The Music Of Israel

A unique Israeli national culture—indeed, the very nature of "Israeliness"—remains a matter of debate, a struggle to blend vying memories and backgrounds, ideologies and wills. Identifying popular music as an important site in this wider cultural endeavor, this book focuses on the three major popular music cultures that are proving instrumental in attempts to invent Israeliness: the invented folk song repertoire known as Shirei Eretz Israel; the contemporary, global-cosmopolitan Israeli rock; and the ethnic-oriental musica mizrahit. The result is the first ever comprehensive study of popular music in Israel. Motti Regev, a sociologist, and Edwin Seroussi, an ethnomusicologist, approach their subject from alternative perspectives, producing a truly interdisciplinary, sociocultural account of music as a feature and a force in the shaping of Israeliness. A major ethnographic undertaking, describing and analyzing the particular history, characteristics, and practices of each music culture, Popular Music and National Culture in Israel maps not only the complex field of Israeli popular music but also Israeli culture in general.

A unique Israeli national culture—indeed, the very nature of "Israeliness"—remains a matter of debate, a struggle to blend vying memories and backgrounds, ideologies and wills. Identifying popular music as an important site in this wider cultural endeavor, this book focuses on the three major popular music cultures that are proving instrumental in attempts to invent Israeliness: the invented folk song repertoire known as Shirei Eretz Israel; the contemporary, global-cosmopolitan Israeli rock; and the ethnic-oriental musica mizrahit. The result is the first ever comprehensive study of popular music in Israel. Motti Regev, a sociologist, and Edwin Seroussi, an ethnomusicologist, approach their subject from alternative perspectives, producing a truly interdisciplinary, sociocultural account of music as a feature and a force in the shaping of Israeliness. A major ethnographic undertaking, describing and analyzing the particular history, characteristics, and practices of each music culture, Popular Music and National Culture in Israel maps not only the complex field of Israeli popular music but also Israeli culture in general.

Incorporating the most recent historical discoveries and research of both Israeli and international scholars, Gradenwitz traces the rise and growth of Hebrew and Jewish music from its earliest beginnings to the present and examines the background and state of musical life in Israel today. As in the previous volume, the author explores all historical and musical aspects of ancient, medieval, and modern Hebrew liturgical and Jewish secular music, pointing out Jewish contributions to world music and examining musical cross-relations between the Jews of the Holy Land and those of the Diaspora.

This book contains the first study of the musical culture of ancient Israel/Palestine based primarily on the archaeological record. Noted musicologist Joachim Braun explores the music of the Holy Land region of the Middle East, tracing its form and development from its beginning in the Stone Age to the fourth century A.D. This is not a study of music in the Bible or music in biblical times but a unique, in-depth investigation of the historical periods and cultures that influenced the music of the region and its people. Braun combines significant archaeological findings -- musical instruments, terra cotta and metal figures, etched stone illustrations, mosaics -- with evidence drawn from written (mainly biblical) texts and anthropological, sociological, and linguistic sources. The portrait Braun assembles of this past musical world is both fascinating and innovative, suggesting a reconsideration of many views long accepted by tradition. Enhanced with numerous illustrations and photographs that bring the archaeological evidence to life, this exceptional work will be a valued resource for scholars, students, and general readers interested in the history of music, biblical studies, Jewish studies, and the cultures of the ancient Near East.

Music in Conflict studies the complex relationship of musical culture to political life in Palestine-Israel, where conflict has both shaped and claimed the lives of Palestinians and Jews. In the context of the geography of violence that characterizes the conflict, borders and boundaries are material and social manifestations of the ways in which the production of knowledge is conditioned by political and structural violence. Ethical and aesthetic positions that shape artistic production in this context are informed by profound imbalances of power and contingent exposure to violence. Viewing expressive culture as a potent site for understanding these dynamics, the book examines the politics of sound to show how music-making reflects and forms identities, and in the process, shapes communities. The ethnography is based on fieldwork conducted in Israel and the West Bank in 2011–2012 and other excursions since then. Author has "followed the conflict" by "following the music," from concert halls to demonstrations, mixed-city community centers to Palestinian refugee camp children’s clubs, alternative urban scenes and even a checkpoint. In all the different contexts presented, the monograph is thematically and theoretically underpinned by the ways in which music is used to culturally assert or reterritorialize both spatial and social boundaries in a situation of conflict.

Israel, with its highly heterogeneous immigrant society, offers to the observer a fascinating instance of multifaceted performance practice. Within a relatively limited area, there are numerous musical traditions and styles which encompass sacred and secular, old and new, folk and sophisticated forms. The ten contributions included in these issues of Musical Performance represent a discussion of the most significant traditions that were established during the period before 1948: the search for the establishment of a new and typically Israeli art and folk music; the attitude of the protagonists of this tendency toward the old exiled traditional heritage of the Jewish people, and the struggle of the immigrants after the creation of the State of Israel to ensure the survival of their musical tradtions as well as to cope with the new physical and cultural environment. Altogether the general scope of these contributions correspond to a large extent to major events which marked the m

Israel, with its highly heterogeneous immigrant society, offers to the observer a fascinating instance of multifaceted performance practice. Within a relatively limited area, there are numerous musical traditions and styles which encompass sacred and secular, old and new, folk and sophisticated forms. The ten contributions included in these issues of Musical Performance represent a discussion of the most significant traditions that were established during the period before 1948: the search for the establishment of a new and typically Israeli art and folk music; the attitude of the protagonists of this tendency toward the old exiled traditional heritage of the Jewish people, and the struggle of the immigrants after the creation of the State of Israel to ensure the survival of their musical tradtions as well as to cope with the new physical and cultural environment. Altogether the general scope of these contributions correspond to a large extent to major events which marked the m