Back in the fall, I was a little envious of Jacob Ner David who talked about taking his son to a Hadag Nachash concert in Jerusalem.Last week, we got to catch up with a little taste of Israel here in Boston, with a wonderful concert by The Idan Raichel Project (warning, loud music on website).
Idan Raichel's music (and band) is a mixture of many strands of Israeli life emphasizing traditions from Africa and Arabia in particular. He is a modest performer, letting the vocalists and his musicians take most of the limelight. However, as they arrived on stage, it was clear who was the hero, with people yelling from the audience "I love you, Idan".
The music is catchy and moody all at once, mostly Hebrew and Amharic (from Ethiopia) and other languages mixed in. The band are all young and beautiful, and the voices exquisite. The percussionist is particularly hypnotising when he plays drum like instruments that float in water. He plays them at various heights in the water to conjure many notes and sounds interspersed with the sound of water splashing, slapping and falling.
At least one of the band's songs has been adopted by an Israeli folk-dance choreographer who has created a fabulous couples' dance that my daughter and one of her friends dance together wonderfully.
If you have a chance to listen to music by The Idan Raichel Project you are in for a treat.
Looking for any chance to name-drop, the only other band I know of with a similar Project name is The Alan Parsons Project, and Dorit's cousin Eric Woolfson was one of the two principals in that great collaboration.
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