Chill Vibes, Vintage Synths, And Falafel Jazz
Nitai Hershkovits explains the Israeli sound, regardless of genre or style
Israel, if nothing else, is the only overland route connecting Africa, Europe, and the rest of the Middle East. That adds to the country’s inherent multiculturalism, and, for musicians growing up there, it means that a plethora of regional sounds get in your bones. Those sounds come out in your playing as well, even if your genre is blues, jazz, metal, or something usually associated with elsewhere.
“Whatever you’re doing is still you,” noted pianist and synth doyen Nitai Hershkovits says. “Even if you’re an Israeli who’s denying his roots, that’s still a sound. We call it falafel jazz, because it sounds like you can taste the falafel. For us, it could get a little funny listening to—it’s not so pensive and serious—it’s more like a salsa vibe or Cuban. That kind of energy.”
Hershkovits first started playing high profile gigs in the mid-2000s, and his curriculum vitae includes long term associations with artists like saxophonist Daniel Zamir, bassist Avishai Cohen, and many others. He’s busy with a number of solo projects, too, as well as a long and fruitful association with Raw Tapes, an Israeli label whose vibe is electronic, danceable, and usually chill. His work with Raw Tapes strays far from the acoustic jazz he first made his name with, and places more of an emphasis on heavy grooves and feels from around the world. Ironically, his quartet, Apifera, features Amir Bresler, Yuval Havkin (Rejoicer), and Yonatan Albalak—his frequent collaborators at Raw Tapes—except that the band is signed to the iconic L.A. hip hop label, Stones Throw.
“Stones Throw is based in L.A., and they’ve been doing the Madlib stuff since the beginning, and J Dilla, and really cool stuff,” Hershkovits says. “We’re the niche part of the label, where it’s mostly instrumental music. We did some collaborations with people, too, but it is mostly instrumental.”
I spoke with Hershkovits from his home in Givatayim. We talked about a recent commission he’s working on for a film project in Tel Aviv, his first gigs with Daniel Zamir, moving to New York City, Israeli music’s African roots, the essence of falafel jazz, and—although I couldn’t fit it into the Q&A below—his adventures getting vintage American-made synths to work in Israel, despite the higher voltage.
You mentioned you’re working on a commission, what’s that for?
It’s at the Teder, which is the most vibrant place in Tel Aviv. The Teder is this group of restauranteurs who also curate cool art nights, sell records [like the Romano Record Fair], and things like that. Once a year, they do this big event for a whole weekend with a chamber orchestra. Each time it is a different theme, and this time the theme is a soundtrack—they commissioned me to do a soundtrack live—for this movie from the 1970s, La Planète Sauvage. It’s a really cool animated movie that was very modern for its time. The soundtrack is very beautiful. I am writing original music using some of the themes and not doing a direct transcription. Amir Bresler is playing, too, and a few other friends. It’s a rhythm section along with the chamber orchestra, which is violins, flutes, clarinets, and things like that.
It’s only when you try doing something like this yourself that you realize how complex film scoring is. For us, we’re screening the movie behind, and I am not really timing it or being accurate. It’s just like a show with a kind of video art behind, except that we’re being very respectful of the creation itself, the themes.
Did you start as a clarinetist?
Yes. I was and I came back to it recently.
Do you use it in your work?
In Apifera. I have a band with Amir, Yuval Havkin (Rejoicer), and Yonatan Albalak, who are the guys from Raw Tapes. We found ourselves in a band and just loved the sound. I brought the clarinet along and it worked really well. I just play lines. I am not seriously improvising or shredding.
You don’t have chops on clarinet like you do on piano?
No, and the fact that I don’t have chops, I kind of like it. That’s what I utilize. I am thinking of the piano when I play so I can find the notes more easily, but it is not the same key [a standard B-flat clarinet is transposed a whole step up]. For me. it’s just another sound on the keyboard that I actually play. That’s how I think about it.
How did you get interested in piano?
My brothers used to play. They both had the same teacher, and at around the same time they both decided they didn’t want to learn. Two slots became available, and I said, “I want it.” On the clarinet, you can play one note at a time, and the piano has so many options and combinations. That was so cool to me, and since then, I am still in that state of mind. It was really quick, I went to this conservatory in the north, because my parents are originally from the north, near the sea of Galilee. It’s a beautiful area, but there is not so much music. Tel Aviv is where most things are happening. Teachers, and people come from New York and perform there. I soon found myself there, and I was playing really weird cafe gigs and whatnot. Playing whatever I could. I knew I had started late, and I was pushing and pushing while my friends were shredding and talking to me about people like Brad Mehldau and Chick Corea. I was like, “Who are they?” I pushed hard, until today. I feel like I still have this mentality that if I am resting, it’s good, but I have to get to work.
Was your first real gig with Daniel Zamir?
I guess so. He came back from New York, and he had this album out that, for its time, was really special called Amen. It was on an Israeli label and he brought these Israeli musicians, Omer Avital (bass), Daniel Friedman (drums), and Omri Mor was playing piano. It was a killer band. I had never heard anything like that. I was visiting New York at the time and I remember hearing it. I had heard his music before and it was all like, RRRRR, and that’s cool, too, but for a musician who is 18 and just listening to Blue Note records, it wasn’t my thing. Amen was an approachable album for me, at least for his world. He came back to Israel and he was playing with everybody. I was like, “I want to play with him.” We did a few sessions at my grandma’s place. We had no rhythm section, it was only me and him, and he brought in a thing in 11/8. I thought, “I don’t know how to play it,” but we dove in and it was really cool. We played for almost five years together and even more after that.
Where you in his touring band?
Yeah, we were really close. It was really an important period for me. You dive right in. No questions asked. No charts.
All his music was taught by ear?
I mean, there were charts, but you don’t want to look at a chart when you play that kind of music. It’s in 9, 11, and stuff like that. It was interesting. It was an interesting thing to do first. Usually people do bebop gigs and jazz stuff, but I dove right into klezmer avant-garde jazz with a kind of looney saxophone player going around. It was like, “What’s going to be today?”
Does he incorporate Jewish and Middle Eastern ideas into the music as well?
Yeah, he was influenced by the generation before. The first people who moved to New York from Israel were Omer Avital, Avi Lebovich, Avishai Cohen the bass player, and later on Avishai Cohen the trumpet player, Daniel Zamir. Before then it was only Berklee people. People who went to Berklee and came back. There wasn’t a hype around it, but then Arnie Lawrence came. Arnie started the New School for jazz in New York. He came to visit Israel a lot. In Jerusalem, he had this group of musicians who later would be this taught by Arnie. It is a very specific methodical situation, where he’d throw a word out and you’d play that word. A conceptual thing. Together with the New School—people later on went to the New School and it opened that channel—not only Berklee or Europe anymore.
Did you study with Arnie?
No, he died when I just started getting interested in studying in an institute, although later on I decided not to. I give him most of the credit when people ask about the Israeli jazz scene. Arnie had this thing that I later heard about, and I wasn’t even around, but it was so strong.
But even when you’re playing jazz, you’re still bringing an Israeli, Jewish, Middle Eastern sensibility to it. It’s different then growing up with the blues or hip hop in New York.
For sure, and I think that’s what people like. You can see it. People have been coming from Armenia the last few years, especially to New York. There’s this wave, or an Eastern European Balkan vibe, that’s getting in there. People are so interested in any sound that is Western but has that twist to it. Israelis just have it. Some people try to deny it—and there is a sound of denying your Israeli roots, too—it is also a cool sound.
This is a crazy generalization. I saw an interview with Miles Davis and he was asked about the difference between the way black and white Americans played. He said that white Americans, in general, laid back behind the beat a lot more, although he didn’t know why that was. Do Israelis also have an approach to groove that's a little different or skewed?
I am sure they do. Israel is not really a Middle Eastern country. It’s really more Eastern North African. That’s how I see it. It’s more Africa than say Iraq or even Jordan. There are also people from places like Libya, Tripoli, and Egypt who came here—Jews from all around the world basically—and a lot of people from Africa. You get this African sound that has also a specific pulse to it. I am not talking about the beat, I am talking about a pulse. It’s like whatever tempo or groove you play, it has some sort of feel to it. You can’t really pin it down, but it is that sound that’s in between. Whereas Europe, the Viennese school, the most classical approach would be a metronome and a straight beat. Israel is the opposite end of the spectrum. You hear those batá drums in Yoruba music, all the Cuban and salsa music came from that, and you can hear it. You can put a metronome to it—because it’s really tight—but you can’t, too. The metronome at some point gets lost. But you still feel that pulse and intention and I think that’s really what matters. I definitely feel it here.
It’s a feel.
Right, and you can’t explain it. It’s just that. I think it comes from Africa. It’s that feel that I can’t feel it straight. It’s very ingrained in you. It reminds me of sitting with my grandpa. My Grandpa was a Moroccan. They came from Morocco around 1963 to Israel. Just so you realize, they had a full life there. Servants and things like that. He was a professor and Arabic teacher, and he was singing with some of the greatest singers there for the king in Morocco on certain Fridays. I wasn’t really into that when he was alive and talking to him about it, but I definitely realized there was something there. He used to sit me down on Fridays watching the national TV channel in Morocco. They would broadcast those times when musicians were sitting around the king and playing for him. It was really insightful. My grandfather would sometimes play together with the beat on the table. When he was playing he was really grooving, and it wasn’t anything close to what I used to listen to. That was the first time I realized, “That’s me.” It’ll probably take me a few years to get there, but it’s just so deep. He didn’t know music, he just did it.
Those performances, did they play secular music or was it piyutim and music from the synagogue?
Both. There is another singer from here, Raymonde, and she’s the mother of Yael Abecassis, who is a model and actress. She did a documentary about her mother not a long time ago. I cried the whole way through. She played for the king as well—she sings really beautifully—and that stuff I used to hear all the time. Nobody would listen to these things. They wouldn’t have recordings of it necessarily, it's just what it was. It’s both Arabic music, which is a Muslim influence and singing in Arabic, like Moroccan. The language is a type of Arabic, it’s like the relationship between Hebrew and Aramaic, it’s the same kind of ancient Arabic. The Jewish people in Morocco used to sing in the same language, so you can’t really differentiate. You don’t know which is which, it just sounds the same, which is amazing.
Did you start playing with Avishai Cohen when you moved to New York?
No, that’s when I left Avishai. It took me about two months to move. The last year with Avishai we played with some people from New York. He brought people on the tours like Kurt Rosenwinkel, and other people he used to play with in the ‘90s there. Those were the people I used to listen to when I was younger on records. It was cool, and then I made some friends once I landed in New York. Most of the people there know each other from the schools and I didn’t have that, so I had to do my own adventure. But it really helped to have played with someone who people knew. That was really helpful.
What’s your relationship with Raw Tapes? You do a lot of stuff with them.
They started the label about 13 years ago and nobody really knew them. They used to do hip hop parties, DJ-ing and bringing that L.A. vibe that was happening at the time, but when it wasn’t a hype. Six years ago they started doing sessions at this studio in Tel Aviv called Kicha Studios. It’s still on. Back then it was the home for these people who started bringing other people other than their gang. Amir was actually one of the first people. We used to play jazz gigs with Avishai. I would ask him, “What are you doing today?” He said, “I am going to Kicha. I play with these guys, maybe come by sometime.” It started that way. I went and there were maybe 13 people in the room making music. I realized that you don’t have to bring music and charts to the session. You can just play a beat and somebody will lay chords on. Stuff like that. That kind of process was very new to me—apart from it sounding really good—really crisp. Synths and stuff like that. It was more of a feeling of real community. It was a short way from there to making an album with Yuvy/Rejoicer (Yuval Havkin) and playing on each other's albums since then. The band, Apifera, was a full circle.
You also have that new album with Keren Dun that came out in March.
That’s the most recent thing. I have a studio album of mine that will probably come out next year on Raw Tapes. There’s Apifera. There’s a lot of focus on that, and we’re touring in Europe this November if everything goes the right way. There are all kinds of other projects I do, too. People book me for solo piano gigs, and I love that. I still love the piano as an instrument, as much as I like doing electronic music, I’ve got to have a piano at home and practice and play.
Your solo piano stuff is thru-composed, improvised—or is it everything?
Everything. I did this piano album, together with Yuvy. It was writing music on the spot and leaving a lot of space for interpretation. When I play solo, I basically have a few themes and then I take it from there. We have a few shows in Turkey coming up as a trio. Whenever they commission me. I don’t necessarily work on my tours now, mostly on Apifera’s. I work with Yuvy on that, which is easier for me now. Plus that commission with the Teder, but we’ll see what happens when the world will hopefully open up…
From The Archives: Music Is The Highest
For Daniel Zamir, making music is the ultimate spiritual experience.
This is excellent. Such a cool article.