Israeli singer Ivri Lider. Photo: AJN file

SAMANTHA MIMERAN

IVRI Lider did not dream of becoming a singer when he was growing up. By all accounts he was very shy, and planned to stay in the background writing music and scoring movies.

But for the artist who last year was named one of 10 people with the most significant impact on the Israeli music industry by Timeout Tel Aviv – Israel’s premier entertainment magazine – it seems singing found him.

“Actually, it’s a funny story,” he told The AJN from Israel, ahead of his first tour of Australia. “I wanted to go to UCLA to study film scoring but my parents didn’t have enough money… so I stayed [in Israel and] started working. At the same time I sent some demos to record companies. They called back and said let’s make a record, so we did and the record did really well. And then I became a singer,” he adds matter-of-factly.

The 36-year-old singer/songwriter made his debut Australian tour last week with concerts in Melbourne and Sydney.
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Israeli gay icon Ivri Lider.

AMANTHA MIMERAN

SINGER Ivri Lider is touring around Australia this week under the auspices of the Embassy of Israel in Canberra.

In looking for a way to promote Israel’s open and inclusive society, the embassy decided to bring out the prominent gay performer for the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.

Lider will lead a discussion entitled “Queer Tel Aviv” as part of Queer Thinking, the opening event at Mardi Gras. He will talk about the devastating shooting at a gay youth event in Tel Aviv in August last year.

Since revealing his sexuality publicly in an interview with Ma’ariv newspaper in 2002, he has become a gay icon of Israel.

“I wanted to be true to my fans, I wanted to be able to write whatever I wanted to write about without barriers. So I decided to come out and … it was actually great,” he told The AJN ahead of his trip to Australia.
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A scene from The Merchants of Bollywood, which is currently touring Australia.

ZEDDY LAWRENCE

WHILE we’re all familiar with the role played by Jewish movie moguls in building the American film industry -– with names such as Goldwyn and Meyer synonymous with the early days of western cinema –- less well chronicled is the contribution of Indian Jewry to Tinseltown’s equally successful Asian counterpart. And not just behind the camera, but on the big screen itself.

Stateside, of course, during Hollywood’s golden age, nice Jewish girls such as Theodosia Goodman and Betty Joan Perske were recreating themselves as all-American celluloid stars Theda Bara and Lauren Bacall.

As for the boys, Issur Demsky and Emanuel Goldenberg were reborn as Kirk Douglas and Edward G Robinson. However, it wasn’t just in Los Angeles that obviously Jewish names were being set aside by the acting elite.

During the 1920s and 1930s, the exotically named Sulochana, translated as “the beautiful-eyed one”, raked in the rupees as India’s highest paid movie actress.
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Leonard Cohen. Photo: AJN file

LOS ANGELES — Musician and poet Leonard Cohen was honoured with a lifetime achievement award at the Grammy Awards.

Cohen, 75, received his award during a separate ceremony at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles on January 30.

The 52nd annual Grammy Awards took place on Sunday night (January 31) at the Staples Centre in Los Angeles.

The Canadian singer has never won a Grammy for his recordings.

Andre Previn also received a lifetime achievement award at the January 30 ceremony. The classical pianist, conductor and composer has won 10 Grammys.

JTA

World-music group Monsieur Camembert will perform at the Shir Madness music festival.

LEXI LANDSMAN

THE first-ever Sydney Jewish music festival is set to make a resounding splash at Bondi Beach later this year.

The inaugural Shir Madness festival will showcase an array of talent and styles, from klezmer and ladino to contemporary blues, jazz, folk, rock, world, reggae, rap and dance.

To be held in August, the event will feature more than 35 Jewish acts performing on four stages at the Bondi Pavilion, and the hunt is now on for suitable artists to appear on the bill.

Festival director Gary Holzman said: “I’ve always found it surprising that Sydney’s vibrant Jewish community has, for many years, held successful Jewish film festivals and writers festivals, but never an equivalent Jewish music festival.”

With home-grown talent such as Renee Geyer, Ben Lee, Lior, Monsieur Camembert and Tal Wilkenfeld having made their mark on the international scene, Holzman said he felt more effort was needed to support established and emerging artists.
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Musician 8 Ball Aitken. Photo: AJN file

AHRON SHAPIRO

EVERY year at about this time, country music flows down the streets of Tamworth just about as freely as the cold beer flows from the taps of their pubs.

It’s the Tamworth Country Music Festival in the city that’s described as the Nashville of the Southern Hemisphere.

It’s also the city home to musicians who go by the curious names of 8 Ball Aitken and Bird.

“Come on in, we’ve made a kugel for you,” 8 Ball Aitken says when we meet at his home. The Queensland native, who sports a long bright red beard and speaks in a soft voice, will be performing at the festival, which runs until January 24

Aitken has led an interesting life. The Golden Guitar nominee went from picking mangoes and bananas, to picking the strings on his guitar. Though not Jewish himself, his fiancee and manager Bird Jensen are, and Judaism has come to influence his music.
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Singer Judy Campbell. Photo: AJN file

LEXI LANDSMAN

JUDY Campbell knows well that where there is water, there is life. But it is contemplating the reverse –- life without water -– that has driven the musician’s latest release, Waters of Kenya.

The new album by her band, Mosaic, is a fusion of traditional east-Kenyan rhythms with contemporary jazz that grew out of her collaboration with Kenyan percussionist Bandika Ngao.

“This whole collection of music is very much along the lines of tikkun olam,” 52-year-old Campbell enthuses. “It’s furthering the message about the importance of clean water in areas of the world that don’t have it.”

The album developed through the band’s association with the Tweed Shire Council of NSW, which runs a Kenya mentoring program to improve community and environmental health for Kenyan families by increasing access to safe water and sanitation.
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Musician Ben Lee. Photo: AJN file

CHANTAL ABITBOL

JEWISH musician Ben Lee is hoping his new catchy jingle will stick in your head, reminding you to “slip, slop and slap” this summer.

As part of the Cancer Council’s radical experiment to see if music can save lives, the 31-year-old singer produced the “Sun Sound” harmony, which will be played at regular intervals on loud speakers at select beaches over the next few months.

The idea is that sound will prompt people to take action and protect their skin.

“Skin cancer is so preventable,” said Lee, who is currently based in Los Angeles. “You hear a siren or a telephone ring and you know what that sound means. So it’s exciting to think about the Sun Sound being thought about in a similar context. It’s kind of a revolutionary idea.”
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Jewish musician Jonti Danilewitz. Photo: AJN file

LEXI LANDSMAN

THE young Jewish winner of a major contest to work with Grammy Award-winning producer Mark Ronson is set to be among Australia’s newest crop of rising young musical stars.

Masada College graduate Jonti Danilewitz’s band Danimals won the Tooheys Extra Dry (TED) The Lab competition earlier this month, beating some 4000 other hopefuls Australia-wide.

“We’re having a pretty hard time picking up what’s left of our minds after being selected by Mark Ronson for The Lab in New York -– we’re ecstatic beyond belief,” Danilewitz, 22, said shortly after winning.

“It’s completely surreal and incredibly scary, to be honest.”
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YIDcore lead singer Bram Presser in concert. Photo: AJN file

ADAM KAMIEN

THE story goes that former Sex Pistols lead singer Johnny Rotten pulled up outside the offices of his record label in a Lamborghini. He climbed out of the car and admitted: “I know … it’s not very punk is it?”

Other things that aren’t “very punk” include having your film clip playing on a loop in a Viennese museum for the benefit of a middle-aged Japanese tour group.

Yet, this was the case for Melbourne punk rockers YIDcore earlier this year. The clip was part of an exhibition about racial stereotypes and tolerance, on loan from the Jewish Museum of Berlin.

The song was If I were a Rich Man from Fiddler on the Roof -– only it was a high-octane, thrash version, complete with screeching vocals and lightning tempo. Noticeably confused, holiday-makers would usually make their way to a more accessible piece.
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