MOTTI REGEV (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel)

Hybridity and Nationalism: The Israelization of Greek Music

One major charasteristic of the contemporary field of popular music is the high degree of cross-fertilization between various musical cultures and idioms and the consequent emergence of hybrid styles. At the same time, popular music is still being widely used as a cultural tool for constructing and preserving identities in general, and national identities in particular. A result of these two seemingly conflicting tendencies is the "nationalization" and "localization" of musical styles and idioms that originate elsewhere.

In Israel, popular music has been a major tool in constructing "Israeliness". However, lacking a Hebrew-unique musical tradition, the construction of a national music culture has been based on hybridity to begin with. Two -- made Greek music a salient component of this hybridization. One was the ideological theme of becoming "Middle-Eastern" and "Mediterranean" that prevailed among leading cultural producers, which made Greek music a source of influence for the dominant styles of Hebrew music. The other was the enthusiasm for Greek music among immigrants from Arab countries, who found in it an alternative to Arab music which has been absent from Israeli public culture. It thus became a source of influence to the less valued "music mizrakhit".

Until the 1980s, the Israelization of Greek music existed separately within these two parallel frameworks. In the last ten years, however, the growing ligitimacy of "music mizrakhit" and the work of Yehuda Poliker, who crossed barriers between music cultures in his "rockish" adaptation of Greek music, blurred the distinction between them. By this time, the vast repertoary of translations of Greek music and of local-original recordings influenced by it, have gained a distinctive Israeli character. The Hebrew language of the lyrics and the role of the music in life-cycle experiences of several generations, have appropriated the music into the very essence of what Israelis perceive as indigenous "Israeli" culture.