Ten points to anyone who can tell me why I titled this long-overdue post the way I did. (hint: it's related to how long it's taken me to write, not the content of the blog.)
Some updates on my life:
I can no longer count the number of friends I have in Tel Aviv on one hand. And this is without having started school or finding a job.
I start school on Tuesday. I should have started today (in fact, I should be on my way to Hebrew), but I didn't register in time. Oops.
I scored 6 points short on getting an exemption from taking Hebrew. Those 6 points cost me 500 sheqels and 6 hours a week, but if I get an A on my first test, I can drop out of the class.
I have a job interview on Sunday working in the office of a group that runs Birthright trips. I'm torn between wanting the job and not wanting any job that won't let me go to camp this summer. While I don't actually know that this job will want me here during the summer, I have a hunch that they'll want me around during Birthright's busiest time. But that's just a guess.
I hear from Galei Tzahal this week. I'm less than optimistic.
Now that I have cable and I'm paying extra for Fox Sports, they aren't broadcasting Eagles games.
I've invited over 30 people to Shabbas dinner at my place this Shabbat. I don't have a dining room table and I have 4 chairs. Better get on that (or hope that people don't show up).
Ok, enough of the unimportant stuff. On to the significant change in my life:
I am no longer interested in writing about Israeli hip hop.
Yeah, that's right. The most distinguishing characteristic of mine, which I have focused on for the better part of 5 years, which I have chosen as my direction for the next 2-3 years, is no longer true. Israeli hip hop has grown boring to me. Maybe it's because I go to an Israeli hip hop club and the music sucks (and not a word of Hebrew was played). Maybe because the only hip hop song being played on the radio these days is Subliminal's Toro, with such profound lines as "Ani toro, mfutzatz im dinero," (I'm a bull, exploding with money). Or maybe because I explored already and didn't find anything interesting in it. I mean my strong thesis statement was that Israeli hip hop is not as interesting as other forms of hip hop. Unless of course, you make up shit about it. But I didn't want to do that, and I still don't want to do it. I'd love to be the world's expert in Israeli hip hop, but first, I'd like Israelis to create something about which is worthy to write. I mean there was a fucking war in Lebanon for god's sake, the entire country is protesting. And I do not hear one protest song in this country. Not in hip hop form, not in rock form, not in soulless bubble gum pop form. Nothing. I'm tempted to release a song myself. Of course I have no talent, but that shouldn't stop me in this country.
So yes, I'm angry at the music industry in this country. Because I am back to square one. I have absolutely no idea what I want to do in life, and I am currently enrolled in an MA studying something which grows less interesting to me every day. I live in a great apartment in a neighborhood so removed that I can barely convince any of my friends to visit me, let alone find a roommate among my friends looking for apartments.
On the plus side, I may have found a job reading Torah at a local conservative minyan. So all is not lost. Yet.
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5 comments:
Sorry you are lost in life Arie. Give me a call so we can catch up.
Dan
Arie, after the last two weeks, I can promise you that NOT seeing Eagles' games is probably the best gift you can give yourself all year.
62 yard field goal. Matt Bryant. 'nuff said.
~Seg
i dont think that israeli hip hop is growing less interesting to you or that you are back at square one, if anything this gives you a more clear path about what you can do. Lets say you want to write about Israeli Hip hop, well you've already begun. You don't need to write about it's differences from other types of hip hop,and it in general from a educative perspective, but rather critique it where it has gone wrong. On the disgust that there was not one protest song. this also shows you that your path could be involved in changing Israeli hip hop for the better. That could include getting involved in the industry, as well as many other opportunities.
I believe you titled this blog entry to follow your long held propensity to quote late 80s/early 90s pre-alternative Australian bands out of context.
Midnight Oil's classic "Beds are Burning" is about the Australian movement to give back certain disputed territory in the outback to the Aborigines people. It's a protest song.
I fail to see the proximate connection between your disillusionment of Israeli Hip-Hop and the atrocities committed by the British Empire upon the indigenous people of Australia.
I agree with you that it is unbelievable that a recent war was waged with Israel's ever-loving terrorist neighbor to the north and yet not one protest song/rap has been written about this conflict.
Then again it's fairly obvious that the majority of the America's Hip-Hop community does not support "Bush's War of Terror" (that's a Borat reference), yet how many protest songs are played on Clear Channel owned urban Hip-Hop station in the States? That's right 0. To my knowledge there are only a handful of mainstream artists who are brave enough to even have written lyrics alluding to the Iraq War and those songs have never been featured or are allowed to play on the radio due to FCC regulations and Clear Channel being one of Bush's greatest corporate campaign contributors.
From your Blog, it's quite evidential that Israeli Hip-Hop has fallen into the materialistic paradoxical trap that American Hip-Hop has been propagating since the mid 90s.
Israeli rap never had an "old school" period. There were never pioneers in the Israel hip-hop community singing about their love of Addidas sneakers or covering influential rock songs in order to bridge the gap into mainstream White America. Nor was there a "gansta" period where all Israeli Hip-hop stars shared a common characteristic of being raised in the ghetto and resorting to a life of crime before they made it.
Israeli Rap is purely synthesized imported American Rap without the cultural significance. There I said it. Prove me wrong.
Because rap is a cultural import to Israel, Israel completely missed the 20 years of cultural development and maturation that American hip-hop has achieved.
You are quite right to be weary of the state of Israeli hip-hop.
I would like my 10 points presented in a sealed envelope and buried deep underground so that no one may speak of it again.
What about Ya Yalla Nasrallah? It's during the war so I don't know if that counts:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLEdX7H6OvI&eurl=
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