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Idan Raichel Project
Discography:
Idan Raichel Project (2002)
Out of the Depths (2005)
Within My Walls (2008) |
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An interview with some goofy looking lanky dude with dreads down to his ass from Israel? What next, 30music, what next? Well, it's unclear if we can top this, and so how else could we end the decade but on an untoppable note? Huh?
Idan Raichel is leader of one of the biggest groups in Israel. Biggest both in numbers (some articles have claimed over 70 collaborators have taken part in the Idan Raichel Project) and popularity. Through three discs, seven years, and many shows in Israel and across much of the Western world, Raichel has brought Israeli music to the masses, while still mixing up what “Israeli music” means.
Why should you care? Besides the fact that the global village is expanding, that everything is the same thing, and soon we’re going to be listening to every type of music ever created? Or the fact that in uniting the patchwork culture that is Israel, Raichel’s music can be seen both as a promise of what Israel could be and a symbol for peace? Or that we can’t turn you on to Dafna and the Cookies quite yet?
Well, Natalie Portman digs him. If it’s enough for the Shins, it should be enough here.
30: You have a lot of people involved in the band, in the project. How do the songs get written?
Idan Raichel: I write most of the songs in Hebrew, music and lyrics. Sometimes it’s co-writing, if it’s non-Hebrew words, it’s co-writers, such as Marta Gomez from Colombia. Although, sometimes also with Marta Gomez, it’s like translations from the Hebrew parts, that I translate to her in English…
30: You write it in Hebrew and then translate it to her…
Raichel: Yeah. And sometimes, we’ve got biblical quotes, or we have samples from tribes, Ethiopian or East African tribes.
30: But you also, that’s one of the things I was curious about, how do you pick languages? Why…Marta Gomez was on “Todas Las Palabras” on the last album…
Raichel: “Todas Las Palabras” and “Cada Dia”. Actually, just great artists that I meet on the road, or in Israel. I don’t see Marta Gomez as my Colombian singer, I see her as my friend. And I’m just trying to help her bring a truth to the mic. Or good input to the mic, or to bring themselves. I don’t want Marta Gomez to sing hip-hop, this is not what she is. If I would work with Speech from Arrested Development, he would bring his preaching, or his freestyle. This is why, since she’s my friend and we’re recording in the Project, so her truth, her reality, she should bring her reality to the mic. So this is why there is this mixture, because, look at Aswassa, (Wagderass Vese,) he’s my friend, but it’s much easier for him to sing in Amharic, so he sings in Amharic.
30: Amharic is on which song?
Raichel: Amharic is a formal language in Ethiopia. There are like 73 languages, but most of the Jewish people speak Amharic and Tigrinya, similar to the Ashkenazi/Sephardic split (Yiddish/Ladino).
30: The project is obviously called the Idan Raichel Project. Is there a sense of the same ownership? I guess it’s interesting to me that you have Spanish, and you explained why, because Marta Gomez sings, and you also have the song “Odjus Fixadu”, which is kind of a Portuguese…
Raichel: Creole, kind of a Portuguese. But it’s Creole, it’s a Portuguese island, Cape Verde. That comes from Mayra Andrade. She speaks Portuguese and Creole, and she wanted to sing it in Creole, and I let her.
30: So again, it’s just a matter of most of the songs are coming from you, and then if you have people who want to…
Raichel: The song, “Odjus Fixadu”, it was a composition that I started to record with a few singers. Actually, the first version was instrumental, then the second one was Spanish version, and then the third version with Mayra, it suddenly fit. So I said, “Oh, let’s keep this one.” Sometimes I have for the same song three different versions, or different singers, or now even languages.
30: As a last question on the languages, as far as I’ve noticed, on your three albums there’s no English language song. Is that conscious, or is it that nobody ever had that desire?
Raichel: No one ever had it. We toured in Australia with a singer named Sonya, so she translated some of the stuff into English. Sergio Braams mostly speaks in English, he’s from Suriname, but he did a version to “Blessings for the New Year,” it’s called “Back to Jerusalem.” We’ve haven’t recorded it yet in a formal release, but it’s on the YouTube, “Back to Jerusalem.” So he speaks in English, it’s kind of broken English, a patois, from the islands.
But I would definitely love to work in co-writing sessions with Americans, or from the UK.
30: You’re an Israeli group, that’s sort of the base. But you tour internationally, so where do you fit? How do you see yourself fitting in? You’re generally lumped into world music…
Raichel: We’re doing Israeli music. But world music is a term for foreign societies. It’s always, a singer from Senegal doing, even, Senegalian pop. Once you hear his CDs out of his territory or out of his region, it will be labeled as world music. Sometimes you’re doing crossover, such as Edith Piaf from France, and then it becomes just Edith Piaf. Or Mercedes Sosa, it’s just Mercedes Sosa. Or it’s Latin American music, it’s no longer world music.
Cesaria Evora is its own music, it’s fado, so it’s half Creole-Portuguese, and half, uh…or Antonio Carlos Jobim, he did bossa nova. So it’s kinda Brazilian, kinda bossa nova, kinda world music. You see him in world music compilations.
I would love to be labeled as Israeli music, as a soundtrack for Israel around the world.
30: But then, what sort of response do you get in Israel? I confess I’m not hugely into the context of Israel, I’m learning, but it seems that one of the things that makes you special here is that you incorporate other, not only languages, but as you said, Ethiopian samples…
Raichel: It’s the umbrella, the big umbrella of the Project. It’s the first time you could listen to the voices of the minorities in the Israeli mainstream media, or mainstream radio. It’s the first time you hear hits in emerging, or Ethiopian languages, or to have hits on mainstream radio in Moroccan (Arabic).
So I’m very happy that here it’s not labeled, or played on “Midnight hour,” or played with the jazz. It’s good for us, but we’re doing our music, and as much exposure as it gets, it’s a plus.
(Idan’s PR agent comes in and tells us he has to get ready for the concert. As if that’s more important than our interview. Anyway, you know what’s coming.)
Raichel: Maybe a last one?
30: (In full William Miller finally getting to ask Russell Hammond a question mode) Last question: what were you listening to at age 17?
Raichel: 17. I will give you, just drop you five names, because I was listening to a lot of music. Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, they have a beautiful record together, I don’t remember the name (internet research suggests Together for the First Time). But Louis Armstrong, you’ve heard of, can’t be compared. Miles Davis, Tutu or Kind of Blue?
30: That’s the famous one, Kind of Blue.
Raichel: Sacha Argov, Noemi Shemer, from the Israeli old school music. Charlie Parker, I remember. I remember too, what’s their name, who sang “Woman in Chains”?
30: Nina Simone, or Billie Holiday? (stop laughing)
Raichel: No, no, ummm. I remember, just a second. (He leaves the room and tracks down a one Shmuley, a member of his band (first name Gilad) to ask about the band name) Tears for Fears! Tears for Fears, I remember them taking references for the keyboards. I remember some classics. So it’s really from all over. Classical music, Mendelsohn, the world without words, or something without words.
-30-
interview on 2009/12/31 by Dan Shvartsman |
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