Lemez Lovas

Publishing The Autobiography of Maurice El Medioni

Wed, 30 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

It has been thirteen years in the making, but it is with immense pleasure that I can say that UK publishing house Repeater Books will be publishing the autobiography of Maurice El Medioni at the end of this year. For those who don’t know, master pianist, Algerian pop song writer, and the author of Ahlan Wa Sahlan, the song without which no North African wedding is complete to this day.

Maurice's ode to his beloved hometown, Wahran/Oran

I’ve already written about how I met Maurice and his life-enhancing music and larger than life personality elsewhere: this post is about karma, and what happens when you don’t give up on something you believe you just have to do.

After two years of performing and touring with Maurice, in the USA, Russia and across the UK, I had formed a strong bond with and admiration for Maurice. It is not easy to see why - everyone who meets him falls in love with him, his easy-going humour, his love of music that keeps him full of vitality well into his 80th year.

I was at SOAS, the School of Oriental and Africa Studies in London, pursuing a Masters in Ethnomusicology. Maurice was to be my dissertation: a look into the long-forgotten world of pre-independence Algerian cosmpolitanism, when nightclubs on the Canastel, on Oran’s northern beachfront, rivalled anything the Cote D’Azur had to offer.

I say ‘pursuing’, because in truth, the Masters was fast running away from me: I was running a band that was getting ever busier, starting our first international tours and about to be signed to an iconic record label. That year, we were shortlisted for two BBC World Music Awards, and my young musical imagination was ablur. I was keen to study, and fascinated in the subject, but I took some courses in the wrong order, and was asked by the University to turn down an international summer tour in order to be present for my exams. I asked if there was another option, and there wasn’t, except to pay another year’s fees - some £3000 - which I didn’t have. To this day, I don’t why the University didn’t try to do more to help a student who had the good fortune to have their extra-curricular life turning out well.

This was just the administration: the music department were different. When I showed the handwritten manuscript that Maurice had sent me to my then supervisor, Keith Howard, he was keen to put it together as an academic book for publication. We invited Maurice to SOAS to give a lecture, recorded it, and typed it up for the book. But when the terms of the book came through - a unit price north of £50 and if we wanted them to print any photographs in the book at all or accompanying an CD, we would have to raise the money ourselves - I felt there must be another way. After all, Maurice’s life had so much colour and joy in it, to publish his vivid recollections as drab text without so much as a single picture or sound snippet seemed like an insult to his memory.

By now we had a good team of supporters who wanted to be involved and help getting Maurice’s memoirs published: Christophe Borkowsky, owner of Pirnaha Records and Publishing, Maurice’s record label; Ben Mandelson, world music producer who had helped shape Maurice’s comeback; Max Reinhardt, BBC Radio 3 presenter and curator; Helene Hazera, Radio France International journalist and North African cultural expert; Josephine Burton, producer and cultural doer who had first put me together with Maurice when she was Director of Yad Arts, and whose insight had given me so much over the years.

Maurice writes of his childhood in the derb, the Jewish quarter of Oran, as a beautiful, unpretentious stream of images. It seemed to me that the book could work incredibly well as a graphic novel: Waltz With Bashir had just come out, and showed how what a potent form for historical storytelling it could be. We got in touch with Joann Sfar, the bestselling French graphic novelist and author of Le Chat Du Rabbin. He was a perfect fit with the story, and might have taken it on if he wasn’t just about to start shooting Gainsbourg - a big budget, big deal in French cinema about an even bigger figure - as his directorial debut.

So now, I am frantically looking again at my translations in advance of the publishing deadline, wondering what everything meant and using the Francophone part of my brain which has been left untroubled for the best part of ten years. Vive Maurice!

Music for Apps - Smule

Fri, 11 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

It was an honour to be asked to make tracks for Songify, the Youtube sensation, whereby two bedroom producers called the Jonas Brothers autotuned the news with great style and humour and made perfect little viral comedy videos.

We were commissioned by Khush, later acquired by Smule, to compose nine tracks on this app, in varied styles – Rock, Waltzes and Country.

It went on to become the world’s no.1 free iPhone app on release in summer 2011.

We later followed it up with work for two more apps: the mega-hit Autorap - and the slightly less-so Singing Santa (reworkings of Xmas hits - hey, everyone’s gotta eat).

Music CV & Biography

Mon, 07 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Blurb

(Written for the Maurice El Medioni book)

Composer, performer, writer, researcher and translator who has worked extensively on the stage, in the studio and in print. His research interests include critical technology, folklore and ritual culture, radical education, language acquisition, singing and vocal techniques, acoustics and sound, absurdist literature, computational linguistics, storytelling and children’s culture, censorship, Russia and the former Soviet Union, Indian, Roma and Jewish culture, sacred music and art as activism.

He’s a BA/MA (Oxon) in Russian and French; studied Ethnomusicology with Hungarian at London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies(SOAS); studied Hebrew and Arabic in Jerusalem for 2 years. His writing work includes: major report for Freemuse/UNESCO on music censorship in Belarus; numerous articles on music and arts for Songlines, fRoots and the Jewish Chronicle of which he was acting Arts Editor; conference coordinator and essayist for WOMEX, the annual World Music Industry Expo.

Musician/producer under the artist name Lemez Lovas: with artists/producers including KT Tunstall, Mike Spencer, Paul Epworth and Maurice el Medioni; leader, arranger/composer for Oi Va Voi (Labels: Outcaste/EMI/V2) award winning future klezmer band (Dutch Edison International Album of the Year, BBC World Music Awards nominations, New York Times Critics’ Top Ten Albums of the Year 2003)

Founder member of Shtetl Superstars and Yiddish Twist Orchestra; co-founder Lemez & Fridel, central London recording and production studio, writing original music and lyrics for companies including game developers Smule and Ubisoft and children’s theatre companies Tall Stories and Peut-Etre; composed and performed original score for silent film East and West (dir. Ivan Abramson, Sidney M. Goldin starring Molly Picon 1923) in London, Paris and Jerusalem.

Media work: producing and presenting for BBC World Service, BBC Russian Service, BBC Radio 2, BBC Radio 3, CBC Canada, Resonance FM, STV; set up OpenAir Radio at SOAS; co-founded award winning independent TV production company, Jerusalem based Digress Media.

Most recently, he set up and ran Tonguesten, an education technology startup turning music videos into games for literacy and language learning.

He divides his time between London and Pondicherry, India.

Music Biography

For a list of lectures/broadcasting/music publications, please see here.

2000

Kharkov Klezmer Band, Ticking Again, Music & Words, NL | production
Hunting of the Snark, dir. Dylan Ritson, Crazy Horse Theatre Co., The Museum Of, London (with Oi Va Voi) | theatre

2001-present

200+ live concerts around UK, Europe, USA | performance

2002

Oi Va Voi, Digital Folklore, self-release, UK | production | songwriting | arrangement
Sitting Ducks, dir. Gerry Fox, UK (with Oi Va Voi) | soundtrack
Talking Tacheles, prod. Andy Cohen, A C Films, UK (with Oi Va Voi) | soundtrack
God of Vengeance, dir. Liselle Terret, Camden People’s Theatre, London, May 2002 (with Paul Epworth) | theatre

2003

Oi Va Voi, Laughter Through Tears, EMI/Outcaste, UK | songwriting | arrangement
X-Bloc Reunion, Barbican Centre, London (with Yad Arts) | curation
Movement of the People/Roots to Reconciliation, monthly, Cargo, London (with The Shrine & Yad Arts) | DJ | curation
Sanhedrin (short), dir. Simon Brasse, UK (with Oi Va Voi) | soundtrack

2004

Regular DJ-ing across London (Cargo, Notting Hill Arts Club, Madame Jojos) and in Europe | DJ
Watch, dir. Leah Thorne, plus adaptation for BBC Radio 4 (with Moshikop) | theatre

2005

Radio Gagarin - Experiments in Sunday Socialism, Notting Hill Arts Club, London 2005-09 (with Friends of Gagarin, DJ Max Reinhardt, Yad Arts) | DJ | curation
Election Song Contest - Grand Finale, Darbukka, London | curation | DJ
Hoop Lane, dir. Mark Rosenblatt, writer Patrick Marber, ICA, London | theatre | performance
Surviving The Terror, dir. Jutta Feit, ZDF, Germany (with Nik Ammar) | soundtrack
What We Did To Weinstein, dir. Tim Supple, prod. Josephine Burton for Dash Arts, Menier Chocolate Factory, London (with Yaniv Fridel) | theatre

2006

Shtetl Superstars compilation, Trikont Records, Germany (with Yuriy Gurzhy) | curation

2007

Oi Va Voi, Oi Va Voi, V2, UK | songwriting | arrangement
Romantik, dir. Sinan Cetin, Turkey (trumpet) | soundtrack

2008

SCORE - East and West, dir. Sidney M. Goldin and Ivan Abramson (1923), silent film soundtrack at Barbican Centre / Purcell Room, London and internationally | soundtrack | performance
Little Miss Roma, dir. Vesna Cudic, Croatia | soundtrack
Ruth, dir. Keren Abitan, Israel (with Yaniv Fridel) | soundtrack

2009

Shahnameh, dir. Tim Supple, Royal National Theatre Studios, London, 2009-10 | theatre

2010

Lyrical Alliance - Arab Hip-hop Summit, prod. Josephine Burton for Dash Arts, Roundhouse London, UK | curation
The Table, dir. Mark Down, Blind Summit, prod. Josephine Burton for Yad Arts, Soho Theatre, London and international (with Yaniv Fridel) | theatre
Louis Theroux - The Ultra Zionists, dir. Andy Wells, BBC Films, UK | soundtrack
The Island - Al Jones, Echoes From The Mountain, Rif Mountain Records, UK (with Yaniv Fridel & Ben Mandelson) | production | arrangement | performance

2011

Lazlo (Kistehen / Little Cow), Venus EP, self-release, UK | mixing | songwriting
The Wild Ones, dir. Lucy Kaye, UK (with Yaniv Fridel) | soundtrack
Sevara Nazarkhan, English Songs LP, Uzbekistan (with Sevara Nazarkhan) | songwriting
Songify, app for IOS/Android, Khush/Smule (with Yaniv Fridel) | composition
Esephus Schmephesus, dir. Mark Rosenblatt for Sixty-Six Books, Bush Theatre, London | theatre
The Other Seder - String Trio & Percussion, dir. Mark Rosenblatt, prod. Josephine Burton for Dash Arts, Tricycle Theatre, London | theatre

2012

Singing Santa, app for IOS/Android, Khush/Smule (with Yaniv Fridel) | composition
We Are Muay Thai, International Federation of MuayThai, Uzbekistan (with Sevara Nazarkhan) | songwriting
Shtetl Superstars, A Day In The Life, Skycap, DE | production | mix | songwriting | arrangement
The Tin Soldier, dir. Daphna Attias, Peut-Etre, Roundhouse, London and nationwide (with Yaniv Fridel) | theatre
The Latke Who Wouldn’t Stop Screaming, dir. Olivia Jacobs, Tall Stories, prod. Josephine Burton for Yad Arts, Roundhouse London and nationwide, 2012-4 (with Yaniv Fridel) | theatre
Under.Me, International Underwear Collection, 2012 (with Yaniv Fridel) | commercial

2013

Alec Kopyt, Raw EP, UK (with Yaniv Fridel) | production | mix | arrangement
Album 61, dir. Halil Efrat, Israel, 2012 (with Yaniv Fridel) | soundtrack
Draw Me A Bird, dir. Daphna Attias, Peut-Etre, UK nationwide, 2013 (with Yaniv Fridel) | theatre
The Other Seder - Bulgarian Vocal Trio, prod. Josephine Burton for Dash Arts, Jackson’s Lane, London | theatre
Autorap, app for IOS/Android, Khush/Smule (with Yaniv Fridel) | composition

2014

Yiddish Twist Orchestra, Let’s, Bergmanton, UK | production | mix | arrangement
Watch, dir. Ewan Golder / Leah Thorne, UK (with Moshikop) | soundtrack

2015

Adishakti Ensemble, Pondicherry Heritage Festival, India | arrangement | performance
Carnatic Vocal Training, Pondicherry, India, 2015-ongoing | study

Selected Humblebrags

| songwriting | arrangement

‘Memorable and melodic songwriting skills’ Evening Standard
‘Mesmerising, innovative music with substance.’ New York Times
‘Beautifully crafted and richly textured’ The Sun
‘[Music of] uncommon grace, diversity and beauty’ BBCi
‘Great tunes… a classic to rank alongside Everything But The Girl “Walking Wounded”’ Sunday Telegraph
‘The deluge of ideas leaves you breathless with wonder’ Independent
‘[Lemez Lovas is ]an impressive songwriter of growing stature’ HMV Magazine

Top Ten Album of the Year, New York Times, 2003
Boundary Crossing Award shortlist, BBC Radio 3 Awards, 2003
Listeners Award shortlist, BBC Radio 3 Awards, 2003
No.1 World Music Album (European Broadcasting Union), Sept-Nov 2003
Critics Album of the Year shortlist, BBC Radio 3 Awards 2004
World Album Of The Year, Dutch National “Edison” Awards 2004

| theatre

‘Lemez Lovas and Yaniv Fridel’s low-level soundscapes are excellently disquieting’ Financial Times
‘Haunting soundscapes… played with aplomb’ Time Out
Best New Work nomination for What We Did To Weinstein, 51st London Evening Standard Theatre Awards

| soundtrack

Best Director, Documentary: Halil Efrat for Album 61, Jerusalem International FF, 2013
Audience Prize, In the Shadow of King David, Nimes Archaeology Film Festival 2009
Best Soundtrack nomination, Ruth, Filmmaker Film Festival 2009
Best Film under 65 Mins, Ruth, Swansea Bay International Film Festival 2009

| curation

‘A far-reaching, revitalising, boundary-pushing compilation’ Songlines
‘The most purely entertaining CD I’ve heard in a long time’ fRoots
‘One of the albums of the year,’ 20 Cent Magazine, Germany

Sringara

Sun, 28 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Today’s post is a linguistic one, about the word sringara. That may not mean much to you now, but hopefully I can explain why this word is what I - and perhaps you - have been seeking for a long, long time.

If you look it up in a Sanskrit dictionary, most likely you’ll see the translation “love”. But like most direct translations, especially from Sanskrit, the translation touches on the truth of the matter while falling far short. The idea of sringara is less love, and more everything that inspires that feeling.

A bit of history: there exists in India a sastra - a manuscript - on the performing arts, called the Natya Sastra. It is the world’s first comprehensive treatise on the performing arts, and it explains a system of nine emotions, known as rasas, which still define the arts in India today. A rasa, poorly translated again as “taste” or “emotion” according to our useless Sanskrit dictionary, is actually the defining emotional object of a play or performance. What is it that a performer wants the audience to feel? What emotional flavour does the performer want the audience to savour?

The selected rasa then becomes an unseen director for the piece, guiding the set, the scenery, the dialogues. If the chosen rasa for the performance is sringara, then should the balcony in the scene have flowers on it? Presumably so. And if so, what flowers?

Sringara is the Bollywood framework par excellence. When the boy and girl cavort in the meadow, how is it that the audience do not get bored, thinking “we’ve seen this before”? Of course they have, but that is the beauty of sringara - the job of entertainment is to lead us to an emotional state that we already know. And the state of sringara is the heighest of all.

But sringara is much more than just romantic love. According to Tantric mystical practice, sringara is every state in which something new is created. Think about that for a moment: of course, romantic love - in the best or worst instances, depending on how you look at it - leads to the creation of new life. It certainly leads to the creation of new energy and desire, no matter what results. But sringara is also the state of inspiration, which psychologist Mihaly Czikszentmihaly calls ‘flow’. It is the essence of innovation, that buzzword which the corporate world is falling over itself to understand. Sringara is that creative state of making something out of nothing, which every artist knows and tries desperately to recreate each day. Sringara is the state in which new ideas flow out of you effortlessly: sringara is quite simply being ‘in the zone’.

Czikszentmihaly on what makes life worth living

In Tantra, sringara is not just another emotion, but the summit of all human states. And so, anything that can lead to sringara - meditation, art, physical practice, meaningful interaction with another person - has equal value as spiritual practice. Some people prefer to pray, others to sing or dance or write - whatever it is that you do, as long as it leads you to sringara, you are on the right path.

Sringara is not content, cat-on-the-sofa happiness. It is not wellbeing, and balance, and all of those things that are sometimes said to be an ultimate goal. It is the feeling of magic, that you are growing as an individual, that the world is changing around you, and you are the force behind it.

Sringara.

The Happiest Boy In The World

Sun, 14 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000

In the speech therapy room at the Satya Outreach school in Pondicherry are a man, a woman, a boy and Judykael, the French speech therapist. The boy is sitting on the floor, clinging onto Judykael’s legs. His own legs are folded underneath him, Japanese-style. His parents are talking animatedly. Many parents in Satya school are somewhat deferential to foreign teachers, but Sayon’s parents are not in the slightest, talking with confidence in fluent French. Sayon was born in France, as were his brothers and sisters, and his parents are asking what paperwork will be necessary to get his younger siblings accepted into the French lycée, the most prestigious school in the area.

Every now and then, to get Judykael’s attention, Sayon gently bites his leg. Judykael breaks off from the conversation and looks down at Sayon, smiling.

“Cheeky boy! I know your game! I am not a dosa! Don’t eat me!”

He turns back to his parents: “He is always playing, this one.”

I sit on the floor and Sayon catches my eye, while the conversation continues in the air above our heads. He has a big smile on his face. His mouth is open at all times, saliva constantly dribbling onto the floor as from a leaky tap. His movements are jerky, his head lolling from one side to the other. He is leaning on Judykael’s legs, unable to support himself, smiling at me.

I walk my fingers across the floor with a cartoon ‘boing’ sound. Sayon laughs. I do it again. He laughs again, as if this is the funniest thing he has ever seen. One more time and he is creased up with laughter, and the minute he stops, a single movement from my fingers sends him back into long fits of laughter.

His mother looks down to see what is so funny, smiling at the sound of her child enjoying himself so much. She takes a soft bib out of her bag, and ties it around his neck, mopping the saliva from his shirt and face.

Sayon wants to get closer to me. He drags himself, a few inches at a time, towards me, reaching out his hands to touch mine. He is still sitting on his heels, legs buckled underneath him. They are cased in hard, plastic supports that go from his feet up to his knees.

I stretch out my hand and walk my fingers on his arms, all the while making the cartoon ‘boing’ sound.

His laughter is hysterical now, so much so that the laughter sends him into a long coughing fit, like after an intense tickling session.

I start to wonder if I might be pushing the amusement too far.

His parents finish up, and leave the room quickly.

Judykael heaves Sayon up from the floor and sits down on his soft purple mat in the middle of his room with Sayon on his lap, taking care to straighten out his legs.

“It’s not good for him to sit like that all the time.”

“OK boy,” he says, stroking Sayon’s neck, “let’s see if we can make some sounds today.”

Sayon turns his head towards Judy, his face open and smiling, like always.

Judy starts with vowels: long “aaaaa”, “eeeee” and “iiiii” sounds, followed by short “a”, “e” and “i”.

Sayon’s voice is unsteady, as if he does not know it very well. He manages to reproduce the sounds, more or less, Judykael encouraging him all the way.

Next they move onto consonants.

“Now we do ‘Mmmmm’. ‘Mmmmmm’. Come on boy, close your mouth and say ‘Mmmmm’.”

“Aaaaa,” says Sayon, still smiling, his mouth open.

“Mmmmmm. Mmmmmm.” Judy strokes Sayon’s chin with his index finger, drawing it across his mouth from one corner to another. “Relax your face.”

“Aaaaa.”

Judy turns to me. “Cerebral palsy. The muscles in his face are too tense. It is very hard for him to shut his mouth.”

I look more closely at Sayon’s mouth. His smile is constant, never leaving his face for a second. If ever he relaxes his mouth, the smile goes away, but only ever for a moment. His smile, I see now, is like an elastic reflex: anything that Judy says makes it snap back into place. But it is more than that - Sayon genuinely finds everything funny. His eyes sparkle with mirth all the time. But when you find everything funny, basic speech sounds are nigh on impossible.

Judy tries a bit more, but by now Sayon is laughing again, high-pitched giggles filling the room. Judy picks him up and turns him around to face him.

Sayon starts to bite his shoulder, which sets him off into fits of laughter again.

“So today you want to play, huh? That’s OK,” smiles Judy, “today we play.” He takes Sayon’s bib and mops his shoulder, which is soaking wet.

“I love this boy. If ever I feel down, I know being with him will make me feel good again.”

I realise that my own face feels a little tired: all three of us have been smiling and laughing non-stop throughout.

Judy puts Sayon gently on the mat, stands up, and heaves him up onto his shoulder to take him back to class.

“Oof! This is getting more and more difficult! You’ve been eating lots of dosas I see!”

Sayon fixes his mischevious eyes on me over Judy’s shoulder, and beams at me as they leave the room.

I am sorry to see him go. Thank you, Sayon. You have taught me more than you can possibly know.

The Prisoner

Fri, 12 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000

I first meet Lokesh at the MD building, a Satya Special School outreach branch on the outskirts of Pondicherry with a big green garden and multi-coloured plastic playground. Fifty or so children are sitting on the lawn when we arrive, about to start a morning yoga session. As usual, they all turn and smile at me, confident. In most of the children it is hard to diagnose any condition with a quick glance. I will learn soon enough that it is often hard to tell without spending time with each child individually. This school is a mixed ability school, for children with varying levels of physical and mental conditions from light to severe.

My speech therapist friend Judy scans the crowd, and says “Our kids are not here. Let’s go and find them.” Back at the main school building are half a dozen ill-lit rooms, full of children. One room is locked from the outside. He opens the latch and goes inside - ten children are sitting at tables, on the floor, walking around, seemingly without instruction or purpose. Lying on the floor in the middle of the room is Lokesh. Judy approaches him carefully, squats down, and whispers into his ear. Lokesh does not move, or show any recognition of any kind. Judy stands up and walks back towards me.

“This is Lokesh. He is severely autistic. And drugged out of his mind.” He explains that doctors here favour huge doses of sedatives that they administer indiscriminately. “He used to be so alive, full of energy. But sometimes he lost control, and this is what happened.”

We sit down looking out at the yoga session on the lawn. A child runs around the group in circles, holding a branch, barely looking where he is going. A teacher approaches him. “I can’t stand that man,” says Judy. “That boy has ADHD, and apart from being full of energy, is perfectly nice, as long as you approach him carefully, and gently. This man likes to provoke him.” The man grabs the stick of out the boy’s hand, and pushes him towards the rest of the group.

We suddenly become aware of someone standing behind us. It is Lokesh. He eyes me warily, and sits down next to Judy. As Judy talks to him, Lokesh puts his hand on his throat.

“He used to grab my throat as if he was trying to tear it out. Now he just wants to touch me.”

Judy tells him gently that it is Friday morning, the time for his session, and does he want to come to the speech therapy room with him?

Lokesh is playing with a blunt pencil in his hands, that he holds tightly as Judy leads him to his room, and then drops just outside the door.

The speech therapy room is bare except for a row of cupboards lining one side, a table and chair pushed out of the way and a musty, purple cushioned mat in the centre.

Judy sits down with Lokesh on the mat. As Judy pronounces sounds that he wants Lokesh to reproduce, Lokesh looks at him mute, and lies down, facing away from Judy. As he looks at me, I look away, aware that he seems uncomfortable in my presence. Previously, all the children that I have seen here will respond to a smile if they are able to smile in the first place. Lokesh glares, and then, his eyes slowly close.

His arms start to tremble violently.

“The drugs,” says Judy.

Judy calms him, touching him on his back and arms. Lokesh allows him to do it for some time, then throws his arms off. All throughout the session, he has not made a single sound.

“Last year he used his voice. Since he was put on these drugs, nothing.”

Judy continues to caress him, humming sounds to him, warm sounds like “Mmmmm” and “Aaaaa”. This is no longer a speech therapy session, but an act of almost parental love, showing Lokesh that he is safe, with somebody who loves him, in a place that he can relax.

Judy continues to talk to Lokesh, reassuring him with his voice, stroking him when Lokesh wants him to, holding his hand when he doesn’t.

“At the moment I see each child for fifteen minutes, twice a week,” he says. “I need to see Lokesh every day. Soon we will open a special centre for autistic children where I will be based full-time. I hope he can come there.”

Lokesh’s fifteen minutes are up. His eyes are half-closed, his eyeballs juddering inside their sockets.

“Lok-eeesh,” whispers Judy. “Time to go back to class.” He tries to lift him up to sitting.

For the first time, Lokesh uses his voice: a high, short, shrill whimper.

“He is very sensitive to noise. He likes my room because it is quiet, unlike his classroom.”

It seems to me that this is only part of the reason - he wants to stay with Judy, this open, generous, wonderful man who loves these children while they are in his room as if they were his own.

Judy tries to lift him up again, and Lokesh screams, louder this time. Now his eyes are open, seemingly fixed on me.

I leave the room, and two minutes later Judy emerges with Lokesh in his arms, and carries him back to his classroom, where he lies down again on the mat, still, in silence.

Their next fifteen minute session will be in four days time.

Improvisation and the Body

Tue, 09 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Coltrane on sparkling form in the SoulTrane sessions

I love Carnatic music for many reasons, but the reason that is easiest to explain, and easiest for others to hear, is the way that the masters improvise. When I say improvise, I am not talking about improvisation in the way that I previously thought of it: musicians playing notes. I used to play jazz, and went to workshops on improvisation, where the emphasis was on self-expression. The Carnatic way of improvisation is different altogether: the goal of improvisation is to bring about the tiniest nuances in the mode, or raga itself: the musician is a vehicle for the highest expression of beauty that the palette of vibrations that make up the raga can conjure up. It is less about expressing yourself, and more about expressing that which is inexpressible. It is less about the musician, and more about getting to the greatest heights possible in a particular mood.

A typical jazz woodshedding practice session

Musicians in jazz often improvise fast - especially so since many of them follow John Coltrane, known for his phenomenal ‘sheets of sound’ technique. In the worst cases, playing fast can become a goal in and of itself, a display of pure technique with no regard for how musical or not it may sound. The technical skills on display are honed by years of ‘woodshedding’ - practising flurries of notes, chord structures and phrase patterns ad infinitum.

Carnatic music is a different beast entirely. The masters have much less to work with. Firstly, the mood in jazz is created by its shifting chord patterns, and good solos are built by creating rhythmic patterns of tension and release around these changing chords. Carnatic music has no chords at all - just one mode, or raga, that evokes a particular mood. Where jazz musicians can create tension by playing ‘out’ of the scale, and carve out a release by going back ‘in’, Carnatic musicians only play ‘in’.

Where jazz musicians often work with complex chords, where every note both in the chord and around it are available for improvisation in an order, Carnatic musicians are limited to allowable sequences of notes, which often changing depending on whether the phrase is going up or down. Jazz chords often cram clusters of notes together in dissonance: many ragas distinguish themselves by emitting key notes in a scale. Within a single phrase, on a single chord, a jazz musician may allow themselves to explore all twelve semitones, either as held notes or in passing.

In Carnatic, the musicians rarely have more than five or six: half of the available raw material in jazz.

Where jazz adds improvisational possibilities, Carnatic takes them away.

The incomparable Bombay Jayashree

Live concerts generally last from two to three hours, in which the musicians will play just a few different ragas, improvising throughout.

There are two things absolutely astonishing here: 1) with all the limitations discussed above, the musicians can keep your rapt attention with endless invention. I have never experienced time in a concert passing as quickly as in a Carnatic concert: the hours become minutes in the hands of a real master. The improvisational phrases layer on top of one another, higher and higher, without undue repetition or growing stale. 2) the musicians can change from one raga to the next in a heartbeat, flawlessly. Think about this for a second: you must spend an hour improvising with just a few notes at your disposal, and then when the next piece begins, all the notes change, and you must instantly be inside the new space. It is like giving a complex technical lecture in one language for an hour, and then changing to another topic and continuing the lecture in another language. This happens several times during a concert: each time a different topic and language.

Yusef Lateef, The Plum Blossom, from Eastern Sounds

The first point is a marvel of technique and ideation: how musicians can keep your interest for long periods of time with few raw materials. It has been done in jazz: the wonderful modal jazz musician Yusef Lateef plays a five-note Chinese flute on his seminal Eastern Sounds album, and the solo is so fluid and inventive that if it wasn’t pointed out to you, you’d never notice. But his solo lasts a minute and a half: the forty minute improvisations in Carnatic are another thing altogether.

It is the second point that I want to talk about here, particularly in regard to vocalists: how can singers play ‘inside’ a scale, with only a few notes at their disposal? To play ‘out’ would be to play a different raga altogether, and would bring down the wrath of the audience upon the performer’s head. How can they do it at the rapidity of John Coltrane’s sheets of sound, using only their voice, without ever making mistakes in pitch? And even if they can do it for one raga or mood, how can they change raga entirely, and continue at the same level of flawless execution, without a single mistake?

Prodigious levels of technique and concentration are a given. But are there devices that they can use to allow them, not to search for the notes each time, but instead just to locate them?

Many Western musical traditions use auralisation - hearing the note before you sing it. It turns out that the key to Carnatic improvisation is not to think about the sound of the notes at all, but to feel them in your body. Tantric tradition has a handy means of doing this: the seven chakras located throughout the body.

swara	solfege	note	chakra	position
Sa	Do	C	Muladhara	under the spine, perineum
Ri	Re	C# / D	Svadhishthana	base of the spine, to the rear
Ga	Mi	D# / E	Nabhi	stomach
Ma	Fa	F / F#	Anahat	chest
Pa	Sol	G	Vishuddhi	throat
Da	La	G# / A	Agnya	third eye
Ni	Ti	Bb / B	Bindu	dip in back of head
Sa	Do	C	Sahasrara	crown

Performers are encouraged not to remember the pitch of each note in a raga, but to feel it as a vibration in each chakra in the body. This can be unnerving at first, but with practice, the note becomes located firmly as primarily a physical feeling, a series of vibrations in the body. When you want to sing a note, you merely reproduce the sensation. It completely transforms practice sessions - instead of listening, you start to seek responses from your whole body. I look forward to coming back to this theme when my practice and improvisational skills are more embedded.

An Audience of One

Sun, 17 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

I have always been interested in how music and sound affects an audience, except that my experience has mostly been to large audiences, where the faces are often hidden from view by the blinding lights on stage. If music can move thousands at a concert, what imapct could it have if you were one on one, concentrating entirely on the energy and mood of the person in front of you? What magic could you create with an audience of one?

I have just completed a short four-day course in sound healing with Aurelio from Svaram. When I first cam across him, it was as a musical instrument maker. His gongs, chimes, percussion instruments and stones are amongst the most resonant, beautiful sound-making instruments I have ever come across.

I subsequently found out he is a healer, and as I continue my investigations into music and medicine, it was a gift to see this short course coming up when I was free.

Sound healing and music therapy are not the same thing. Music therapy is frequently understood in a Western context as related to psychology - most music therapy training in the West involves psychological frameworks, and most music therapists are qualified psychologists.

This has never made much sense to me. I understand music, and by extension, sound as a magical, mystical practice that brings together performance, ritual, art and communication, and the formalised Western context has little room for magic or mysticism.

And so it was with great excitement that I discovered, over the period of these four short days, what sound healing is, and what role it can play.

Waiting for the audience to lie down at Aurelio's Sound Bath

First, a word about sonic experiences. I am having ever deeper experiences through sound here. My first was at a sound bath, Aurelio’s immersive concert where the audience lie on the ground and are ‘washed’ by the musicians with their instruments. Over the course of an hour, I went in and out of dreaming, and woke up at the end of the session deeply refreshed and calm.

The next, deeper level was at the Tibetan bowls workshop with Michael Ormiston in London, where I was taken into a delicious state of vivid lucidity by the sound of Tibetan singing bowls, those magical musical instruments that make the warmest, most enveloping sounds you will ever hear.

Now, at this course, we were taught the basics of the relationship between sound and healing.

Intent and Receptivity

The two most important elements of any healing session, or any sound or music session for that matter, are the intent of the performer, and the receptivity of the listener. Sound is merely the carrier of your consciousness - if your intent is focussed and sensitive, and the audience is open, it is almost impossible not to have the desired effect.

What a perfect framework for understanding music! It explains so much to me - why I find so much pop music depressing, for example. It is because the intent is cynical - to make money - and the receptivity is manufactured - through a carefully calculated, huge marketing spend.

It also explains why I think the Necks are the best band on the planet - their intent is never anything less than the desire to explore what is possible on stage, and to make something entirely new that pushes their creativity to its limit and beyond.

When I was a reviewer - a pointless exercise - I scored the record on one thing alone: how sincere the artists were. Without realising it, I was reproducing Aurelio’s framework for understanding sound - I knew that my own receptivity would change from day to day, so I stopped reviewing based on whether I liked a record, and started to think instead about what the artists actually wanted from the record in the first place.

One day was spent on theory of harmonics in an Indian context - the role of sound in creation and life itself. One day was spent on massage - understanding the five elements (earth, water, air, fire, ether) as touch. And one day was spent on practical sessions, using volunteers from the course.

This was the most remarkable part of the course - in all three practical sessions, the participants ‘went under’ straight away, and at the end of the session had the most blissed out look on their faces, as if they had just emerged from the deepest sleep of their lives, all in the space of a twenty minute session. Sometimes we used Tibetan bowls, sometimes strings or voice. When asked to describe what they felt, they described not the sound itself, but the emotions that we were directing towards them: love, warmth, caring.

Performing to a large audience now holds little interest for me - the next stage in my life as a musician is to understand what it really is to perform for just one person. I can’t wait to see where this takes me next.

Maurice El Medioni

Sun, 10 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Performing with Lili Labassi, Canastel, Oran 1956

I was first introduced to Maurice’s music by Ben Mandelson and the good folk at Piranha Records.

Maurice was a total joy to listen to: an eighty-something year old pianist who became alive at the piano, with a driving Latin left hand and a fluttering, Arabic right hand. He was a key figure in the Golden Years of Algerian Music, just before the War of Independence, one of the bloodiest anti-colonial struggles of the 20th century, and is recognised as one of the fathers of modern Algerian music, collaborating in recent years with Khaled, who called him the godfather of rai.

On the road with the Mahieddine Theatre Company, Algeria, 1950s - Maurice in scarf standing on the right

An offer from Josephine of Yad Arts to collaborate with this piano legend led to shows in London, Los Angeles and Moscow, and I had the opportunity to speak with him at length about his life and work.

One day I received a package in the post: Maurice’s personal archive of audio and TV recordings spanning fifty years, and a hand-written autobiography, eighty pages of A4.

At the time I was studying for an MMus in Ethnomusicology at SOAS, University of London. I translated his autobiography from French, wrote coursework about him, and essentially fell in love with this gentle genius whose life had seen so much of the 20th century’s defining moments.

He writes his life story in pictures, and through contacts in Paris, Joann Sfar, the wonderful French cartoonist - author of Le Chat Du Rabbin, amongst others - was interested to work on an animated novel of his life. The issue was timing: Joann had just started working on his epic film biography of Gainsbourg, and so the moment was lost.

Maurice is still going strong, having moved to Israel in recent years from Marseille to be with his children. This project is my way of saying thank you to him for those years of inspiration and good music, and for showing me how anyone can age with bags of style and good humour.

Together with BBC Radio 3’s Max Reinhardt, I am collecting essays and articles about his life, to be published along with his autobiography by Repeater Books in May 2017.

Update: see my blogpost about publishing the book, here

Blurb

The book tells the story of how Maurice learnt to play his unique “orientale” piano fusion style, his experience during WW2 with the Dominican and Puerto Rican GIs, the subsequent golden years of nightlife in Oran, the “Paris of the South”, and horrific years of bloodshed that followed in the Algerian war of Independence, his exile from Algeria, his difficulties assimilating into Israel as an “unwanted” Sephardi artist in the early 1960s, his move to Paris and then Marseilles, and an account of emigre life and nightlife there amongst North African Jewish communities.

The Other Seder Quartet

Fri, 01 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Live music commissioned for the Other Seder at the Tricycle Theatre, directed by Mark Rosenblatt for Yad Arts and JCC London.

We were commissioned to write music for the four short plays that make up the evening.

Egypt Jazz - is inspired by John Zorn’s Masada Trio. African - is inspired by the genius of Konono No. 3 Romanian - is inspired by the Romanian gypsy recordings of Gabi Lunca and Nicolae Gutsa.

Below is a video of the recording of Romanian, at Moshikop’s beautiful studio in Walthamstow, East London.

Blurb

The JCC reprises its Other Seder for a fifth consecutive year with the premiere of four new plays by leading international playwrights.

Performed by an ensemble cast and directed by Mark Rosenblatt, The JCC presents four short interpretations of freedom, inspired by the four cups of wine drunk at the Seder. Written by Arnold Wesker, Eve Ensler, Ryan Craig and Amy Rosenthal and cut with live music from a Seder House Band.

Liberation by Amy Rosenthal Amy Rosenthal’s previous plays include Henna Night and Jerusalem Syndrome.

Deliverance by Arnold Wesker Arnold Wesker is the author of 44 plays including Chicken Soup with Barley, Roots, I’m Talking about Jerusalem, Shylock and Annie Wobbler.

Redemption by Ryan Craig Ryan Craig’s plays include The Glass Room, Our Class and The Holy Rosenbergs which opens at the National Theatre.

Independence by Eve Ensler Eve Ensler is a playwright, performer and activist whose 13 plays include most famously The Vagina Monologues.

DJ-ing

Sat, 12 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

I got my first radio DJ-ing gig at University as Head of Late Night Music for Oxygen 107.9FM in Oxford. It was the UK’s first full-time, student-run FM radio station, and I was in charge of airtime five hours a night, seven days a week.

I used to present my own show, Two Percent Jazz, with friends and fellow music heads Jim Giles and Arnab Chatterjee: it was as close as we could get to Gilles Peterson, our common hero. We played jazz, global hip-hop, brazilian, mashups and everything else we could get our hands on.

We set up a weekly club event, Umbrella - the Sunday Social, in Oxford as a collective with artists and DJs.

The next year I was in Russia, and got a spot at 106.8FM, Moscow. I was playing every Sunday at Propaganda, a legendary Moscow club, and every Thursday was a guest from 8-10pm.

From there, I began to take DJ-ing more seriously. Back in London, we set up Radio Gagarin, a long-running celebration of all things Central and Eastern Europe at the infamous Notting Hill Arts Club, and I began to get international bookings too: as part of the Shtetl Superstars Sound System, an offshoot of the Shtetl Superstars band with Berlin DJ Yuriy Gurzhy, and as a solo DJ, armed with a bag of records, my trumpet and a KAOSS pad.

I had been making mixtapes since my school days (mostly hip-hop, soul, funk and jazz), and started making mixes like the East End Dancefloor Explosion mix above.

DJ-ing taught me a lot about music - how to read a crowd, how to feel the energy in a room, how to build tempo slowly over time. I still use a lot of the lessons learned in DJ-ing in live performance now, no matter what kind of show it is.

Watch

Sat, 21 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Leah’s intensely personal radio portrait of her father’s Alzheimers was one of the most moving projects I’ve been involved in, and even though the music was written over a short period in 2004, Leah’s words continue to resonate with me to this day.

From the original radio play, ‘Watch’ was reborn as a film, and was nominated for an AHRC Inspiration Award – Best film inspired by arts and humanities research in 2015.

Blurb

A unique and creative collaboration between spoken word poet Leah Thorn and filmmaker Ewan Golder, ‘watch’ uses Super 8 film, poetry, storytelling and photography to reveal the centrality of memory to identity and the impact of dementia on a father/daughter relationship.

With a haunting original soundscape by Lemez Lovas and Moshik Kop, ‘watch’ is a deeply personal and moving film exploring loss, vulnerability, survival and memorialisation. The production was made possible by a Leverhulme Trust Artist Residency in the Kent Academic Primary Care Unit at the University of Kent and the England Centre for Practice Development at Canterbury Christ Church University.

About Leah

Leah at a TedX event.

Leah is a spoken word poet, who works in collaboration with film-makers, dancers and musicians. At the heart of her poetry is the autobiographical exploration of identity and of issues of liberation. She is published through performance, film and anthologies and magazines in England and the United States.

Leah is currently Leverhulme Trust artist-in-residence in the University of Kent Academic Primary Care Unit and the England Centre for Practice Development at Canterbury Christ Church University. During the residency, Leah will use poetry to explore the life experiences of women in their 60’s.

You can find out more about Leah on her site, here.

Esoteric Music - Tibetan Singing Bowls and Khoomi Overtone Singing

Mon, 16 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

My Introduction

During my time in India, I am being initiated slowly into esoteric music practices.

It started with my morning vocal workshops with the Adishakti actors, and in particular Nimmy Raphael. My singing and music theory classes with her soon turned into an exploration of the limits of her voice, and the extraordinary sounds she can make at the very edge of vocalization. There was something of Meredith Monk in her voice, spanning 3 - 4 octaves, capable of great expressive power.

Kathakali singers and performers

In our sessions we talked a great deal about esoteric and spiritual voice traditions. Her guru and the founder of Adishakti, Veenapani Chawla, had brought Tibetan monks from their exiled enclave in Karnataka to train the actors in their ritual practice.

They had learnt Kathakali padam singing, the stylized Sanskrit chanting that accompanies Kathakali theatre, with its swinging head movements that reminded me so much of ultra-Orthodox Jews davening at the Wailing Wall.

They studied the ancient Indian treatise on the arts and breathing, the Natyashatra, and built on its theory of rasas - the evocation of the nine core emotions through breathing patterns.

illustration from the Natya Shastra

They studied Sanskrit shlokas from the Rig Veda, the incantations at the heart of Hindu spiritual tradition, from Dr Sampadananda Mishra, with whom I am lucky enough to be getting my own Sanskrit lessons.

And so back in London in November, I jumped at the chance to delve further into two traditions in a single day - Tibetan Singing Bowls and Mongolian Khoomi Throat Singing, with longtime practitioners Michael Ormiston and Candida Valentino.

The Tibetan Bowl Session was extraordinary. It started with a performance on the small brass bowls, which took me into a deep, meditative state. I was fully awake - and could hear the performers moving around the room, but as they walked up behind me and played the bowls in my ears, I experienced the change in dynamic as a narcotic rush that sent me into a semi-conscious state of pure pleasure. As the performance came to a close, I felt as if in a lucid dream. No amount of money in the world could have made me open my eyes to bring that feeling to a premature end.

In the afternoon was an initiation into Khoomi throat singing, as practised in Mongolia. If you haven’t heard it before, it is the art of singing more than one note at once, using the vocal apparatus to highlight overtones in the voice.

We learnt ‘palette style’ - using the position of the tongue against the soft and hard palette in the roof of the mouth to create the singing overtones, but subsequently I have had some success in using the lips and throat too.

It was a fantastic workshop that really opened my eyes and ears to the relationship between pure sound and healing. The khoomi session was even more exciting, as it showed me that to heal another, you don’t even need any instruments, but only your voice. More experiments coming soon.

World music reviews, guides and sleeve notes

Fri, 30 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

I was an in-house reviewer for Songlines magazines for several years, and also wrote for fRoots, The Rough Guide to World Music and others. I liked being up to date with new releases, I got plenty of good music through the post and it kept me in sandwiches while I was writing them.

But reviewing other people’s music in print is a terrible thing to do, for three key reasons:

(1) What anyone thinks about a piece of art can change from day to day
(2) In a small scene like world music, you often have personal relatioships with many of the artists and label owners whose music gets sent to you
(3) The ratio between how much time artists spend thinking about reviews, and how much time reviewers spend writing them is at least a thousand to one.

Sometimes, like on the Ersatz Musika review below, I really screwed up - not liking the CD on the day it came, and then realising how wonderful it actually was later on.

After that experience, I graded my reviews on one thing alone - how geniune I thought the release was. If it felt like a labour of love, no matter what I thought of the actual music, I’d grade it high, and if it felt cynical, I had no mercy. As you can see below, I was generally pretty kind.

Rough Guide To World Music

Ukraine discography and reviews, The Rough Guide to World Music, (Vol 2, 3rd Edition): Europe and Asia

Sleeve Notes

Artist Guides

Reviews (Songlines)

* Moshe Berlin Ensemble — Aneinu - Hasidic Orthodox Music from the Festival of the Torah in Jerusalem

Reviews (fRoots)

La Palestine - Douze Points?

Thu, 29 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Blurb

The Eurovision song contest is the most famous singing competition in the world. Now, Palestine want to join. But the road to Eurovision glory is paved with bureaucratic hurdles Palestinians hope that inclusion in the contest will; “show the world the real face of Palestine”. But as Palestine is not recognised as a country in its own right, it depends on the full backing of other European countries. As Dr Daibis states; “If we are accepted in the Eurovision, it will be the birth of a new era”.

Transcript

Israel/Palestine - Palestine’s Eurovision Entry - 8 min [8 May 2007]

Scene 1

00:00:02:00- 00:02:02:00 Colour Bars

00:02:02 Picture starts (Press conference in Ramallah)

00:02.16:00- 00:02: 54: VO: It started as a television experiment by a few European broadcasters after the second WW but now the ESC is one of the most hotly contested and widely watched shows in the world. But participation has long been open to countries beyond Europe, with singers from North Africa, the Caucasus and Israel flying the flag on stage. Now, the Palestinians want to join too – and it has been announced that in 2008 Palestine will be seeking full participation for the first time in the world’s most famous singing competition.

Visuals: News conference announcing the Palestinian bid for Eurovision (Ramallah); Musicians playing the Eurovision tune on kanoun and hand drum; busy streets in Jerusalem’s Old City; music shops in East and West Jerusalem; posters of Palestinian and Israeli singers; Sabreen concert

Musical Soundtrack: Eurovision tune played on traditional Arabic instruments- canoun and hand drum; Wissam Murad (Palestinian singer) music (traditional/jazz fusion music)

Scene 2

00:03.03:00- 00:03: 24:00 :Rasmus Nielsen, ‘Superflex’- ‘Palestinian Eurovision’ Partner: (Press conference Ramallah) ‘It’s an incredible moment for the Palestinian music scene as well to present itself on an international scale. So I think from the pint of view of the Eurovision community, we should see this as an important moment for opening up and letting Palestinians participate in an international song competition.’

00:03:25:00- :00:03:41:00 Said Murad, Composer, Sabreen Association for Artistic Development: “It will help showing the real face of Palestinians. Palestinians are a nation, and they have everything like any other nation, and this is what we’re trying to show through music.”

00:03:42:00 – 00:04:12:00 Dr. Fadia Daibas ,Spokeswoman, Sabreen Association for Artistic Development: “Music has always been a central part of Palestinian culture, in the camp, in the village in the city - it has been a way of expressing Palestinians’ opinions, Plestinians’ feelings. Also love music, in weddings, in the debke (national folkdance), where all the dancers hold each other’s hands and they dance to folklore music. This is very common in Palestine. It is also as a way of expressing joy and happiness.”

Visuals: Speakers (Nielsen at press conference Ramallah, Murad in recording studio East Jerusalem, Daibas in Ramallah hotel); images of Palestinian women dancing at a traditional wedding over part of Dr Daibas interview

Musical soundtrack: Drumming at Palestinian wedding, clapping etc

Scene 3

00:04:17:00-00:04:45:00 VO: But the road to Eurovision glory is paved with bureaucratic hurdles. First of all the state TV network – in this case the Palestine Broadcasting Corporation or PBC – must be accepted as an active member of the European Broadcasting Union or EBU – that’s the club of European TV networks that organise the competition. A partner from the Eurovision veterans Denmark, has been enlisted to help with the red tape.

Visuals over VO: Musicians on concert stage; singer and engineer in recording studio session, technical equipment

00:04:46:00 – 00:05:12:00 Rasmus Nielsen: ‘Superflex’- ‘Palestinian Eurovision’ Partner: PBC is already an approved participant of the EBU and it is recognised as an national TV channel, and we have applied for an active membership. Whether or not this will be approved we do not know yet – it is an application procedure that we are in the middle of. “

Scene 4

00:05:14:00- 00:05:18:00 VO: Out on the street, the reaction to the news is surprised, but confident. (visuals of busy street in Jerusalem)

00:05:20:00- 00:05:51:00 Two young girls: “ We think that for Palestine to be in the Eurovision contest is a fantastic opportunity. For one I think it gives the interernational communities opportunity to acknowledge Palestine, and the music of Palestine, and also its a good opportunity for Palestinians themselves to be motivated to make their music, which is wonderful, to get it out there and make it international.

00:05:52:00- 00:06:05:00 Internet café man: I think the idea to present Palestine is a very nice idea. At least people could know the Palestinian culture, and see what kinds of songs we have. It reflects about people living in Palestine. I think it’s a great idea.

00:06:06:00- 00:06:24:00 Old man in souvenir shop: That’s a pride for me, to hear and to know that Palestine will join this contest, and we hope that they will get a real good place in the result, if not the best, at least one of the best.

00:06:25:00- 00:06: 45:00 Man 1 in Old City shop: Long time ago Palestine was in a very good situation, we were making good kind of music, good kind of dancing, debke, you know whats debke? All these kinds of things which were traditional. But now we don’t have it that much. You know, its politics , we don’t have such a good mood for it. But maybe one day we’ll have a good life, we’ll have a peaceful life, so we’ll go back as we used to be.

00:06:46:00- 00:06:50:00 Man 2 in Old City shop: It would be so nice if Palestine won the Eurovision.

Scene 5:

00:06:52:00- 00:07: 15: 00 VO: There are numerous potential obstacles in the way. Firstly – that Palestine is not yet recognised as a country in its own right. But one thing is sure - if they do manage to get accepted for competition in Eurovision 2008, the organisers believe it could help to persuade the world that Palestinians have much more to say than the terrible pictures that we see in the news. ( Visuals- Musicians and singers in live concert)

00:07:18:00- 00:07:35:00 Dr Fadia Daibas, Spokeswoman, Sabreen Association for Artistic Development: “ If we are accepted in the Eurovision, and Palestine is also winning the Eurovision competition that would be a very important, a very significant day for all Palestinians all over the world. It will mean a birth of a new era for all Palestinians in the world.

00:07:36:00 2 young girls: La Palestine, deuze point!

Forbidden Games

Thu, 29 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

A short report on video games and propaganda in the Middle East. The terribly serious tone seems a bit dated now, but this was a fascinating report to make.

For more background on games and propaganda in context, see this Guardian article.

Full Transcript

Ideological gaming in the Middle East

Report by DigressMedia, Jerusalem

Reporter intro to camera: Space Invaders. Super Mario Brothers. Sonic the Hedgehog. Videogames have come a long way since those innocent days. Now with a global market worth billions of dollars annually, games creators have come to realise that this can be more than mere entertainment. Videogames have now become the latest ideological weapon in the battle for young hearts and minds

Visuals: action from US war game. US soldiers corner a single Arab fighter.

Voiceover: Video games are a multi-billion dollar industry. And in the very popular war games, a common scenario turns the player into an imaginary US soldier shooting down groups of Arab terrorists. But there’s a digital backlash brewing in the Middle East, where programmers are creating games from the opposite perspective. (Visuals: Galit Elat teaching child to play) Galit Elat is the director of the Israel Centre for Digital Art. Her exhibition “Forbidden Games” brings together videogames from radically different ideologies.

Galit Elat: Most of the games are developed with the West’s perspective. So the terrorists are always Arabs, the bad guys are Arabs, the good guys are American or European or Israelis. And they’ve developed different games so that children can identify themselves with heroes that are Arabs, and not Americans.

V/O: The most violent games are to be found in the bomb shelter underneath the building. The Night of Bush Capturing is a direct adaptation of an American game called the Quest for Saddam. The player takes on the role of an Arab fighter entering a US military camp, shooting American soldiers, and attempting to capture President Bush.

Visuals: Galit Elat going downstairs to bomb shelter, walking through dark corridors, playing game in darkness, action from the game.

Galit Elat playing game: I’m killing Americans. And I think I’m part of Al Qaeda forces. I’m more interested in the ideological aspect behind the games and less about the experience of playing the games themselves. This is the reason the games are here. Oh someone killed me.

Visuals: end of game: “You got killed. Do you want to try again? Yes/No.”

V/O: Special Force is a game developed by Hezbollah. It begins with a training camp, where players practise shooting on the portraits of Israeli leaders. Then they go out and fight Israeli soldiers in South Lebanon.

Visuals: opening title sequence from Special Force. Shooting practice at head of former Israeli defence minister.

Galit Elat playing game: From what I heard it’s a big hit in Ramallah. A lot of young people playing this game.

Visuals: Galit Elat teaching children to play, action from game, child playing.

Galit Elat: I’m not for these games. For me they are forbidden. But still I open it to the public because one can’t find part of the games here on the market. One has to explore Ramallah or other places, to have other sources to get the games. So in a way I open up something that I think is forbidden.

Visuals: action from Stone Throwers game - Palestinian demonstrator in front of Al Aqsa Mosque throwing stones at Israeli soldiers and then dying.

V/O: One room contains two very different perspectives on the Palestinian Uprising or Intifada. A game from Syria, called The Stone Throwers, centres on a lone Palestinian demonstrator who throws stones at waves of Israeli soldiers.

Visuals: closing screens from Stone Throwers game. “Game Over. Well maybe you have killed some of the Israeli soldiers in the computer world, but… (photo of martyr’s funeral) This is the real world”

V/O: On the other hand… a game from Israel called Intifada shows a single Israeli soldier facing many Palestinian demonstrators.

Visuals: blonde girl playing. Action from Intifada game. Israeli ambulance picks up wounded soldier. “Game Over - you are just another victim of Arab terrorism.”

Galit Elat: If you think how easy it is to push the button. When you are sitting in a tank, or in an aeroplane. How easy it is to push the button to shoot someone through the screen. I think it’s almost the same feeling as you have here. You don’t communicate. You don’t see face, you don’t see eyes. You just push the button.

Visuals: computer game - bombing a busy market town.

Galit Elat: If we want to live in the Middle East we have to communicate with our neighbours and to understand the culture and the motivation, and to have a more if not open environment at least more understanding. That is what we are trying to do as a cultural centre.

Reporter to camera: A games war is being played out on computer screens all over the world. As the games designers compete with eachother a young generation is spending hours in front of the screen. It may look like child’s play but this media war is no game.

David Lasserson, Holon, Israel.

Digging For Trouble / In the Shadow of King David

Thu, 29 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Yonatan Mizrahi is an archaeologist activist.

He didn’t used to care much about politics, but in his role as chief archaeologist for the separation wall that Israel built to limit access into and out of the West Bank, he came to understand that in Israel, archaeology is politics, and that archaeology gives a narrative that can be used to drive political goals.

In fact, the only way that the wall could be stopped, either temporarily, or indefinitely, was through an archaeological discovery. Palestinian landowners whose land was to be appropriate for the wall begged him to “find something, anything”. He realised that he too wanted desperately to “find something” in every back yard.

He resigned to set up Emeq Shave, or Common Ground, an NGO that represents a non-partisan, apolitical archeological history of Jerusalem, and fights the revisionist-settler movement and its use of archaeology as propaganda. The Palestinian village of Silwan, just outside the Old City walls, is at the forefront of this battle between narrative and reality.

This film tells its story.

Blurb

Living with King David is no fun. Just ask the people of Silwan, a Palestinian village just outside the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem. Since the first excavations began in the mid 19th century, archaeologists have come to this picturesque village, spade in hand, hunting for the legendary biblical city of King David. But in the last ten years, this obsession with antiquities risks ruining the lives of the people who live here as a constant threat of demolition hovers over their homes. Is the past more important than the present? Or is there another agenda - something more sinister than an innocent love of history - hidden amongst the stones?

Awards

SPECIAL JURY PRIZE, Int’l Archeological Film Festival, Nyon, Switzerland

Transcript

Israel/Palestine - Digging for Trouble - 23 min 15 sec [14 January 2008]

Digging for Trouble

Time-coded script of the final cut (23:44 min)

1: Exterior - archaeological site

Montage with music - excavations at an ancient site, people digging in soft early morning light.

Dr Rafael Greenberg (Rafi) sweeps ancient stone road and says in Hebrew:

00:28:20

“Sweeping a 5,000 years old road really does it for me.”

00:35:24 Voice over during visuals of Rafi:

“Dr Raphael Greenberg, a professor at Tel Aviv University, is one of the Israeli most respected archaeologists. These days Dr Greenberg is a worried man.”

2: Exterior - antiquities in the City of David Nat. Park

The title of the film: DIGGING FOR TROUBLE appears during the drive

Driving through a Palestinian village, suddenly the walls of the Old City (with Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa visible) appear in the distance above. Shot of a busy road with the Old city walls in the background and Temple Mount above, CU sign in 3 languages points to the City of David. (music)

VO over the following visuals: people walk above ancient tower, antiquities, man in “Indiana Jones” hat points to ancient stones, religious man reads book, kids run on ancient walls, ELS people under layers of ancient walls, full view of Silwan village under TM, CU of the Al Aqsa.

01:19:09 VO:

“4000 years ago, the heart of ancient Jerusalem, was here.

It was first discovered by the British explorer Charles Warren in the mid 19th c, and since then the search for biblical CoD has fired the imagination of many archaeologists. Today, these impressive antiquities sit in a disputed area of Jerusalem, inside the Palestinian village of Silwan, captured by Israel in 1967 war.

3: Exterior - Pool of Shiloam in CoD

Visuals: CU of the Al Aqsa, MS of church surrounded by old houses, glass mosque in front of densely built houses, Rafi Greenberg talks to a group of people, he walks and people follow him.

01:51:06 VO:

“In such a sensitive place, which stories are told and who tells them can have profound impact on the people who live there. This is what is worrying Dr. Greenberg and he takes his fellow academics around the CoD excavations to explain the problem.

Rafi talks to a group of academics sitting around him at the ancient pool surrounded by stone walls. (in Hebrew)

02:21:07

“I started my archeological career in Jerusalem, in the City of David excavations in 1978 - 82. During that time I got to know the area really well. I also met my wife here, she is still my wife and I have a very personal and meaningful relation to this place. Afterwards I became a lecturer at the TA University. In 2002 I came here to prepare a tour for my students, and to my amazement I discovered that the place I knew changed completely. The place I knew as an Arab village with archaeology, turned into a place with armed guards, with guns ready to be pulled out any moment, a place with amplified symbols of Israeli presence - huge flags, watchtowers, cameras filming 24 hours a day. This was my renewed acquaintance with Jerusalem, with the City of David under the rule of Elad, the settler organization that runs the archeological site here.”

4: Exterior - City of David archaeological park

Visuals: the entrance to the CoD archaeological park, many tourists and soldiers coming in and out, woman playing harp, young women sift through findings and clean them, woman in a hat looks at the view. All over this sequence, there is harp music.

Doron Spielman, spokesperson of ELAD / Ir David Foundation, walks up the steps.

03:55:03 VO:

“For the last 10 years, the City of David national park has been run by a private foundation called ELAD or Ir David. Doron Spielman is their director of development.”

Doron talks standing on top of the CoD with the Temple Mount in the background:

04:09:15

“The Ir David foundation protects what is perhaps maybe the holiest place in the world, or certainly one of the most historical places in the entire world. And we’re standing at no better place in understanding the history of 3 religions in the world today. Here behind me we see the well known Temple Mount, place where originally king Solomon built his Temple 3,000 yrs ago, today we can see the Al Aqsa mosque standing on top of the Temple Mount,. And we are now in the cradle of civilisation for Jerusalem. A place where 3,000 yrs ago King David came in his attempt to conquer Jerusalem.”

Visuals: kids playing on rooftops of Silwan houses, tourists looking at the CoD, kids entering ruins, antiquities.

CU of Doron talking:

04:45:15

“In this location, the Bible is the most accurate text in understanding the life of the city. In fact, 60% of the Bible was written on this little hill, which is only 150 m wide, by 700m long. Every layer, every stone you pull up and you look at the other side of the stone; you can find a clue to a past civilisation. So this place is so rich in archaeology is that of course that’s what draws everybody to get closer, and closer, to pile on top of home, to be closer to the energy of this place.”

5: Exterior - Silwan, at the locked entrance to ancient Pool

Shot of an ancient water pool through closed gates.

Rafi in front of a closed gate, talks to a guard inside a booth (in Hebrew).

05:24:16

Guard: I have instructions not to let any photographers in.

Rafi: Not to let photographers in?

Guard: Only from the ELAD organisation.

Rafi; Is this ELAD’s property?

Guard: Sure, this is private property of ELAD.

Rafi: I don’t think so.

Guard: This is private property of ELAD.

Rafi: It seems to me you’re wrong. I think it’s a public area.

Guard: this is private property of ELAD. ELAD invested money here, not the state.

Rafi: Do you think there is a difference between ELAD and the state?

Guard: Yes, there is. ELAD is the only one, for now, who takes care of the site. The state didn’t give any money for this.

Rafi: Doesn’t the state give any money to ELAD?

Guard: Not even a shekel…(camera moves to film the guard) Excuse me, why are you filming? (smiling)

Rafi: Because it interests her. I think this excavations area is public area. It was always public. There used to be a passage here. Then they made excavations here and called them rescue excavations as they said they had to repair the sewage system here.

Guard: The sewage exploded here and then they discovered the pool here.

Rafi: It belongs to ELAD?

Guard: Sure, ELAD paid for all this.

Rafi: Ok. So this belongs to ELAD. Thanks.

Shot of a lock over closed gate.

6: Exterior - street in the village of Silwan

Rafi Greenberg walks through Silwan, passing by densely built area. Man has a haircut in barber shop, elder man stands on the street, man sweeps the street, a girl looks from her balcony. (music)

Rafi talks standing on a Silwan street and pointing around.

Intercuts: shots of ancient tombs underneath densely built houses, closed gate, man with a wheelbarrow walks on ancient walls.

06:59:11

“So we have here to our right historical village of Silwan - there are many antiquities interspersed with the modern buildings-we can actually see some parts of the bedrock cliff and the tombs, the ancient tombs that were cut into that cliff, about 700 - 800 BC. And then over on this side is the archaeological park of the City of David. It’s theoretically open to the public - in practice however, Silwanis, the people living here, have no part in this park, they don’t enter the park, they don’t have any opportunity to see its antiquities or to study them.”

7: Interior - at the entrance to the Warren Shaft

Doron walks down the steps in the park, opens the gate to a building, walks down iron stairs:

07:59:21 “This is the ancient tunnel that he discovered when he came to Jerusalem in 1867.”

Doron walks through a concrete tunnel towards the shaft. He speaks on top of the shaft:

08:11:20 “We’re looking, carved into solid bedrock an opening that goes down into the middle of the earth, underneath the city walls, to the water source. You see the Canaanites the progenitors of the Jebusites, in 1850 BCE, dug this underground shaft, which brought people underneath the city walls to the water. Why is this so fantastic? There are few places in the world where you can stand and say- no question they were here. I can tell you with certainty that David, Solomon, Batsheva, Jeremiah, Isaiah, go through all the prophets and all the kings of the ancient world, perhaps the queen of Sheba, they all stood here and they walk down this very shaft- because this was the only way to gather water from the city.

Doron walks down the steps in the narrow deep shaft:

09:07:05 “Come on, join the fun!”

Tourists walk down the shaft and through tunnels. Inside a dark underground chamber, a guide speaks to a group of tourists:

09:16:02 Guide: “Until about 200 years ago, no one had any idea where the City of David is. And that changed in 1860 when a British man came to Israel, his name was Captain Charles Warren. And he came to Israel and he wanted to dig underneath the Temple Mount. And why did he want to dig there? Any ideas?”

09:40:23 A tourist: “Looking for treasure”

09:42:00 Guide: “Looking for treasures, exactly.”

Doron inside the shaft, his face lit by eerie orange light:

09:47:14

“Without a doubt we have experienced the most explosive tourism in the entire country. I think this is due to the fact that just now these incredible archaeological finds which have enormous importance for the entire world have come to light. And the archaeology itself speaks, this is not just the stone, this wall is not just a wall, I’m not touching just the stone here, I’m touching this stone I can feel the chisel made by the Canaanites as they made this stone, I feel king David’s hand as I put my hand on this stone.

8: Exterior - Silwan, background of ancient walls with visitors

Visuals: LS of woman and boy walk on the Silwan street with the walls of the Old City overlooking it, Rafi walks in Silwan, CU of the walls of the Old City, tourists view the area from above. (sound of muezzin)

Rafi speaks on the street, in front of the fence surrounding the CoD:

Intercuts: tourists walk around the park, man with a wheelbarrow runs, LS kids play on the ancient walls, sign City of David, guard holding a gun walks in front of the entrance to the CoD

10:33:20

“Back in the 70s ad 80s when I excavated here, and afterwards when area began to be developed, it was developed by Jerusalem Municipality as a public park accessible to anyone, and it was supposed to represent part of the mosaic of cultures of Jerusalem.

What has happened in recent years is that ELAD settlers group has volunteered to take on the management of the entire archaeological park - they’re not doing this out if kindness or good will but as part of their program to take over and occupy large parts of Silwan and make it Jewish. So they have their own slant on the history of this region- it begins more or less at the time of David and then history ends with the destruction of the 2nd temple only to be renewed with their own settlement history or with early Zionist or the 19th C Jewish settlement. This is the ELAD view, and they are entitled to their view as is everyone in Jerusalem. But what has happened is that the government has handed over the keys metaphorically and physically to the ELAD organization and they now control the entire site, they are using their control of these antiquities to control all of Silwan. So it’s a very highly politicized approach to the way antiquities are excavated and presented and this is what troubles me.”

9: Exterior - the village of Silwan

Visuals: houses with Israeli flag inside Silwan, Jewish religious man sits on a rock looking around, Arab woman on her veranda with grapes, veiled woman walks down the street with a little girl, house with laundry.

12:17:02 VO:

In 2004, a city plan to enlarge the archaeological park called for demolition of 88 houses here in Silwan. After months of protests by Palestinian, Israeli and international activists, the demolishing order was put on hold, but for many, the threat of losing their house remains real.

Abed Shaludi talks to a group of activists (in Hebrew), Rafi stands next to him listening:

12:38:17

“Listen, we’re sitting on a barrel of explosives here. It can explode at any moment. It’s not good for us, nor for you. Not for my children, nor for yours.”

12:51:16
VO: Abed Shaludi, who lives in Silwan, was one of the leaders of the protest campaign.

10: Exterior - Courtyard of the house of Abed Shaludi in Silwan

Abed Shaludi sits under an olive tree in his courtyard:

12:58:12

“They wanted to destroy 100 houses. And the demolishing order we received from the municipality, they said that Silwan is part of a very big site of Jewish history, and King David were here before 1000 yrs ago, and he built his kingdom in Jerusalem, in the Old City, and his garden were in Silwan, because they had a lot of water, in all of the years, and imagine, in a few words down there, they wrote, and that’s why we want to destroy a 100 houses. 1500 people live in these houses, imagine that they want to throw them out because King David were here. He slept here, he ate here - so what?”

11: Exterior - the City of David national park

Doron stands on stairs, looking at children running by:

13:58:13 “These are Arab children that live here.”

He extends his hand to them, but they ignore him and run past him.

14:14:21 “Children will be children. Children always stay outside of the political argument.”

Small boy (arms up, V sign) shouts in Arabic.

Doron stands on top of COD, Silwan background:

14:25:16

“So this began the process in 1986 the founding of my foundation, the Ir David foundation, whose goal is to return all this land you see behind me into Jewish hands. And we purchased much of this land for much more than its face value, in order to return much of these assets as possible back to the Jewish people. Today 60-65% of this land is now back in Jewish hands, you have Jews and Arabs living peacefully together, and on the surface of the earth you have the dynamic of Jews and Arabs living together, and underneath their feet you’re exploring history.”

Montage of shots of Silwan with music:

Palestinian woman walks towards the camera, many CU shots of cameras in various places overlooking the village, Palestinian man repairs his satellite dish on a roof, another camera with an Israeli flag, kids enter ancient pool, many fences on a hill on top of which an Israeli flag is waving in the wind, guard wit a gun walks on a roof of a house, kite flying high in the sky.

12: Exterior, under olive tree in courtyard of Abed’s house

Abed sits in his courtyard in the shade of an olive tree.

Intercuts: Abed’s wife and children in courtyard.

15:36:08

“They offered my father half a million dollars. I was a millionaire. I was… But I refused. Before a week ago, I talked to a friend, he told me- you know, this is the opportunity of your life. You know what-this is half a million dollars. It’s a very huge money. Take it man! Anyway, they will throw you out of it… I told him-listen man. I had a very hard life. Before 2 yrs ago I was in house custody, most of the time we didn’t have food to eat, me and my children. And I have an opportunity to make half a million dollars! But why should I do that? The only thing that I have here is my reputation. The money can come and go. I don’t care for the money. The money can come and go…My home, my land, I’ve been born here, I know every inch of this place, every stone…”

Abed’s daughter calls him to help her with the bicycle. His wife looks at them.