Israeli Hip-Hop Takes U.S.
At their recent Berkeley performance, the fifth stop on their
American tour, Israel’s chart-topping hip-hoppers Hadag Nahash
found themselves performing to a sold-out crowd of 750, with a huge
crowd left outside University of California’s Wheeler Auditorium,
disappointed.
“It was surprising,” says Yaya Cohen Harounoff, bass player for
the seven-member band. “It’s like that a lot of the time in Israel;
but here they didn’t even know the language, yet they had such
great energy!”
Hadag Nahash cranked out one Israeli hit after another, jumping
around the stage and leaping in the air. Audience members climbed
onto each other’s shoulders, danced in the aisles, and shouted
along with the band’s call-and-response. Many attendees seemed to
have come out of curiosity — despite having no religious, ethnic
or national connection to a hip-hop band from Israel.
“Hadag Nahash is similar to the Roots in America,” noted Yarden
Schneider, events coordinator of the Israel Center in San
Francisco, which initiated the band’s tour across the United
States. “Both sing socially conscious, positive hip-hop.”
Not all their songs, however, conveyed upbeat messages. In
“Misparim (Numbers),” lead rapper Sha’anan Streett belts out the
Hebrew lyrics, “Nine is the number of times I was too close to a
terrorist attack,” reflecting the common experience of the band
members and many of their compatriots.
“I was at a cafe on the promenade in downtown Jerusalem,” Street
tells Rolling Stone, recalling one of his more frightening
narrow escapes. “The first boom came, and my beer flew off the
table as everyone ran into the cafe. Then there was the silence
that always follows an attack. At that point, I started yelling to
everyone, ‘Don’t leave the cafe yet!’ Attacks usually come two or
three at a time: suicide bombers wait for police to arrive on the
site of the first attack, then they set off another explosion.
“Sure enough, there was another. When it was all over, I walked
around, amidst all the mess, handing out water to survivors. I
can’t do the bloody stuff; it’s too traumatizing for me. But I have
a mental picture of a good friend of mine putting someone’s brain
back in his head, as another friend of mine, a medic, tried to
reattach people’s arms and legs. For me, these are the heroes of
modern-day Israel: the ones who can do good things in the middle of
all this shit.”
In early October, just one week before Hadag Nahash launched
their American tour, drummer Moshe Asaraf invited two friends to
the band’s sold-out Tel Aviv concert. Following the performance,
the two young women drove south to the Sinai, joining thousands of
Israelis on vacation for the Jewish holiday of Sukkoth. A triple
suicide bombing shattered the peace there shortly after the two
friends’ arrival. Asaraf found himself visiting one in the hospital
and attending the other’s funeral, days before boarding a plane to
the U.S.
“Life goes on, as hard as that is to say,” he remarks. “This is
the reality of how things are here. I don’t actually know how I
keep on going. There is just no chance to stop and think about
things. You have to get up and continue forward.”
In an effort to help Israelis heal from the trauma of terrorist
attacks, Hadag Nahash created an Israeli hip-hop compilation album
in memory of DJ Benny the B, which they sold at U.S. concert
venues. Originally from small-town Pennsylvania, Benny the B helped
produce the group’s second album and was a leading hip-hop DJ in
Israel — until he was killed two years ago in the Hebrew
University suicide bombing. Proceeds from Remember Ben CD
sales go to a soup kitchen collectively run by devout and secular
Israelis, on a mission to promote religious tolerance.