Israeli rock

Israeli rock is rock music created by Israeli bands and singers. At first, Israeli rock was based upon on foreign creations, but during the years Israeli rock has changed and become the popular music genre in Israel, and a unique varied creation of rock styles emerged, part of them in combination with local music elements.

The development of Rock music in Israel

Over the years the existence of Hebrew rock was regarded as controversial. The Israeli creation has gone a long way from the stage in which rock music was considered a foreign and even negative music style (The Beatles were not allowed to perform in Israel in the 1960s as a decision made by the minister of the education then, in order to not "corrupt the youth") to the original musical style acceptable today by the wide public.

The Sixties

Originally rock music was outcast in Israel, mainly due to the fact that in the 1960s Israeli society was a recruit society and was relatively closed to Western cultural effects. The well-established Israeli artists of that time considered rock and roll to be a trend that would soon pass, and there were some who even recorded parody versions of rock songs.

The first Israeli rock bands were the "rhythm bands" that began to perform in the mid-'60s in nightclubs and discos, first in Ramla and later also in Masger Street in Tel Aviv. The audience which filled these clubs was mainly composed of children of the 1950s Israeli refugee camps and the children of blue-collar workers. So too were the musicians of those first rock bands, many of whom were excluded from the military bands and from the state-institutionalized culture which was dominant in public and on the radio during those years. These bands mainly performed cover versions of popular rock songs by bands like The Beatles, The Shadows, and more. Amongst the bands which stood out in the first wave of Israeli rock were The Lions, The Churchills, The Fat and the Thins, The Styles, The Electric Stage, The Seventh Radiance, The Goldstars, The Sing-Sing, The Blue Stars, The Spiders and many more. Most of these bands did not record any original material, although some of the most prominent bands of the period recorded their own albums.

Toward the end of the decade the rhythm band scene improved and even gained some legitimacy, mostly after the Six-Day War when western musicians began to arrive in Israel and influences of the pop revolution began to permeate the local culture. Some of the local bands added English musicians to their ensemble and thus several new bands were created based on the original rhythm bands. In the second wave of rhythm bands, three main bands led the local rock scene. The first was The Churchills, which consisted now of five musicians including Canadian singer Stan Solomon, and British guitarist Robb Huxley. These were the most adventurous of the Israeli rock bands; they played innovative combinations of psychedelic rock mixed with Mediterranean Arab music. In 1970 the Israeli composer Noam Sheriff initiated a concert played by the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra and The Churchills, and their shared work with Arik Einstein, Oshik Levi and other artists from the mainstream Israeli pop music scene granted the Israeli rock scene a public stamp of approval.

The second band, The Lions, was considered to be the first Israeli band to experiment with reggae music. In 1968 The Lions became the first Israeli band to insert a song at the top of the British charts ("Our Love's a Growing Thing").

The third prominent Israeli band of those years was the supergroup Uzi and the Styles, created by the former lead singer of The Fat and the Thins, Uzi Fox. The band's varied style was based not only upon British pop music but also on American soul music and was characterized by the compound-rich processings of wind instruments similar to Blood, Sweat & Tears, Chicago, etc.

Between the 1960s and the 1970s, successful Israeli musicians started to show interest in rock music and many of them recorded songs in the rock style by themselves or with bands. The artist who took the most significant step towards the adoption of rock as a dominant force in Israeli music was the popular singer-songwriter Arik Einstein, who in 1969 made The Churchills his backup group. Einstein's albums from those years, "Pozi" (1969), "slug" (1970), "Plastelina" (1970) and "Badshe etzel Avigdor" (1971), are considered to be groundbreaking in the way in which they combined rock melodies with Hebrew texts. They were revolutionary both in the fresh musical perception which they demonstrated, and in creating more personal mainstream songs rather than the military bands which were prominent in the previous decade.

The Seventies

In the early 1970s, Israeli had a burgeoning progressive rock scene. One of the first performers was Shlomo Gronich, whose 1971 debut was "Why Didn't You Tell Me?!". This was however, preceded by Danny Ben Israel "Bullshit 3 1/4", which was released in 1970 and promptly forgotten about for some thirty years. Other 70s prog bands included The Churchills, Zingale, and Sheshet.

Israel also developed a new style of rock/metal named Oriental metal, which is a crossover between death metal and doom metal, influenced by ancient Jewish traditions and the oriental culture, both in lyrics and melody.

In the seventies a lot of bands were formed. The rock band Tamouz gained a lot of success in the 1970s. The most successful Israeli Rock band of the seventies was Kaveret which combined a rock music and unique sense of humor. At the end of the seventies singers whom performed rock music became very popular and successful: Shalom Hanoch, Ariel Zilber, Tzvika Pick (in combination with a pop music), Efraim Shamir, Yitzhak Klepter and Gary Akshtine.

The Eighties

During the 1980s a small number of rock bands became popular. Notable rock bands of the decade were "The Click", "Benzin", "T-Slam" and "Mashina" which proved to be the most successful Israeli rock band of that decade and continued to perform until 1995 when they disbanded but formed back together in 2005 due to popular demand.

The Nineties until present day

1991 was the year of the break though of the Israeli alternative rock bands and singers, which was lead by Rami Fortis, Berry Sakharof and Aviv Geffen, and young bands like Where Is the Boy?, The Elders of Zfat, Rockfour and Dr. Kasper's Rabbits Show whom became very popular. An essential role on the raise of those bands and artists was the former Roxanne club in Tel Aviv which hosted known artists and emerging artists of rock and alternative rock and so it allowed a fast exposure to the new bands, and cultivated a listener audience for those music styles. Since then most of those bands have disbanded, but their members still continue to act in the different setting and mostly constitute the community of the Israeli music of today.

In the field of Glam metal and Heavy metal it is important to note the band Stela Maris from Haifa, which began performing at the start of 1990s. Later on Stela Maris integrated in the mainstream Israeli music, as well as it's soloist, Pablo Rosenberg, which went out on a solo career of his.

In spite of different crises and low point periods which affected the world of the Israeli rock (like the Arad festival disaster of 1995, after which the popularity of such events descended), during the next decade the Israeli rock music style became to the central and most acceptable music style, and important bands like The witches and Monica Sex were formed.

Amongst the prominent Israel rock bands of the 2000s are Beit HaBubot, which plays melodic rock which focuses on the acoustic guitar sound and Sinergia, which tends to have a melodic Nu metal sound.

ee also

* List of Israeli rock artists
* List of Israeli musical artists
* [http://www.taar.co.il/indexenglish.html Tel Aviv Alternative Rock: Alternative rock]