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Idan Raichel heads to Vancouver
by Lauren Kramer
The Idan Raichel Project is a band whose music consistently tingles my skin and makes me yearn to get back to Israel. So I was thrilled to learn that Raichel and his team will be traveling to Vancouver March 4 to perform for the opening night of the Chutzpah Festival at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver.
Raichel, 32, has sold some 300,000 records since he launched his first album eight years ago. He started out playing backup for other Israeli pop singers but after a while determined he would follow his own musical ideals, which encompass a variety of musical styles.
His recordings for the Idan Raichel project in 2002 include the sounds of 70 different musicians – Ethiopian Jews, Arabs, traditional Yemenite vocalists, a Suriname percussionist and a South African singer among them. Raichel composed and arranged many of the tracks. He plays the keyboard and collaborated with the other vocalists and musicians.
There are love songs in Hebrew, songs in Amharic and traditional sounding tunes set to modern music. But each track on the album feels distinctly different, which makes for great listening. You don’t get the sense of sameness and repetition that haunts many other artists.
My favourite of his songs is Mi’ma’amakim, (”From the Depths”) which was the title track of his second album, launched in 2005. This album also has songs in Arabic, Zulu, Hindi and Yemenite Hebrew. With this rich mixture of voices and dialects, it’s easy to tell that Raichel appreciates the beauty and musicality of language.
High on my to-do list is to get my hands on a copy of Within My Walls, his third studio album launched in 2008. I’ll be applauding Raichel from the audience March 4 and blogging about his music the next day.
Source: Canada’s Israel @ http://www.canadasisrael.ca