Looking For The Real Thing
Nadav Bachar talks about his never-ending quest for authenticity in music
For Nadav Bachar, a multi-instrumentalist from Hadera, Israel, the best music isn’t the most complicated, or assessable, or adventurous—or whatever quality people use to describe it—for him, the best music is authentic. Authenticity is the thing he looks for in the musics he listens to, and it’s the defining characteristic of the music he makes. That could be cultural, and indicative of an organic synergy between the artist and his roots, but just as likely, it’s reflective of what he considers a palpable realness.
“People coming together and sharing in a musical experience—good music comes from that intention [כוונה],” Bachar says in our interview below. “When you want to experience music together, and you don’t have a need to put it on YouTube, that’s music for the sake of music. It’s totally for its own sake, and that’s what I am looking for.”
Bachar discovered that realness—or became aware that he was drawn to it—while exploring his faith. He was in New York, at a farbrengen, or Hasidic gathering, when he first heard nigunim, or wordless Hasidic melodies, performed raw, and in their natural element. That got his attention, and he realized, finally, that this was music he could call his own.
“When you play the blues as a kid, you think, ‘How does that relate to me?’” Bachar says. “But the nigunim, I really felt that they were mine … I heard 5,000 people singing a nigun together on Shabbat, and that, for me, was an authentic music experience. I think that is the only real way to play nigunim. You need to capture the power of 5,000 people singing together, not to mention the melodies and the simplicity of the nigunim, and the depth. It was an opening of a new world.”
That new world is something Bachar explored in collaboration with Oren Tsor, another multi-instrumentalist. They got a lot of attention, and airplay, in Israel for their arrangements of nigunim, which were recorded with various artists. But that’s not all he does. Bachar’s interests include Andalusian piyutim, or liturgical melodies, open-ended Hasidic-flavored jams, progressive metal, and avant-garde jazz, all of which he’s explored at some point—and often simultaneously—throughout his career. He’s first and foremost a guitarist, although if an instrument has strings, he can probably play it.
“I think most stringed instruments are mostly the same,” he says. “You have a string, frets, sometimes no frets, but it’s a string. I want to believe I can play on any kind of string, because they really work the same way.”
Bachar’s quest is seemingly never-ending, and that was a big part of our conversation. I spoke with him from his studio at home, and we discussed his early struggles balancing his passion for music with his evolving religious beliefs, discovering nigunim as well as other musics he feels draw from the same emotional, or spiritual, source, the differences between how Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews look at their cultural heritage, and why he feels composers like Mozart and Bach are simply the beneficiaries of better public relations.
When did you start playing music?
I started playing guitar when I was 11. I wanted to be one of the Beatles. I had a cassette player, and my first tape was a Beatles album. It was the compilation, the one with the picture of them on the balcony. I loved it. The experience of getting cassettes and headphones really influenced me as a child. I remember my father playing Bob Marley in the car or playing Dire Straits. It was a special moment the first time I heard Mark Knopfler, or when my father turned the bass up when he heard reggae and Bob Marley. I remember it as an experience, so it probably was a good one.
Did you start playing in bands early on?
I played in a band when I was 15 called Excalibur. It was a metal band, and we won a few contests, including a big contest for young bands that was in Raanana. Back in the ‘90s, there was a scene of young bands, and that is what we did all the time. We had the keys to the bomb shelter that belonged to the high school, and that was the place that we rehearsed. It was our after school group, or extra curricular activity (חוג). I studied classical music, too. I had a teacher who was a classical musician, and I studied it formally, with notes and theory and all that stuff.
What was Israel’s metal scene like then? Didn’t you already have bands like Orphaned Land?
No, this was much earlier, in the ‘90s. We had our band, Excalibur, but we were kids. I was then in a progressive rock band, which was totally influenced by Frank Zappa (called פרווה חמה or Hot Fur). It was a very high level of music and very weird. We also had actors doing skits when we were playing the music. It was a great time. I moved to Tel Aviv when I was 18, and at that time, I played with Hot Fur and a few other bands. I tried to be a session player, as a guitar player with different kinds of bands. I played with Mika Karni and Tomer Yosef—after that he joined the Balkan Beat Box—and I was a close friend with Ben Hendler, he’s the bass player for Berry Sakharof, and also one of the producers. We were close friends, and he always would grab me and say, “Let’s go, let’s play.” I just wanted to meet girls, but he said, “No, we have to play.”
Did you serve in the army?
No. I tried to be in the band, but it didn’t work out. Somehow, I don’t know how, but I was out of the army. I just told them that I didn’t want to be there if they wouldn’t let me play music, and they believed me. After that, when I was 19, I went to the Rimon Music School. I was there for one year. It was a good experience, but I was very young. When I look at it now, I think that 18 is an early age to leave home, but as it was, all these experiences, those were the things that brought me to teshuvah [to embrace religious observance].
How so?
After I went to Rimon, my friends finished the army and went to India and other places. I joined them and went to India with a friend. After that I wanted to travel. When you’re a kid, you don’t really have a life. You want to begin your life, and I thought to myself, as a creator, what would inspire me? I wasn’t really an adult that I could create. I needed to see the world and I needed to develop. I went to India and Thailand and it was an amazing experience. Also, I was discovering music from the east, and started to get an interest in music from there. One time I went for two months, and then I went for one year, just traveling and studying music. Every place I went, I tried to learn music. I learned a bit of the sitar. I learned tabla. I also learned shehnai, which is a type of flute, or the saxophone of the Indians [editor: the shehnai a double reeded instrument, similar to an oboe, but without levers or keys, like a recorder]. It was when I was in India that I met Chabad. I was interested in Buddhism and yoga and lots of stuff. I did two silent retreats, and that really opened me enough to say, “I know much more about Buddhism than Judaism.” I went to the Chabad House and started to learn. It was in Dharamshala, in northern India. The process began at the Chabad House. After that, I returned to Israel. It took me a year, and then I started studying at a yeshiva in Ramat Aviv. There was one year where I really was confused. I didn’t know what to do, because when I got back, I returned to all the people who I played music with. They were not religious. When I was 20, I left everyone, and then I got to India and I decided I wanted to be religious, and then I went back to Israel as a religious person, but I threw that all away and returned to all the people who I played music with, and then I threw them away and went to the yeshiva. I cut everything. I said goodbye. We made a party. We put on a show, and everyone said, “Bye Nadav.” I was wearing a kipa and tzi-tzit. The show was all mixed together. It was my farewell party, with Hot Fur and all the people I played with.
When was that?
It was in 2003, when I was 23. I went to the yeshiva and I almost left music. That first year, I didn’t play at all. I created stuff, but I didn’t play. There were about three or four years where there was music, I did stuff, but I primarily only studied at the yeshiva. But then I returned. I started a band named A Groyse Metzie [א גרויסע מציאה]. It was a progressive Jewish band. I started that band with Oren Tsor.
You’ve collaborated with Oren a lot.
With Oren, we did a few nigunim albums, and some of them were played on the radio in Israel. We did one with Erez Lev Ari, “Kol Bayar,” which was on the radio. It was on the Galgalatz playlist. I think most people know me from those arrangements of nigunim, which is also what I see from the statistics I get from YouTube. That is one of the problems, people always expect you to do the same thing. It’s a well-known problem. Actors experience it as well.
They get pigeonholed.
If you do comedy, you do comedy. You can’t do drama. It’s a problem. But I don’t know if it’s such a problem, that’s the way the world is. People want to put everything in its right place. “This guy does this, and that guy does that.” If you try to combine and blend those worlds together, it’s hard for the listener. This is the galut [the exile]. But for me, I am really weird.
How are you weird?
In my taste in music. It is hard for me to listen to pop music and ordinary stuff. If the music doesn’t make you think, “What is going on there?” It’s boring. I think that a lot of the stuff I do, I need to restrain myself. Especially with the nigunim, I try to put the light into the vessel. That’s also part of life and part of the journey. There’s stuff from the point of view of where you have to hold back, there are limits and boundaries. But I also like the avant-garde stuff and totally abstract music.
Have you found that nigunim, and music in general, has been a way to express your Jewish identity?
Of course. When I first encountered the nigunim, I think that was the first time I encountered something authentic, which relates to me as a Jew. It really was an authentic experience. When you play the blues as a kid, you think, “How does that relate to me?” Maybe if you’re born in the United States, or maybe if you are black, you can feel that the blues belongs to you. I really like the blues—I like to play the blues, and I study the blues—but I don’t feel like it belongs to me. But the nigunim, I really felt that they were mine. When you go to a farbrengen, I was at a farbrengen at 770 in New York [770 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, is the headquarters of the Chabad Lubavitch movement], and I heard 5,000 people singing a nigun together on Shabbat. That, for me, was an authentic music experience. I think that is the only real way to play nigunim. You need to capture the power of 5,000 people singing together. That is nigunim. Not to mention the melodies and the simplicity of the nigunim, and the depth, it was an opening of a new world. That was 10 or 15 years ago. I heard all those people singing together and it was amazing. I understood that what I was really looking for was authenticity. That’s what I am looking for in music, or that’s the essence of music that I am looking for. And then I discovered the world of Andalusian piyutim [liturgical melodies].
From North Africa?
Yes from Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria. That’s the Andalusian music. I was totally charmed by that world. Every music that has that sense of authenticity, like I heard in Balinese gamelan music, which I also really love. It has the same—it’s weird to say it—but it has the same intention or focus [כוונה] as nigunim do from my point of view, and that applies to the piyutim as well. It’s people coming together and sharing in a musical experience. Good music comes from that intention. When you want to experience music together, and you don’t have a need to put it on YouTube, that’s music for the sake of music. It’s totally for its own sake [לשמה]. That is what I am looking for, and it is a shame that you have YouTube and Facebook and all these idolatrous alters that you need to serve. I hate it.
Have you studied the Arabic maqam systems?
I have, but I’ve only studied the Andalusian music. I’ve studied Turkish as well, but informally with friends when they come over and we play that music together. I love to learn that stuff from all those areas, but what I really like is the Andalusian music. There are maqamet in Andalusian music, but the system is not based on that.
What’s it based on?
It is based on the diatonic system. It began in Spain, and then it went to Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria. In Morocco, it began to blend with the Arab influence, and with the Berber influence and rhythms, but the basic system is only diatonic. It’s lots of scales that go up one way and down a different way, like the melodic minor scale, except that it’s a lot of different scales that are acting differently. And the groove is the best, it’s the best groove in the world.
I’ve heard that as you go further south in Morocco, the music has more of an influence from the African musics from that region.
There are also piyutim that are from that area that are totally African. You hear lots of pentatonic scales, but totally Jewish words. You need to hear African beats, too, and the older the better. But this is a really large topic, and you can’t use one word to describe, say, the music from Egypt and the music from Turkey. Those are totally different things. But I really like all these kinds of traditional music. I like traditional music from all over the world.
In Israel these days, there’s a resurgence of people embracing the musics of the different diaspora communities. Are you seeing that as well?
Yes. When people speak about Bach, and say that he is basis of Western music, I don’t see it that way. I think Bach is the traditional music of the Germans. You can learn stuff from it, and sometimes it is beautiful, but it is not a superior music. Mozart is not a superior music, he is traditional music from Austria. They just had really good PR [laughs]. But it’s only PR. It is written down, so they say, “Look, we can show it to you!” These days, with the internet, and search, people are exposed to lots of music, and you can find it. For example, there’s a site for Turkish music that has thousands of pieces with notation, but you don’t learn that way in school. You learn only the Western way, and there’s not much of a choice what you can learn. I mean, my last name is Bachar, which is from Turkey, and it was only when I was 35 that I had a chance to hear authentic Turkish music. It was not on MTV. It was never on the radio. There are all kinds of different traditions, and I think these traditions are the best, especially in the Jewish world. As Jews, we really explore these traditions, and we also really influence the traditions. For example, in Morocco, we kept the old traditions. The Jew in Morocco remembers songs that the Moroccans don’t remember from those Andalusian traditions. We have a part in keeping those traditions.
Is that true with in the Ashkenazi community as well? For example, some nigunim come from old Russian marches. The Russians aren’t singing those songs any more, but the Jews are.
The thing is that the Ashkenazim will say, “We took this music, and we’re using it. This is ours.” That is the way the Ashkenazim relate to it. The Sephardim don’t see it like that, it’s totally blended together. But this is a characteristic of people, and it’s ok, this is who we are. In Europe, it was harder, and the Jews made an effort to get away, to be separate, in a radical way. As in, “That is them, and this is us.” But in different countries it was different.
Why do you think that musicians who embrace religious observance are often drawn to the Hasidic movement? It seems, and I could be wrong, that the Hasidic movement is more open to exploring different styles of music than other groups within the Ashkenazi world.
I think it’s because Hasidic thought is aiming for the truth. I think that when you are using Hasidic teachings, you are trying to take the world and make it more holy. To elevate the world, or to ascend, or to elevate the material in everything that you are dealing with. People like Ishay Ribo and Shuli Rand, and people like that, are totally mainstream today, and I think that comes from the Hasidic movement. You can do your thing, and it will be part of your service to God. In the past, I don’t think it was like that. Someone like Uri Zohar, he didn’t want to do it [Zohar was an Israeli film star and celebrity who embraced observance in the late 1970s].
You mentioned earlier that you’ve recorded a lot a nigunim with Oren Tsor. Is that you you singing on those recordings?
No, it’s friends or different artists. I don't like to hear my voice, it’s too hard for me [laughs].
Photo courtesy Nadav Bachar
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