Gilad Atzmon

Gilad Atzmon גלעד עצמון
Gilad Atzmon
Born	Gilad Atzmon (1963-06-09) June 9, 1963 Tel Aviv, Israel
Nationality	Israeli and British
Education	Rubin Academy of Music, University of Essex
Occupation	Musician
Known for	Musician, political activist
Website	www.gilad.co.uk

Gilad Atzmon (Hebrew: גלעד עצמון, born June 9, 1963, Israel) is an Israeli-born British jazz musician, and is known as an author and activist who is critical of both Zionism and Judaism. His album Exile was BBC jazz album of the year in 2003, and he has been described as "one of London's finest saxophonists". Playing over 100 dates a year, he has been called "surely the hardest-gigging man in British jazz". His albums, of which he has recorded nine to date, often explore political themes and the music of the Middle East. He has also written two novels, which have been translated into over 20 languages.

Early life

He was born a secular Israeli Jew in Tel Aviv, and trained at the Rubin Academy of Music in Jerusalem. His service as a paramedic in the Israeli Defense Forces during the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon caused him reach the conclusion that "I was part of a colonial state, the result of plundering and ethnic cleansing."

Atzmon studied jazz and composition at the Rubin Academy of Music in Jerusalem. He first became interested in British jazz when he discovered some in a British record shop in Jerusalem in the 1970s. He initially was inspired by the work of Ronnie Scott and Tubby Hayes and regarded London as "the Mecca of Jazz." He also was influenced to become a jazz musician by the work of Charlie Parker, in particular Charlie Parker with Strings recorded in 1949. Atzmon said of the album that he "loved the way the music is both beautiful and subversive - they way he basks in the strings but also fights against them." He worked with top bands as a musical producer.

In 1994, Atzmon emigrated from Israel to London, where he attended the University of Essex and earned a Masters degree in Philosophy. He has lived there since, becoming a British citizen in 2002.

Music

While Atzmon's main instrument is the alto saxophone, he also plays soprano, tenor and baritone saxophones and clarinet, sol, zurna and flute. Atzmon's jazz style has been described as bebop/hard bop, with forays into free jazz and swing, and seemingly inspired by John Coltrane and Miles Davis. Atzmon sometimes plays the alto and soprano sax simultaneously.

Atzmon's works have also explored the music of the Middle East, North Africa, and Eastern Europe. Atzmon told The Guardian that he draws on Arabic music which he says cannot be notated like western music but must be internalised, which he calls "reverting to the primacy of the ear." Atzmon's musical method has been to play with notions of cultural identity, flirting with genres such as tango and klezmer as well as various Arabic, Balkan, Gypsy and Ladino folk forms. Atzmon's recordings deliberately differ from his live shows. "I don't think that anyone can sit in a house, at home, and listen to me play a full-on bebop solo. It's too intense. My albums need to be less manic."

Atzmon has created the "Benny Hill-like alter ego - a fanatical Zionist" Artie Fishel, on the album Artie Fishel & the Promised Band, which has been described as "musical anarchy." With traditional klezmer music, dialogue, and jokes, the album features Atzmon on saxophone, John Turville on keys and electronics, Yaron Stavi on bass, and Asaf Sirkis on drums. Other artists include vocalist Guillermo Rozenthuler, Koby Israelite on vocals and accordion, and Ovidiu Fratila on violin.

Collaborations and groups

Atzmon joined the veteran punk rock band Ian Dury and the Blockheads in 1998, and continued with The Blockheads after Dury's death. He has also recorded and performed with Shane McGowan, Robbie Williams, Sinéad O'Connor, Robert Wyatt and Paul McCartney. He has recorded two albums with Robert Wyatt, who describes him as "one of the few musical geniuses I've ever met".

Atzmon has collaborated, recorded and performed with musicians from all around the world, including the Palestinian singer, Reem Kelani, Tunisian singer and oud player Dhafer Youssef, violinist Marcel Mamaliga, accordion player Romano Viazzani, bassist Yaron Stavi, violinist and trumpet-violin player, Dumitru Ovidiu Fratila, and Guillermo Rozenthuler on vocals.

Atzmon founded the Orient House Ensemble band in London in the 1990s and is currently touring with them. The band includes Asaf Sirkis on drums, Yaron Stavi on bass and Frank Harrison on keyboard. It has produced five albums in eight years.

Atzmon is on the creative panel of the Global Music Foundation, a non-profit organization formed in December 2004 which runs residential educational and performance workshops and events in different countries around the world., and also offers personal workshops to students.

Reviews

Atzmon and his ensemble have received favorable reviews from Hi-Fi World, Financial Times, The Scotsman, The Guardian, Birmingham Post, The Sunday Times and The Independent. Reviews of his 2007 album Refuge included:

Manchester Evening News: The individuality of the music is extraordinary. No one is more willing to serve his music with raw political passion, and that curious cantor-like tone on clarinet is immediately arresting, like Artie Shaw writhing in his death throes.

EjazzNews: "For sheer improvisational fireworks, quirky humour and genre-defying invention, one will be hard-pressed to find a bandleader as unique as Gilad Atzmon." ("EjazzNews," September 2008)

BBC: "...the OHE is finding its voice in an increasingly subtle blend of East and West, that’s brutal and beautiful."

In November 2008 Chris Searle launched his book Forward Groove: Jazz and the Real World from Louis Armstrong to Gilad Atzmon at the London Jazz Festival. It "chronicles the development of jazz and its great exponents" alongside social developments and political protest movements. The reviewer noted that "the torch continues to be carried by contemporary musicians such as Israeli-born alto saxman Gilad Atzmon who dreams of a free and united Palestine."

In February 2009 The Guardian music critic John Fordham reviewed Atzmon's newest album In loving memory of America which Atzmon describes as "a memory of America I had cherished in my mind for many years". It includes five standards and six originals "inspired by the sumptuous harmonies and impassioned sax-playing of (Charlie) Parker's late-40s recordings with classical strings".

While John Lewis praises much of Atzmon's work, he notes that "trenchant politics often sit uneasily alongside music, particularly when that music is instrumental." Lewis criticized his 2006 comedy klezmer project, "Artie Fishel and the Promised Band," as "a clumsy satire on what he regards as the artificial nature of Jewish identity politics."

Awards

Atzmon was the recipient of the HMV Top Dog Award at the Birmingham International Jazz Festival in 1996–1998. Gilad Atzmon's Exile was BBC jazz album of the year in 2003.

Novels

Atzmon's novels have been published in 22 languages. His first novel A Guide to the Perplexed, published in 2001, is set in a future where by 2052 Israel has been replaced by a Palestinian state for 40 years. It largely reviews memoirs of the alienated Israeli Gunther Wunker’s rise to fame as a "peepologist," or voyeur. The perplexed are defined as "the unthinking Chosen" who "cling to clods of earth that don't belong to them." The novel excoriates the commercialization of the Holocaust and "argues that the Holocaust is invoked as a kind of reflexive propaganda designed to shield the Zionist state from responsibility for any transgression against Palestinians." The Independent reviewer wrote that "Those who still thrill to the pages of Sixties underground "comix" may find some of this amusing, however laboured. Yet even those semi-sympathetic to its politics will find it cheap and "provocative" in the worst possible sense." He also wrote that the book has "just enough connection with reality to give it a certain unsettling power." The Guardian review notes it is "odd to mix knob gags with highly serious assertions" but that it works because "Atzmon writes with so much style and his gags are so hilarious."

Atzmon's second novel, My One and Only Love was published in 2005, and features as a protagonist a trumpeter who chooses to play only one note (extremely well) as well as a spy who uncovers Nazi war criminals and locks them inside double bass cases which then tour permanently in the protagonist's orchestra's luggage. The book also is comedic take on "Zionist espionage and intrigue" which explores "the personal conflict between being true to one’s heart and being loyal to The Jews'.

Politics

Atzmon describes himself as a political artist. He also has called himself "a Hebrew-speaking Palestinian" who plays music for the Palestinian cause. After the prime minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had cited Atzmon during a debate with Israeli president Shimon Peres, music critic John Lewis wrote in The Guardian: "It is Atzmon's blunt anti-Zionism rather than his music that has given him an international profile, particularly in the Arab world, where his essays are widely read."

Atzmon is opposed to Zionism and critiques what he describes as the "supremacist nature inherent in an ideology like Zionism." He supports the Palestinian Right of Return as well as the establishment of a single state in Israel/Palestine. Some of his comments have led to accusations of antisemitism and holocaust denial, which he denies.

Atzmon labels the term "antisemitism" as an empty signifier, holding that "criticism of Jewish nationalism, Jewish lobbying and Jewish power can only be realised as a legitimate critique of ideology and practice." He states that "antisemitism is a spin, it is a myth...there is no such a thing as antisemitism."

Atzmon has disseminated his political views through his performances, speaking engagements and publications. He has been published in CounterPunch,. Many of his published papers are available on his personal website. He is a co-founder of and contributor to the web site Palestine Think Tank

Atzmon has engaged in "furious attacks on Israel." His military service led him to believe that Israel was a "racist, militarised state that was a danger to world peace" and that Israel’s actions "sow hatred throughout the world." He compares the Israeli actions to those of the Nazis, and said that the Rocket and mortar attacks on southern Israel did not justify the Israeli military response in 2008-2009 Israel-Gaza conflict. He described Israel’s attacks on Palestinians as increasingly brutal, its nuclear weapons as "idiotic" and a threat to the region.

Atzmon extends his criticism of Israel to Zionism and Judaism, including through philosophical texts on Jewish identity discussed by the likes of Noam Chomsky. Atzmon says the military experience of "my people destroying other people left a big scar" and led to his condemnation of "Jewishness" as "very much a supremacist, racist tendency". He later expounded "In the UK bigotry and racism is becoming a Jews-only territory." Atzmon has asked "How is it that people who have suffered so much and for so long can inflict so much pain on the other?" and questions ‘How can Zionists, who are motivated by a genuine desire to return, be so blind when it comes to the very similar Palestinian desire?"

Atzmon has stated in the past that he has effectively "renounced his Jewish identity" but explains his being sometimes "loud and rude" by saying "You can take the Jew out of Israel but you cannot take Israel out of the Jew." He states his writings and music are "self-reflective" and that "When I criticise the Jews, in many cases I'm criticising myself."

Atzmon believes the financial meltdown "is all just part of the programme," including the Iraq war, of "America acting as an Israeli mission for fighting the last pockets of resistance, led tactically by Neoconservatives and the Federal Reserve." He says there was not a credit crunch but a "Zionist punch" and that "Alan Greenspan's job was to create a financial boom so America's people were not concerned with the tactics used in the Middle East." He says non-Jews like former U.S. president George W. Bush also "behaved Jewishly": "Even in Christianity, this tendency to go Old Testament - into tribalism, into supremacy, into violence, into shock and awe . . . This is something we have to fight against."

Atzmon has had conflicts with some Jewish anti-Zionists who he says fail to listen to Palestinian activists but "prefer to act under your Jewish banner" and "run campaigns solely with your Jewish comrades." He asserts "The Palestinian cause doesn't belong to any one person. And I don't identify with any political party. That's the advantage the artist has over the politician."

Discography

• "In loving memory of America" - Label: Enja - January 2009
• Refuge - Label: Enja - October 2007
• Artie Fishel and the Promised Band - Label: WMD - September 2006
• MusiK - Label: Enja - October 2004
• Exile - Label: Enja - March 2004
• Nostalgico - Label: Enja - January 2001
• Gilad Atzmon &The Orient House Ensemble - Label: Enja - 2000
• Juizz Muzic- Label: FruitBeard - 1999
• Take it or Leave It - Label: Face Jazz - 1999
• Spiel- Both Sides - Label: MCI - 1995
• Spiel Acid Jazz Band- Label: MCI - 1995
• Spiel- Label: In Acoustic&H.M. Acoustica - 1993

Books

• A guide to the perplexed, English translation by Philip Simpson. London : Serpent's Tail, 2002. ISBN 1852428260
• My one and only love. London : Saqi, 2005. ISBN 0863565077 (pbk.). ISBN 9780863565076 (pbk.)

External links

• Gilad Atzmon web site
• Gilad Atzmon, Lexicon of Resistance, a dictionary of his "charged terminology."
• Gilad Atzmon Interviewed by Mary Rizzo, July, 2007.