Haim Moshe

Haim Moshe ( _he. חיים משה,born 1956cite book
last=Regev
first=Motti
coauthors=Edwin Seroussi
title=Popular Music and National Culture in Israel
page=215
year=2004
publisher=University of California Press
isbn=0520236521
url=http://books.google.com/books?id=kAxLAn6sOb4C
accessdate=2008-08-26] in Ramat HaSharon) is an Israeli singer whose musical style has crossed over from Yemenite and Mediterranean "ethnic" music to include mainstream Israeli and western pop elements. He has helped Mizrahi music achieve wide popularityboth in Israelcite news
last=Peress
first=Naim
title=Expert discusses Middle East music
work=The Daily Pennsylvanian
date=February 15, 1995
url=http://media.www.dailypennsylvanian.com/media/storage/paper882/news/1995/02/15/Resources/Expert.Discusses.Middle.East.Music-2177007.shtml
accessdate=2008-08-26] and in Arab countries.cite news
last=Friedman
first=Thomas
title=Using songs, Israelis touch Arab feelings
work=The New York Times
date=May 3, 1987
url=http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DEED6173FF930A35756C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all
accessdate=2008-08-26]

Early life

Haim Moshe was born in 1956 in Ramat HaSharon, Israel. His parents were Yemenite Jews who immigrated to Israel after World War II; as Mizrahi, or Eastern, Jews they had a distinct culture and background from the Ashkenazi (European) Jews who played the major role in establishing the modern state and culture of Israel. As a child he learned to sing not only Israeli and Jewish religious music in the synagogue, but also Greek, Turkish, and Arabic songs, which he performed for weddings and Bar Mitzvahs. As a young man, Moshe worked in a print shop, and he served in the Israeli military in the mid-1970s.

Musical career

Moshe began his professional music career as a member of the band "Sounds of the Vineyard" ( _he. צלילי הכרם, "Tzliley Ha-Kerem") along with Daklon and Moshe Ben-Mosh, playing in clubs and at weddings. Their music was distributed by the brothers Asher and Meir Reuveni, who had started informally selling cassette-tape recordings of wedding performances by Daklon and others. This Mediterranean or Oriental style, which had been neglected by the established Israeli music industry, became known as "cassette tape music" or "central bus station music" (after the stalls in the Tel Aviv Central Bus Station where many of the tapes were sold). Many of the songs were taken from Greek and Turkish pop, with the words translated or entirely rewritten in Hebrew by specialist lyricists, and the music reworked into Yemeni style. Mediterranean music grew in popularity after 1980 and eventually became a profitable business for the Reuveni brothers.cite news
last=Agassi
first=Tirzah
title=Bus Station Blues
dateMay 3, 1991
work=The Jerusalem Post]

In 1983 Haim Moshe released his first major album, "Ahavat Hayay (Love of My Life)," with 200,000 sales. This album included two hit songs: "Ahavat Hayay," a Yemenite-style song in Hebrew; and "Linda," a Lebanese song which Moshesang in Arabic.cite journal
last=Regev
first=Motti
title=Musica Mizrakhit, Israeli Rock and National Culture in Israel
journal=Popular Music
volume=15
issue=3
year=1996
month=October
pages=275-284
url=http://www.jstor.org/pss/931329
accessdate=2008-08-26] "Linda" was not an immediate hit on Israeli radio, but earned Moshe a following among Palestinians and Arabs fromsurrounding countries.cite journal
last=Horowitz
first=Amy
title=Israeli Mediterranean Music: Straddling Disputed Territories
journal=The Journal of American Folklore
volume=112
issue=445
month=summer
year=1999
pages=450-463
url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/541372
accessdate=2008-08-26] The success of this album made Haim Moshe a "household word" in Israel.

From the mid-1980s, Moshe began to incorporate more "Shirei Eretz Yisrael" into his repertoire. These "songs of the Land of Israel" formed a corpus of standard Israeli songs, many with patriotic themes, developed to promote an Israeli national identity. This helped Moshe achieve greater mainstream popularity in Israel, but also attracted criticism that he was abandoning his Mizrahi musical and cultural roots in a process of "Ashkenazification.":"My friends say to me: 'Haim, you're exaggerating. You're running out on us. You will soon be an Ashkenazi. Just when we have found a good singer in our style, you turn to another style.' They want me with them, to keep the style for them, to keep up the standards. So that "musica mizrakhit" will receive the honour it deserves. My roots are black, real black… I am and will always be Haim Moshe with the Yemenite accent, the jargon and the admirationfor the Oriental culture."cite journal
last=Halper
first=Jeff
coauthors=Edwin Seroussi and Pamela Squires-Kidron
title=Musica mizrakhit: Ethnicity and Class Culture in Israel
journal=Popular Music
volume=8
issue=2
year=1989
month=May
pages=131-141
url=http://www.jstor.org/pss/853463
accessdate=2008-08-26]

Over the following decades, he released a string of hit albums, among them"Ten Laz'man Lelehet" (Let Time Pass),cite news
last=Goldberg
first=Andy
work=The Jerusalem Post
date=January 26, 1989
title=Oriental Duo to Tour] .His performance of the song "Pictures in an Album," composed by Ze'ev Nehama and Tamir Kaliski, was the 1999 Golden Feather AwardsSong of the Year.cite news
last=Kaye
first=Helen
title=Eyal Golan gets Album of the Year
work=The Jerusalem Post
date=January 31, 1999
page=8] His most recent album is "Karov LeLev (Close to the Heart)," released in 2008.

Cultural influence

Haim Moshe's music became popular not only with Israelis, but also with Arabs in surrounding countries. He began to receive fan mail from young people in Syria and throughout the region, and it was even rumored that during the 1982 Lebanon War, the Israeli and Syrian armies were bothlistening to his "Linda."cite news
last=Petreanu
first=Dan
work=The Jerusalem Post
title=The Thursday Interview: Haim Moshe. A musician, not a political crusader.
date=February 2, 1989] He became a positive symbol Israel within the Arab world,cite news
last=Lynfield
first=Ben
title=Peace, Rattle and Roll
work=The Jerusalem Post
date=March 31, 1989] and of Mizrahi culture within Israel. He has been "a bridge between East and West in Israel", predicting that "In another twenty years this music will be known as the real Israeli music - not eastern or western but the authentic sound."

Discography

Moshe has released 35 albums, not including collections. Some of the best known are:
*Ahavat Hayay, 1983 (Love of My Life, _he. אהבת חיי)
*Hakolot shel Pireus, 1990 (Voices of Piraeus, הקולות של פיראוס)
*Etmol, 1995 (Yesterday, אתמול)
*Hatmonot sheba'albom, 1998 (Pictures in an Album, התמונות שבאלבום)
*Od shana chalfa, 2000 (Another Year Has Passed, עוד שנה חלפה)
*Emtza Hachayim, 2001 (In the Middle of Life, אמצע החיים)

References