a little about israeli music and scene

A couple nights ago, my roommate Caitlin and I went walking around the Mercaz (outdoor shopping & cafe area). There we peeked into a tiny music store with some cool looking guys working there. Well, the kinds I'm used to in Boston and not used to in Haifa. I'll just call them "alternative". I'm beginning to stumble upon the underground culture in Haifa. It's sort of unusual here. They told us about this one street in Hadar that's more "indie" with second hand stores and used book/music shops. To put this into perspective, I would call Boston 80% indie, and Haifa 5% indie. haha.. does that even make sense to say that? Whatever. It feels true.

Anyway, one guy was saying how there wasn't any original Israeli music. Maybe one or two artists were truly original. I was thinking how hard it must be for such a young society to come up with its own art and music. They're using a new language, put into daily usage less than a century ago, and they all come from different cultures and countries, and they're supposed to have their own culture already? That's hard. It's good that this guy seemed let down with the music in his counrty--at least he has high expectations.

As we were about to leave, he pulled out two cds for us, music samplers as a gift. I'm listening to it now. Most of it is rock-ish, but there's one on here that sounds sephardic... the only clue to me that Israel is more than European immigrants. I liked that one the best because it seemed less like a spin-off.

This song wasn't on the cd, but the artist was. So far the old Israeli music sounds better to me than modern stuff.