Israeli rock
Israeli rock (Hebrew: רוק ישראלי, Rok Yisra'eli) is rock music created by Israeli bands and singers.
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History [edit]
The development of Israeli rock in the 1960s [edit]
Israel's initial attitude toward rock music was extremely negative. Israeli musicians of the time believed it was a trend that would soon pass. The first Israeli rock bands began performing in the mid-1960s in nightclubs and discos, first in Ramla and later on HaMasger Street in Tel Aviv.[1] These bands mainly performed cover versions of popular rock songs by bands like The Beatles and The Shadows. Rock culture, in the social and political sense, was nowhere in sight.[1] Bands that stood out in the first wave of Israeli rock were The Lions, The Churchills,[2] The Fat and the Thins, The Styles, The Electric Stage, The Seventh Radiance, The Goldstars, The Sing-Sing, The Blue Stars and The Spiders.
In the euphoria that followed the Six-Day War, the performing groups of the Israel Defense Forces rose in status, with a steady stream of songs about victory, bereavement and loss. Rock was part of the alternative music scene, played mostly in clubs such as "Hakarish" and "Calypso", formerly known as drug dens.[1]
Towards the end of the decade, rock and roll began to gain legitimacy. Western musicians began to arrive in Israel and influences of the pop revolution began to permeate local culture. Some of the local bands added English musicians to their ensemble and thus several new bands were created based on the original rhythm bands. In the second wave of rhythm bands, three main bands led the local rock scene. The first was The Churchills, which consisted of five musicians including Canadian singer Stan Solomon, and British guitarist Robb Huxley. These were the most adventurous of the Israeli rock bands; they played innovative combinations of psychedelic rock mixed with Mediterranean Arab music. In 1970 the Israeli composer Noam Sheriff initiated a concert played by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and The Churchills, and their shared work with Arik Einstein, Oshik Levi and other artists from the mainstream Israeli pop music scene granted the Israeli rock scene a public stamp of approval.
The second band, The Lions, was considered to be the first Israeli band to experiment with reggae music. In 1968 The Lions became the first Israeli band to insert a song at the top of the British charts ("Our Love's a Growing Thing").
The third prominent Israeli band of those years was the supergroup Uzi and the Styles, created by the former lead singer of The Fat and the Thins, Uzi Fox. The band's varied style was based not only upon British pop music but also on American soul music and was characterized by the compound-rich processings of wind instruments similar to Blood, Sweat & Tears, Chicago, etc.
Between the 1960s and the 1970s, successful Israeli musicians started to show interest in rock music and many of them recorded songs in the rock style by themselves or with bands. The artist who took the most significant step towards the adoption of rock as a dominant force in Israeli music was the popular singer Arik Einstein, who in 1969 made The Churchills his backup group. Einstein's albums from those years, Pozi (1969), slug (1970), Plastelina (1970) and Badshe etzel Avigdor (1971), are considered to be groundbreaking in the way in which they combined rock melodies with Hebrew texts. They were revolutionary both in the fresh musical perception which they demonstrated, and in creating more personal mainstream songs rather than the military bands which were prominent in the previous decade.
1970s [edit]
In the early 1970s, Israel had a burgeoning progressive rock scene. One of the first performers was Shlomo Gronich, whose 1971 debut was Why Didn't You Tell Me?. This was however, preceded by Danny Ben Israel Bullshit 3¼, which was released in 1970 and promptly forgotten for some thirty years. Other 70s prog bands included The Churchills, Zingale, and Sheshet.
Israel also developed a new style of rock/metal named Oriental metal, which is a crossover between death metal and doom metal, influenced by ancient Jewish traditions and the oriental culture, both in lyrics and melody.
In the seventies, many bands were formed. The rock band Tamouz gained much success in the 1970s. The most successful Israeli Rock band of the seventies was Kaveret[3] which combined rock music and a unique sense of humor. At the end of the seventies, singers who performed rock music became very popular and successful: Shalom Hanoch, Ariel Zilber, Tzvika Pick (in combination with pop music), Efraim Shamir, Yitzhak Klepter and Gary Ackstein.
1980s [edit]
During the 1980s a small number of rock bands became popular. Notable rock bands of the decade were The Click, Benzin, T-Slam, and Mashina[4] which proved to be the most successful Israeli rock band of that decade and continued to perform until 1995 when they disbanded but formed back together in 2005 due to popular demand.
1990s [edit]
1991 was the year of the break though of the Israeli alternative rock bands and singers, which was led by Rami Fortis, Berry Sakharof and Aviv Geffen,[4] and young bands like Eifo HaYeled,[4] The Elders of Zfat, Rockfour and Dr. Kasper's Rabbits Show who became very popular. An essential role on the raise of those bands and artists was the former Roxanne club in Tel Aviv which hosted known artists and emerging artists of rock and alternative rock, thus allowing fast exposure to new bands, and cultivated a listener audience for those music styles. Since then, most of those bands have disbanded, but their members still continue to act in the same different setting and mostly constitute the community of the Israeli music of today.
Notable in the field of Glam metal and Heavy metal was the band "Stella Maris" from Haifa, which began performing in the early 1990s. Stella Maris later integrated in the mainstream Israeli music scene and its vocalist, Pavlo Rosenberg, launched a solo career of his own.
In spite of different crises and low point periods which affected the world of the Israeli rock (like the Arad festival disaster of 1995, after which the popularity of such events descended), during the next decade the Israeli rock music style became to the central and most acceptable music style, and important bands like The witches and Monica Sex were formed.
2000s until today [edit]
Israeli Rock in the 2000s became less popular relative to previous decades. Israeli Pop artists took the place of the Israeli rock artists. Nevertheless, Israeli rock never stopped being popular, and many new rock artists and bands become popular in this decade. Amongst the most prominent Israel rock bands of the 2000s are Beit HaBubot, which plays melodic rock which focuses on the acoustic guitar sound and Synergia, which tends to have a melodic nu metal sound. Additional successful emerging Israeli rock bands and artists of this decade include: Girafot, Sheygets, HaYehudim,[3] Yoni Bloch, Hadag Nahash, Shy Nobleman and many more.
At the end of the 2000s Mizrahi music gained massive popularity in Israel which only added another factor to the weakening in popularity of Israeli rock.
In addition, during the 2000s, many veteran disbanded Israel rock bands began playing again, such as T-Slam, Mofa Ha'arnavot Shel Dr. Kasper, Eifo HaYeled, Monica Sex, Mashina, etc.
See also [edit]
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Rock music groups from Israel |
- List of Israeli rock singers
- List of Israeli rock music groups
- Rock Mizrahi
- Music of Israel
- List of Israeli musical artists
References [edit]
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