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Rap riffs to heal the rifts
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| By Daphna Berman |
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It's
late on a Thursday night in downtown Jerusalem and a man with sidelocks
and a scruffy beard is rapping in quick and rhythmic French. Hardly
anyone in the crowd of this small and smoky club can understand what he
is actually saying, but that doesn't seem to bother them, or him for
that matter.
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"Today, we have Jewish hip hop," the Hasidic-looking
rapper, who goes by the on-stage name Shmoopie Fly, yells in accented
English. He's trying to get the crowd in this small club riled up and
with the shouts and applause that respond, he's clearly succeeding.
Part
of the Corner Prophets - or Nevi'im B'Pinah as it's known in Hebrew -
project, these monthly rap gatherings in the downtown Jerusalem club
Daila are some of the most recent additions to the city's music scene.
An estimated 350 people flocked last week to the crowded club, and
while only a small number vied for time onstage, the monthly events,
which take place on the last Thursday of every month, seem to be
filling a cultural void in the capital.
"Jerusalem is rich in
religious culture, but the level of artistic culture is somewhat
lacking, especially for youth," says Corner Prophets founder Dan
Sieradski, a 25-year-old from New York. "On a Thursday night, I know
that I can grab 350 people because where else will they go? A bar? A
cafe? Here, they can come and interact with people artistically in an
open forum."
Lofty goal
Corner Prophets, which
was launched earlier this year, is aimed at creating a comfortable
space for teens and young adults from a variety of ethnic and religious
backgrounds, in attempt to create artistic dialogue and promote
coexistence. It's a place, Sieradski says, for people on all sides of
the political divide to hear and be open to hearing others.
"Israel
is a somewhat fractured society and my hope is to unite people through
hip hop music," he says. "Hip hop is increasingly popular here and this
is the first generation in Israel of kids growing up listening to hip
hop as an integral part of their music diet. It's the perfect time to
tap into it and use music as a way of repairing those fractures."
The
goal is somewhat lofty, considering that the events take place in west
Jerusalem and attract an almost exclusively Jewish crowd. Palestinian
rapper Tamer Nafar appeared at the debut performance last month, but he
was too busy for last week's event and says he's not sure how active
he'll be in the coming months either. "Music brings people together,
but to say that it makes people closer is a bit cliche," he said. "At
the end of the night, the Arabs go back to their destroyed homes and
the Jews go back to their uniforms. Music doesn't actually bring peace."
But
Sieradski says he's happy just bringing Israeli Jews together. And he
says that music can potentially repair the various religious and ethnic
tensions that often plague the capital in the western, Jewish, part of
the city.
And indeed, last week witnessed a collection of young
rappers, some of whom came bare-headed and others whose ritual fringes
dangled rhythmically from under their shirts, who went on stage to
rhyme in a variety of Hebrew, English, French and Russian.
"The
religious and secular people in this city are at each other's throats
and though we absolutely want to reach out to Arab populations, this is
about repairing rifts in Jewish society as well," he said.
Orthodox anarchist
Corner Prophets was modeled in the shape of the Unity Sessions, a
festival that took place last summer in Brooklyn and drew a variety of
Jewish, Muslim, Israeli and Arab performers. The unity sessions were
lauded for the range of musicians it was able to attract. They were
sponsored by JDub records, a Jewish record label.
The idea
evolved further when Sieradski arrived in Jerusalem last year as a
yeshiva student in the Dorot fellowship program and noticed that local
teens would get together for freestyle cipher events, as they are
known, in Zion Square.
"I thought, wow, this is amazing, why not
put this on stage and bring in the rest of the community," he
says.Together with Jerusalem rapper Sagol 59, he then contacted the
heads of the Daila club, which is run by the Israeli Committee Against
House Demolitions, and promoted the event.
The rappers rhyme
about anything from anti-Zionism to their love of Torah and Jerusalem.
Sieradski, who considers himself an Orthodox anarchist, raps about
peace and Talmud; Tamer Nafar raps about racism and political injustice
and David Levy, a black rapper from London used his time on stage to
warn on the impending arrival of the messiah. "It's nice to have an
event here that I can relate to as black and Jewish," he later
explained.
Corner Prophets is currently looking for funding and though Sieradski says he's considering immigrating here.
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