Rock at the Front

[Mediocrates]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/27/wo...rssnyt&emc=rss

From news article:

Give Them Shelter: Where Rockets, and Drums, Go Boom

By JENNIFER MEDINA
SDEROT, Israel — The underground Israeli pop-rock music scene seems to start here, in a bomb shelter set in the center of town.

It does not matter how loudly the teenagers hammer at their drums or pluck at the guitars; the green tin that is meant to protect residents from incoming rockets also works as a sound barrier for the funky music.
It is not unusual for Israeli towns to turn shelters into community centers of some sort. But Sderot, barely a mile from the Gaza Strip, is one of the few cities where such shelters are still used frequently.

And in Sderock, as the shelter-turned-music studio is called, the teenagers grapple with the dueling realities that have made the city famous: the music that comes out of it and the rockets that come into it.

“This is the safest fun place in the city,” said Nir Oliel, 21, who has played guitar for several years. “It is also where everyone great came from.”
In the Israeli public consciousness, Sderot is a place of poverty and danger. It has been barraged by more than 4,000 rockets in the last six years, including nearly 200 since the shaky cease-fire began in November. Six people have died from the attacks, and dozens of homes have been damaged.

And yet Sderot is also the hometown of a pop culture hero of the moment: Kobi Oz, the lead singer of the Teapacks, the Israeli pick for the popular Eurovision song contest. Mr. Oz made headlines in March when organizers of the contest suggested that his song “Push the Button” might be disqualified for carrying an inappropriate political message. [The Teapacks are scheduled to perform in the Eurovision semifinal in May.] The song riffs on the Israeli fear of being obliterated by an atomic bomb. Mr. Oz, who is also the host of a weekday morning television news program, makes no apologies for the lyrics, which he says are meant to reflect the “hot politics” of the region.

“There are not sweet love songs to play,” he said in a telephone interview. “If you are here, you have to have all kinds of conflict inside the music. Our way to deal with it is to laugh in the face of terror and make rock ’n’ roll for the craziness.”

Mr. Oz, with two platinum albums in Israel, is by far the most successful musician to come out of Sderot, but he is hardly alone. He got his start with Sfatayim, whose name means lips, a band made up of young artists from Sderot who played Moroccan music. On Israeli radio it is possible to hear more than half a dozen bands from this city, quite a feat for a place with about 25,000 people.

The musicians who grew up in the 1980s are the children of immigrants from North Africa and other parts of the Middle East. They blended their New World guitar and drum with their Old World counterparts — an oud and a goatskin-covered drum called a darbukah — to create what critics called ethnic-pop. Those who perform it say it is “pashut Yisraeli,” simply Israeli.
But it is a particular kind of Israeli, reflecting the sort of chip-on-the-shoulder attitude that many children here grow up with, convinced that the wealthier European Jews in the bigger cities like Tel Aviv look down on them.

When the Qassam rockets — 70 pounds of steel each — began landing here, much of the Israeli mainstream seemed unperturbed, favoring a less aggressive military stance. After the rockets started landing in schools and houses, the residents grew increasingly frustrated with the government.
Encouraged by their hawkish mayor, Eli Moyal, they set up protest tents, crying out, “Conquer Gaza now,” and demanded that the Israeli military take action. When Israel did take action, it did not help much: the rockets returned.

The teenagers at Sderock seem less convinced that more force will calm their lives down. Their music captures their angst.

“Don’t Break,” a song one group recorded for Independence Day celebrations, focuses on their sense of defiance and fear:
“We won’t break; we won’t be afraid,” the chorus goes.

And then:
How does the state abandon
This war, who is extending his hand?
They do nothing, when it comes to you.

The verse ends with “Shma Yisrael,” which translated literally is a command: “Hear, O Israel.” It is also a reference to the ubiquitous Jewish prayer that is said during daily worship and also on one’s deathbed.
With the success of so many musicians in the last decade, the city has poured considerable resources into cultivating more talent. The city estimates that it spends $30,000, a considerable portion of its budget, on music. International groups have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars on projects like Sderock.

Chaim Uliel and Micha Biton, native sons who became successful performers and producers, teach classes here. Mr. Biton, 42, mused about how much more sophisticated the youngsters are.

“When my older brother was the first one to get a guitar, it was like a diamond,” he said. “All the neighbors came over. It was something that everyone wanted to touch. That’s not something so exciting or special anymore.”

With so many opportunities, Mr. Biton said, one of the city’s younger stars is almost certain to rise to the top soon. In particular, Mr. Biton has his eyes on Hagit Yaso, 17, a daughter of Ethiopian immigrants.

“Singing is just what we do,” said Hagit, who has won several festival competitions in the country. “We do it to escape, to smile, to laugh.” In a sign of the ever-shifting identity here, she raised her nose a bit at the suggestion that she would perform Oriental music. Asked which musicians she admired most, she did not hesitate: Mariah Carey and Beyoncé.

For their teachers, it is only a matter of time before the younger students become more political in their songs and outlook. A byproduct of parents’ insistence that their children stay inside to avoid the crash of Qassam rockets, the music shelters have become more popular than the basketball courts.

Mr. Oz says he is determined to sing about a place that lives in a constant tension between joy and sorrow. Mr. Biton’s anthem for Sderot has become a sort of mantra for the residents: “I don’t leave the town for any Qassam.”

A nice story but I'm always suspect of the NYT's motives. As if what could possibly be bad about living in Sderot despite what all those objectionable Israelis (non Liberal variety) say about it?

http://daledamos.blogspot.com/2008/1...-red-zone.html

From news article:

Back in March, I linked to a post on Jerusalem Diaries: In Tense Times entitled From Laura in Sderot: The last 36 hours...--by Laura Bialis, an independent documentary film maker, describing her impressions of Sderot over 36 hours. Bialis was in Sderot while preparing a film about Sderot.

The name of the move is Sderot: Rock in the Red Zone:

SDEROT: Rock in the Red Zone, tells the story of the people and the music of Sderot -- a town in Southern Israel that for eight years has been under almost daily attack by Qassam rockets launched from Gaza.
Though thousands of rockets have been fired into Sderot, the town's suffering is largely unknown to the international community. But the voice of Sderot resonates through Israeli culture, as its years of anguish have bred a vibrant music scene that profoundly articulates the despair of a town in the crosshairs.

Told through the eyes of Sderot's talented and diverse young musicians, this documentary explores daily life in Sderot and the effects of living under the long-term stress of constant bombings.

From those who have already made it big -- Teapacks, Knessiat Hasechel, Sfatayim, now among Israel's cultural elite -- to the up-and-coming teenagers who play in SDEROCK, Sderot's underground rock club (which doubles as a bomb shelter) the artists and their music represent a culturally and ethnically diverse representation of Israel.

[Mediocrates]

From news article:

Musical sounds and instruments from all over the world meld together in this place at the crossroads of East and West. As they try to live normal lives, and realize their careers, the musicians write about their daily struggles and the harsh realities of living in Israel and especially, Sderot. Their music captures their fears and challenges, the feeling that the world has abandoned them, the uncertainty of this place. Through Hip-Hop, Folk, Middle-Eastern, and Rock n' Roll, they express their desperation and determination.

To many, the questions about Israel and the Middle East are abstract. But the people of Sderot are at the tip of the spear -- they live the battle on a daily basis. To them, peace in the Middle East is not a question of roadmaps or diplomatic initiatives, it's just a day that goes by when they don't have to run for cover.

This film will not only raise awareness about what is happening in Sderot, but will immerse the viewer in the power and vibrancy of Israeli culture and open a window into the day-to-day life of what it means to be Israeli. Through the words of Israel's modern-day poets, we will introduce our audiences to some of the complexities of modern Israel.

Read more about the movie.


The Jewish Week has an article from June about Bialis, which mentions that as a result of living and filming in Sderot she will be making Aliyah. There is also an article in Hebrew from Makor1.


While there was a private screening of the movie last month, I have not yet been able to find a clip to post on my blog.


In the meantime, for more information on Sderot and what is going on there, check out SderotMedia.com.

http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArt...osenblatt.html

From news article:

Sderot, A Love Story

Sderot, Israel — There’s far more to Sderot than the almost daily Kassam rocket attacks and the victimized, stressed-out residents we read about in the headlines.

There is all of that, for sure, but there are also stories to be told of people here who are as in love with this mostly poor town of about 20,000, about a mile from the Gaza border, as they are frustrated with and deeply pained by a government that has allowed them to be targeted by Palestinian militants’ rockets for more than seven years.

Meet one of Sderot’s most recent residents, Laura Bialis, a 35-year-old filmmaker from Los Angeles, who is viewed by the locals with a mixture of admiration and curiosity because while many of them are

desperate to leave, she chose to move here six months ago. Hers is a love story with a special twist.
When I spent the day with her here last week, Bialis, a warm, outgoing and upbeat woman, was just back from a month in New York, where “Refusenik,” her feature documentary about the Soviet Jewry movement, opened to glowing reviews. Rather than basking in the praise, though, she is hard at work on her latest project, trying to tell the story of Sderot, documenting “the trauma and also strength of this community, and how people use their art to survive.”

Long before the rocket attacks began on Sderot in 2000, the town was known for the pop music it produced, most notably a band called Teapacks, which blended rock and the traditional music of North Africa — not surprising since many of the residents or their parents are from Morocco.

Bialis, whose only previous trip to Israel was with her parents when she was 10, visited Israel several times while making “Refusenik,” interviewing Natan Sharansky and others who served time in Russian jails for their Zionist commitment.

During those visits she became increasingly obsessed, she says, with the difficult situation in Sderot, and soon learned about groups of teenagers who relieved their stress and frustration by practicing their ethnic rock music in bomb shelters-turned-community centers, most notably one in the center of town labeled Sderock.

After “Refusenik” was completed, she began to spend time in Sderot, getting to know the young musicians and artists who told her they choose to focus on their work rather than on the fear they live with constantly.

And make no mistake: that fear is real. It doesn’t take long for a visitor to learn that life here is measured not in days or hours or even minutes but in 15-second intervals. That’s how long the siren warning is when a Kassam is on its way, telling you how long you have to seek protection from one of the many small shelters found around the city.

Residents weigh even the most trivial decisions — when to take a shower, when to visit a neighbor — because, without being overly dramatic, it can be a matter of life or death. Eight people have died from the attacks, and many more have been wounded.

On the morning of my visit, we went to a home whose residents, Robbie and Lavi, two film students in their 20s and friends of Bialis, were moving out that day. Bialis and her cameraman filmed the sad scene of furniture being removed and items being packed. She explained that a Kassam rocket had hit the house last month. When the warning siren went off, Lavi had just showered and was sitting on his bed, deciding whether or not to rush to the reinforced “safe room” in the house. (Many houses in Sderot do not have them.)

At the last moment he made a dash for it, just before a Kassam landed in the house, in his room, on his bed. No one was injured, but we saw the demolished room and understood why Lavi and Robbie were moving a few miles away.

What was harder to understand is why anyone who could afford to leave Sderot would stay.
Avi Vaknin, a low-key, thoughtful 29-year-old singer, songwriter and music producer, tried to explain. It was he who started Sderock some years ago and who helped two-dozen teenagers, many of them now in the army, to channel their anger, frustration and fear into original music, which he produced and recorded.

“The music is a sign of hope here,” he said. “We take a desperate situation and try to make something positive out of it.”

He expressed contempt for the politicians who come to Sderot and make pronouncements of solidarity, while nothing changes. But he said he is torn between wanting to flee, so he can “once again live freely,” and choosing to stay put, near his parents (who refuse to leave) and friends. “Why should I leave this place?” he asks. “It’s mine.” But a moment later he admits that just getting through each day in Sderot, “I feel like a soldier without a uniform.”

Vaknin said his music is not about the situation per se, but listening to several songs on his new album, one appreciates the blend of cynicism, yearning and tenderness infused in the melodies and lyrics. In one song, “Square of the Lost,” he sings: “Boy, boy, take yourself to the holy land. To die for who? Boy, boy, here’s where I get off, today your are alone only for yourself.”

When Bialis came to Sderot, she interviewed Vaknin and got to know him and his friends, fellow artists. She soon decided that the way to tell the story of the town — its resilience and creativity — was through its music makers and artists.

She took us to the local cultural center to meet Michah Biton, who does after-school drama, singing and dance with local youngsters age 6 to 18, sometimes incorporating the reality of Sderot and sometimes avoiding it. And Bialis took us to the Cinematheque (one of only four in the country), which regularly draws large crowds to its independent films. There are two screening rooms, she told us. One has a bomb shelter; the other does not. When the siren goes off, patrons of the vulnerable theater are asked to stay in place so as not to precipitate a stampede into the other screening room’s shelter, Bialis said.

“I wanted to show the story that isn’t being told” in the news, she explained, adding that she is “inspired” every day by those she is documenting. And now there is more to the story.

Unlike previous documentaries Bialis has done, including a biography of a Holocaust survivor, a report on life in postwar Kosovo and the “Refusenik” story of how grass-roots activism helped free more than a million Soviet Jews, this film about Sderot has completely overtaken her life, blurring the distinctions between the personal and the professional.

That’s because Bialis has not only fallen in love with Sderot, but with Avi Vaknin, their friendship having grown into romance. She plans to make aliyah this summer, after realizing during her frequent commutes between the U.S. and Israel last year, that “I felt like my work was there but my life is here.”

Can an L.A. woman from an assimilated Jewish family and an Israeli man from an Orthodox Moroccan family find happiness in a poor Israeli town hit by Palestinian rockets almost every day?

It sounds far too kitschy, even for fiction. But it’s real — perhaps the subject for Bialis’ next film, and just one more story behind the headlines of Sderot.