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It was a surreal experience when Israeli singer, songwriter and bandleader Idan Raichel stepped onto the stage as the opening act of the fifth Ethiopian Music Festival in Addis Ababa. This was January 2006, and Raichel had only discovered Ethiopian music a few years before while working at a boarding school for troubled teens in Tel Aviv. When he began experimenting with a fusion of Ethiopian, Israeli, Arab, and other rhythms from around the world in his basement studio, he knew it would be an uphill battle to get the music heard, but he persevered. Surprisingly, the first album by the international collective he put together went platinum in Israel, propelling The Idan Raichel Project into the global spotlight. His forward-looking music resulted in an invitation to play in Addis Ababa, and the artist who extended it was legendary Ethiopian singer Mahmoud Ahmed— another musician known for his ability to create unexpected fusions of diverse musical styles. The group had already planned to play in Ethiopia, but Ahmed’s call was a pleasant surprise. “It was a great honor to meet him,” Raichel says by phone from his home in Tel Aviv recently. “Cabra Casay, one of our lead singers, has family in Ethiopia, but she was born in a refugee camp in the Sudan, so this was her first time back home. Another singer, Wagderass Vese, left his family behind [in Ethiopia] when he came to Israel at age 14, so our trip was a big homecoming.
“We were lucky because we’d taken along a film crew to document Cabra’s return home. The film will be called Home: Backward and Forward, and deals with the challenges refugees face in defining their identity. Do they consider themselves Ethiopian or are they Israeli? This is an ongoing question. Israel is a melting pot, with people from many cultures living side by side. When people immigrate, they often have identity problems and try to forget where they came from, especially the teenage kids. They tend to adopt an American hip-hop identity. When I was working with kids in the boarding school, music was an important way to get to know them better. I thought if I expressed an interest in their culture, it would help these Ethiopian kids keep their own roots alive.”
The kids shared their cassettes of Ethiopian reggae, jazz, pop, and folk by artists like Mahmoud Ahmed, Aster Aweke and Ejigayehu “Gigi” Shibabaw—sounds that captivated Raichel and inspired him to start investigating the country’s rich musical heritage. He went to Ethiopian bars and clubs and visited Ethiopian synagogues, weddings and traditional ceremonies. “I got especially interested in the village music of Ethiopia,” he explains. “The folk music has beautiful 6/8 rhythms and sinuous melodies. You will hear a drummer playing with a one string violin player and they will go on and on, like a mantra. If you listen for two minutes, it can seem annoying, but after five or ten minutes, it puts you into a trance. It’s like the experience you can have in a dance club if you stand in the middle of it, it may seem noisy, but after five hours of dancing, you’re in an altered state.”
Raichel began dreaming: would it be possible to combine the pop music of the Israeli mainstream with the traditional music of the immigrant communities and come up with something new? Already a successful studio musician, Raichel played keyboards and
arranged music for pop singers, but he was looking for his own identity. “I was doing whatever they told me, taking any job I was offered,” he says. “Working at that boarding school made me understand for the first time what Israel is all about. Every 15 years or so, there’s a big infusion of immigration, and while we are all Israeli, there are many cultures co-existing here. People celebrate Spanish holidays, Russian holidays and Yemenite holidays. There are mini-cultures within the bigger culture. Even today, you cannot define one Israeli food or tradition because it’s still developing—it’s all mixed together. I thought I should make music that reflects that.”
Raichel’s interest in diverse cultures developed early on. He grew up in a musical family and was always attracted to keyboard instruments—or at least, instruments with keyboards built into them. “I grew up playing the accordion, which is the most uncool instrument ever,” he confesses. “But the thing is, it’s a worldwide instrument: from the tango in Argentina, to the waltzes of France, to Bulgarian wedding music, it’s all played on the accordion. And Israeli folk music is also based on the accordion, so playing it kept my ears and mind open to music from all over the world. I did try to play some classical arrangements for accordion, but mostly I was interested in folk music from all over the world. That got me listening to salsa, the pop music of Edith Piaf, gypsy music—the music of many countries.
“My grandfather had an accordion in his home,” he continues, “and when I was young we used to visit him and my mother used to play it. I played the instrument for a few years until I got into high school. Then I got interested in jazz piano, improvisation and electronica. I like electronica, but learning how to improvise on the piano in real time got me deeper into the music. By the time I joined the army, the acoustic and electronic had started mixing together.”
In Israel, everybody serves in the military—no exemptions or exceptions—and like any 18-year-old, Raichel stepped up to do his three years and was lucky enough to get into an entertainment unit. “I played in different army bands, but mostly in a rock band—guitar, bass, drums and keyboards, with four lead singers. It was my first time playing as a sideman.” The group played a diverse repertoire of contemporary Israeli pop songs and traditional music, international pop and rock hits, as well as funk and jazz instrumentals. “We played to boost morale and have fun. I had to learn to play in a lot of styles and work with singers from all over the country. In my third year with the band, I was able to write some keyboard arrangements. It helped me later when I worked as a session player and production musician for pop singers.”
The studio skills Raichel picked up in the pop world served him well when he began writing the music and recruiting the participants for what was to become The Idan Raichel Project. After his stirring introduction to Ethiopian music, Raichel retreated to the basement of his parents’ house in Kfar Saba, a small town outside of Tel Aviv. With a laptop computer and some recording software, he began creating his own brand of Israeli music. “I lived in the studio for four years,” he recalls. “People from all over the country came to the basement to contribute their talent to the recordings. I had a PC with two inputs and two outputs, so I was always bouncing tracks down to make space to add more music. The computer was always saying ‘memory full’ [laughs], so I had to record and then mix right there on the laptop. With only two tracks, we had to be creative and
improvise. It was a great experience.”
The ordeal gave Raichel a keen insight into what it means to pursue a creative vision without compromise, and to push what little you might have to the limit if it means realizing that vision. “You know, The Beatles only had four tracks,” he notes, “and that was using analog [tape], so what we did is easy compared to what they had to work with. But if I was to recommend something to musicians, I’d say don’t buy too much gear—what’s important is your heart and your desire to make music. It’s like what [Italian actor and director] Roberto Benigni said when he won an Oscar: ‘I want to thank my parents for raising me poor. Being poor, you have so much more hunger to make it and do it your own way.’ So maybe I was lucky to be working on a small budget.”
Raichel had already written some songs and began inviting musicians and singers from various backgrounds to his basement studio. In the end, over 70 artists contributed to the first two Idan Raichel Project albums. Drummer Gilad Shmueli, a producer himself, signed on early. Raichel says his unique perspective pushed the project in unexpected directions. “He doesn’t understand theory and has no formal musical knowledge— nothing about harmony or chord structure—but he has good instincts. He’ll say, ‘I don’t like this sound’ or ‘There’s not enough bass on this track.’ If you hire a professional and ask him to play something in C Major, he does it. If you ask someone who doesn’t know, he will search around and, in the process, you’ll find a lot of interesting things. So Gilad is great because his desire is to always search for a new way of doing things, and for sounds no one has heard before.”
Many have praised Raichel’s rich, multi-rhythmic sound, but he says he didn’t have a specific plan in mind when he started recording. “The lo-fi equipment gave the music a special texture,” he insists. “We had only one microphone, so we had to search for interesting ways to make it work. We put the drums in the kitchen of the house, where the mic picked up an odd reverberation. The piano we used was not in tune, so we had to put a chorus effect and phase shifters on it. People compliment me on the dense sound of the music, but that came from bouncing everything down to two tracks.”
Raichel wanted the music to be as culturally diverse as possible, with inspirational lyrics. “We used Biblical stories and poems, and lyrics and music from traditional folk songs from all over the world. I only speak and sing in Hebrew and English, so I asked the singers to bring texts in their own languages, and I’d compose music for them. If they sang songs I wrote, I let them do it in their style, in their own language, so we made some interesting fusions. Even though most of the artists were Israeli, they have diverse backgrounds with roots in Yemen, Ethiopia, Iran, Sudan, Uruguay, and Suriname. When people want me to define our sound, I say it’s Israeli music, not world music really, because all those cultures are here living together.” As soon as he had a few tracks finished, Raichel sent them around to his contacts in the music business. Most thought the fusion was too odd and too foreign. “[But] Gadi Gidor at Helicon Records said he found it interesting,” Raichel says, remembering his first conversation with the Israeli label’s A&R rep. “He liked the way the oldschool Israeli melodies mixed with the music of the immigrants. This project is the first time a producer was signed as the main artist it’s more usual to sign a band with one singer.”
It was Raichel’s determination to use the right singer for the right song, no matter where they came from or how old they were, that lends such an overarching feeling of diversity to his first two albums. “The youngest singer was 16,” he explains, “and the oldest was Shoshanna Damari, who was 82. She passed away [in 2006] after making her last recordings for us. She also participated in some live concerts before she died.”
The first album, simply titled The Idan Raichel Project, caused a sensation, selling over 150,000 copies. The second album, 2005’s Mi’Ma’amakim (Out Of The Depths), has moved 80,000 units to date. The Project’s live shows have wowed and surprised people with their solid grooves and ever-shifting lineup of lead singers. “Everywhere we go,” Raichel says, “we have artists asking if they can come on stage and give their input. We’ve had musicians from Colombia, India, Benin, Argentina, and Senegal, just in the last few months. They come to a sound check and later that day we’re making music together. On our next record, we’re going to use tracks we’ve been recording all over the world, and make the music even more international.”
Raichel’s music was building a major underground buzz when Jacob Edgar of the U.S.-based label Cumbancha offered him a chance for an international release. “I thought a compilation would be the best way to go,” Edgar says. “There’s great material on both records, but to break into the international world music/global pop audience, we wanted songs that spoke an international language, so to speak. Combining songs from the first two albums would bring worldwide listeners up to speed on Raichel, and get them ready for his next album.”
Cumbancha’s The Idan Raichel Project opens with “Azini (Comfort Me),” where a solitary flute plays a sinuous Eastern melody before the band drops in with a fusion of R&B and Arabic pop. Anwar Awad, a Palestinian Christian who sings in Arabic and Hebrew, contributed both the lyrics and a powerful lead vocal overflowing with passion. Yihia Tsubara, a 76-year-old traditional Yemenite singer, sings an ululating duet with his son Shalom Tsuberi on “Im Tachpetza (If Thou Wisheth).” The tune is from the Yemenite folk tradition, but it’s given a modern sheen by Raichel’s keyboards and Avi Singolda’s guitar, which mimics the cascading arpeggios of an oud.
During the sessions for the second album, Cabra Casey, who met Raichel in the Israeli army, sang him the folk song “Nanu Nanu Ney,” which they incorporated into “Mi’Ma’amakim (Out Of The Depths).” Wagderass Vese and Raichel trade verses on the song, with Vese singing the traditional melody in a high, dramatic, almost falsetto register, with Raichel countering in his reassuring low tenor. Bongani Xulu, a South African singer, met Raichel in Israel after seeing a performance of The Project the two collaborated on “Siyaishaya Ingoma,” a traditional Zulu love song. Raichel’s gospel-fl avored piano accompanies Xulu’s soulful, subdued vocal, with Donovan Prefect Reid providing a rap interlude. Sergio Braams, originally from Suriname, sings lead on “Brong Faya,” which combines old time calypso, dancehall reggae, trance, and dub impulses. Braams has a beautiful clear tenor and delivers a vocal full of playful humor.
Ofer Shriki’s chiming 12-string guitar hook and subtle violin set off Zamnawet Zoe Gidamo’s vocal on the mellow, reggae-fl avored “Ayal-Ayale.” The song is followed by “Hinach Yafah,” a ballad based on the Song of Songs from the Bible, and one where Raichel gets to show off his own vocal chops, his minimalist but silky voice playing off Zena Edchanani’s more theatrical improvisations on the chorus. It’s a prime example of the sound that prevails throughout the album—smooth, lush, and yes, dense. Balancing ancient traditions with today’s technology, The Idan Raichel Project delivers a smoky, impressionistic mix of bright trebly guitars, wailing vocals, effect-thickened keyboards and spare, measured percussion programs to produce a simmering global groove.
“The next album will be even more international,” Raichel promises. “We’re always recording new stuff as we tour, working with musicians from all over the world. I have about 30 tracks, and we’ll see what story they tell. When I was in New York, I recorded a singer from Colombia in France, musicians from Cape Verde and Brazil in India, singers from Jaipur. We take a doumbek rhythm and try to play it on an Indian tabla. We take an Israeli love song and translate it into Spanish and Arabic. Bringing different traditions together, you always get something interesting, even if people don’t understand it. The hardcore world music audience thinks the music is too produced. At a rock festival, they say, ‘What the hell is all this Ethiopian stuff?’ I know it’s hard to market and hard for booking agents, but this is what Israel really sounds like—many cultures making a new song together.”
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