nini, an Israeli woman of Yemenite descent who spent her childhood in North America. Today, the population of Israel is divided over its national identity. Singers like Arik Einstein have further developed the musical style of Naomi Shemer, uniting a distinctive Israeli message with a more modern folk-influenced popular idiom.

In addition, within the country, musical styles of Mizrachi Jews have long competed with Western sounds. In recent years there has been a crossover in which Mizrachi–and even Ethiopian–music has become part of the popular Israeli music scene. Politics, also, is intertwined with the Israeli popular-music scene, with lyrics expressing all sides of the debate regarding the conflict with the Palestinians and the stresses of everyday life in a war-torn land.

Sources: http://www.international.ucla.edu/israel/article/193595