All the attention this week may have been on Boy George’s well-publicized visit to Israel and his sold-out ‘We Will Dance Again’ shows in Tel Aviv, but another appearance by an international musician, with far less media glare, might have been more significant.
Jonny Greenwood, the guitarist and co-leader of Radiohead, one of the most enduring British bands of the last 30 years, slipped unobtrusively into the country for two shows with his longtime Israeli friend and musician Dudu Tassa.
The two guitarists hosted 17 musicians on the stage of the sold-out Jerusalem Theatre’s Sherover Hall on Thursday night (with another show added on Friday afternoon), for an electrifying performance of their 2023 joint album Jarak Qaribak (Your Neighbor is Your Friend).
The shows were the opening show of the 27th Jerusalem International Oud Festival, produced by the Confederation House under the artistic direction of its CEO Effie Benaya. And despite a stellar lineup over the next week, Tassa and Greenwood will be difficult to top.
Even before a note of music was played, the event was a triumph simply due to the fact that Greenwood came to Israel as the most high-profile artist to arrive here since the October 7, 2023, massacre.
Greenwood and his bandmates in Radiohead have a long history with the country, which helped break the band’s first single “Creep” back in 1993.
They’ve performed in Israel a number of times since, and unlike the ‘Israel can do no wrong’ take presented by Boy George during his stay, Greenwood and his bandmates, particularly frontman Thom Yorke, have been vocal critics of Israel’s policies and have expressed conflicted and nuanced views since October 7. The difference is that, unlike many artists who have demonized Israelis en masse and have explicitly or implicitly boycotted the country, Greenwood can apparently differentiate between the government he may be critical of and the country and the people themselves, for whom he seems to have an affinity.
The collaboration between the two artists began when Tassa opened for Radiohead on their 2017 U.S. tour, after releasing his album “Dudu Tassa and the Kuwaitis”, which paid tribute to the work of his grandfather, Daoud Al-Kuwaiti, and his brother Saleh, who were born in Iraq and became among the greatest and most important musicians in the Middle East in the 1940s.
Representation of classic Arabic love songs, incorporating modern rock, world music
Jarak Qaribak reinterprets classic Arabic love songs from the Middle East in a style that stays true to their origins while incorporating modern rock, electronic, and world music elements to create a churning wall of sound.
Switching between electric guitar, bass, and a mad-wizard persona behind an electronic percussion setup, Greenwood let the music do the talking as just another band member, even though most eyes were glued to him. Tassa, on guitar and vocals, was a combination cheerleader and conductor, high-fiving the mesmerizing guest vocalists, Baghdad-born Karrar Al-Saadi (Kiri) and Nazareth-based Gianna Nadaf, and leading the band throughout the evening.
Both musically and visually, it was akin to watching a Middle East-centric Talking Heads in its Stop Making Sense big band days – so much to look at and so much to take one’s breath away musically. And when super drummer Dan Mayo broke out of the three-man percussion section to go full throttle, matching Greenwood on bass beat for beat, it turned into a full-fledged rock rave.
Tassa addressed the audience, acknowledging that he had brought together “friends from Israel, Baghdad and England”, and referencing last week’s election, that while that hatred and turmoil were swirling outside, here was proof that music could transcend differences.
There was no loss of irony that while a few hundred meters away, President Isaac Herzog was meeting with the heads of the Israeli political parties to determine the future leadership of the troubled country and hundreds of demonstrators stood outside calling for unity, the musicians and audience gathered in the Sherover Hall were expressing true cultural and musical harmony.
