Israeli rappers prove hip-hop will translate to any language
TEL AVIV -- At 3 a.m. on a Thursday night, the Soweto club is packed wall to wall, as DJ Jeremy spins the latest in hip-hop, reggae, R&B, and soul music. A slender young man with chin-length dreadlocks, the DJ is also known as MC Jeremy Cool Habash -- the leading Ethiopian-Israeli rapper, regularly featured on television and radio programs throughout the nation.
Though he sports classic rapper attire -- baggy blue jeans with oversize pockets; a blue, white, and red jersey; and a heavy gold-plated chain with JCH on the pendant -- Habash exudes little of the gangster persona associated with mainstream hip-hop in the United States.
To the contrary, his kind eyes, soft-spoken manner, and gentle energy reflect his rootedness in traditional Ethiopian Jewish heritage.
A graduate of yeshiva -- an Orthodox Jewish religious school system -- Habash steers clear of mainstream rap topics as well, preferring to sing about his love for Judaism, his concern about youth getting lost in alcohol and drugs, and his anguish about the treatment of Ethiopian Jews in Israel.
Ethiopian youth in Israel are listening to his messages. "I'm a star in the Ethiopian community," Habash says matter-of-factly of his success, which has led to performances in France, Canada, England, and Ethiopia, as well as throughout Israel.
Yet Habash is adamant about using his achievements as a tool for motivating others, specifically Ethiopian youth at community centers throughout the country.
"I have taught 300 Ethiopian kids throughout Israel," he says proudly, "I have taught them what is hip-hop, how to write a song." His ultimate dream is to create a recording studio for Ethiopian youth, supplying all the funding and equipment for their musical projects.
In Ashdod, a southern town boasting one of the largest concentrations of Ethiopian-Israelis, Efsharut Aheret (A Different Option) is one of the many youth groups benefiting from Habash's attention. Like numerous programs of its kind, it offers creative arts activities as a solution to the drugs, crime, and school dropout rates plaguing teens in the Ethiopian community -- problems that community leaders cite as the product of racism from fellow Israelis.
For program participant Tarik Malko, 16, singing hip-hop is not just a cool way to spend an afternoon, but a matter of emotional healing: "I want to tell people about the racism I experience," she says. "It's hard for me to talk about it, because people don't understand. But when I sing, I say what I love, what I hate. I even curse. I get everything out of myself, everything inside me."
"Ethiopian youth are attracted to hip-hop as the new expression of our identity," Habash explains, saying that it is only natural to turn to African-American culture for inspiration. "African-Americans are succeeding in music, advancing themselves through music. Ethiopian-Israeli youth are seeing role models in this."
Though hip-hop has special meaning to Ethiopian youth, it is popular across ethnic lines and among all age groups in Israel. This was not the case a decade ago, when the now-defunct band Shabak Sameh came out with the first Israeli hip-hop album. At the time, Israeli DJs insisted the genre would never go over well with their audiences.
"They said you just can't rap in Hebrew; it doesn't sound good," recalls Chemi Arzi, one of the band's rappers, who has since gone on to found his own hip-hop group, Halutzei Halal (Space Pioneers).
In the spirit of their hit song "Nofel Vekam" (Fall and Get Up), Shabak Sameh just kept on keeping on, until their new style of music swept the nation. Today, Israeli hip-hop can be heard in Hebrew, Arabic, English, and French -- depending on the group, the song, or even the sentence.
Canadian-Israeli rapper SHI (Supreme Hebrew Intellect), the son of Jewish refugees from Morocco, raps in all four languages. His style of hip-hop, he explains, fuses together all the aspects of his identity -- "through the beats, the sounds, the rhymes, the accent."
American-Israeli rapper Elan Babylon also expresses the facets of his identity through hip-hop: "Any Moroccans from the 'hood here tonight?" Babylon belts into the microphone, strutting onstage to perform. Standing squarely in front of an Israeli flag hanging from his disk jockey equipment, he is known for shouting, "Raise your hands and make some noise, Moroccans!"
The son of Jewish refugees from Morocco and Yemen, Babylon was raised partly in Israel and partly in Reseda, Calif., where he felt ostracized from the youth surrounding him.
"I was about 12, 13 years old," he recalls, "and it was a tough situation. Back then, we were getting criticized badly for being Middle Eastern, called all kinds of names that white kids found for us."
The only other people being treated in this derogatory way, Babylon says, were Latinos and blacks. "What every Middle Eastern kid did at the time was hang out with Latinos and blacks," he adds. "We didn't want to be part of the white world."
Through this social circle, Babylon had his first taste of hip-hop, which later became his passion and, when he moved back to Israel as a young adult, his profession.
Today, Babylon performs and produces with Subliminal -- featuring MC Subliminal, MC Hatsel, and backup singer Sivan Bahanam -- by far the most popular hip-hop group in Israel. Jokingly referred to as the Persian mafia, because each member comes from an Iranian Jewish family, Subliminal is known for its Zionist message.
"Once it was a shame to walk around with a Star of David," says Hatsel. "Jews have been ashamed of our symbol because of what we learned from generations of oppression. But our group is not ashamed. In our CD, everyone gets a Star of David as a gift."
Subliminal's most recent hit is called "Hatikva," the same name as Israel's national anthem. Verses describe the anguish Israelis experience daily: "I have seen how many of them have gone/ Too many of them have not returned/
Friends separated, homes broken/ Tears of families spilled/
Human buds, now flowers that will never bloom . . ." The chorus attempts to break this sense of despair: "Come, let's continue this life before us/ It's not too late, because tomorrow is a new day/ The dream will die if we lose our hope/ So stretch out a hand to love."
Regularly drawing crowds of about 15,000 at their concerts, these performers make a living from their art, as do the musicians in Hadag Nahash -- a popular funk/hip-hop fusion band, with whom MC Shiri performs. The granddaughter of Iranian and Russian Jews, and the first female rapper in Israel, Shiri had to overcome male rappers' resistance.
"People tried to stop me," she recalls of her entrance into the scene four years ago.
But like Shabak Sameh, MC Shiri persevered, and when she was asked to perform with Hadag Nahash, her career took off. Today, she also raps for her own, all-female group, through which she sings about her struggles as a young woman in Israel.
Safa and Nahwa, the two young women of Arapiot -- a Hebrew hybrid word for Arab female rappers -- also sing about gender issues.
Reportedly the only Arab female rappers in the world, Safa and Nahwa got their start performing with MWR, Dam, and Tammer, three popular Arab rap groups from northern Israel, who sing out against poverty, drugs, crime, and, as Israeli Arabs, the frustration of feeling marginalized and hated by Arabs and Jews alike.
According to Safa, Arapiot offers the chance for young Arab women to be heard. "[We] have families that don't give us our freedom to determine our fate: to get an education, to go out with friends, to choose whom we will marry. In our songs we demand our freedom."
Whether demanding freedom, respect, unity, or justice; whether singing about the joys of sex or the angst of drug addiction; whether positively goofy or deadly serious, Israeli hip-hop provides Jews and Arabs of all ethnicities the platform for self-expression.
"Israelis like to talk," laughs Shulu, the co-director of Yaga Productions, a studio dedicated to developing young hip-hop artists. "It works."
