Motti Regev and Edwin Seroussi

Popular Music and National Culture in Israel

$70.00, £50.00 hardcover

978-0-520-23652-3

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$25.95, £18.95 paperback

978-0-520-23654-7

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308 pages, 6 x 9 inches,
April 2004, Available worldwide
Categories: Music; Ethnomusicology; Middle Eastern Studies; Popular Culture; Jewish Studies

Description | Table of Contents | About the Authors

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"A meticulously researched survey of five decades of music in Israel. . . "—American Jrnl of Sociology / Ajs

"A fascinating study, full of interesting detail relating to a musical culture that is generally invisible beyond Israel."—Keith Kahn-Harris, Jewish Chronicle

A unique Israeli national culture—indeed, the very nature of "Israeliness"—remains a matter of debate, a struggle to blend vying memories and backgrounds, ideologies and wills. Identifying popular music as an important site in this wider cultural endeavor, this book focuses on the three major popular music cultures that are proving instrumental in attempts to invent Israeliness: the invented folk song repertoire known as Shirei Eretz Israel; the contemporary, global-cosmopolitan Israeli rock; and the ethnic-oriental musica mizrahit. The result is the first ever comprehensive study of popular music in Israel.

Motti Regev, a sociologist, and Edwin Seroussi, an ethnomusicologist, approach their subject from alternative perspectives, producing a truly interdisciplinary, sociocultural account of music as a feature and a force in the shaping of Israeliness. A major ethnographic undertaking, describing and analyzing the particular history, characteristics, and practices of each music culture, Popular Music and National Culture in Israel maps not only the complex field of Israeli popular music but also Israeli culture in general.

Preface

Introduction: Popular Music and National Culture
PART I: CULTURAL AND INSTITUTIONAL CONTEXTS
1. A Short Introduction to Israeli Culture
2. Israeli Institutions of Popular Music

PART II: POPULAR MUSIC AND NATIONALIST IDEOLOGY
3. Shirei Eretz Yisrael (Songs of the Land of Israel)
4. "In Spite of it All, She Has Something": Popular Songs in the Yishuv and Early Nationhood
5. The Lehaqot Tzvayiot (Army Ensembles)
6. "And the Winner Is . . . ": Popular Song Festivals

PART III: ISRAELI ROCK
7. The Invention of Israeli Rock
8. The Coming of Rock

PART IV: MUSIQA MIZRA{HU}IT
9. Musiqa Mizra{hu}it: Origins, Style, Production, and Public
10. From "Neighborhood" to the Charts: Musiqa Mizra{hu}it and Legitimacy
Conclusion

Select Discography
Works Cited
Song and Album Index
Name Index
Subject Index

Motti Regev is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the Open University of Israel. He is the author of Rock: Music & Culture (1995) and Oud and Guitar: The Musical Culture of the Arabs in Israel (1993). Edwin Seroussi is the Emanuel Alexandre Professor of Musicology and Director of the Jewish Music Research Centre at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.