by amy klein
correspondent
Israeli violinist Miri Ben-Ari has always loved a challenge.
That’s why, growing up in Ramat Gan, Israel, she didn’t mind when her parents started her on the violin at age 5, even though her brother eschewed it for the guitar. “I liked the challenge, the difficulty,” said the 28-year-old in her slight, lilting Israeli-accented Hebrew.
And that’s why, even though she was a child prodigy headed for Juilliard School in New York City, and later did a stint in the Israeli army’s string quartet, she started listening to jazz and fell in love with the improvisational, avante-garde freedom it provided, away from the “perfection” of classical music.
Ben-Ari left classical music, left her parents’ dreams and left Israel for New York.
Her story would be interesting enough if it just ended with her three jazz albums — one featuring jazz great Winton Marsalis — and a contract with the Blue Note Jazz Club in New York. But during one of her performances on the Upper West Side, someone from Atlantic Records was in the audience and came up to her afterward. “You are so different. Why don’t you go play to Wyclef Jean?” he told her, and that’s where her latest journey began.
It’s a journey that started her in the world of hip-hop, led her to become the only Israeli to win a Grammy (for co-writing “Jesus Walks” with Kayne West in 2005), and made her famous as “The Hip-Hop Violinist,” a category that didn’t even exist before Ben-Ari entered the very different world of hip-hop.
Ben-Ari sat in Wyclef’s studio for six months. Her first commercial hip-hop gig was on breakout artist Alicia Keys’ “Fallin’.” Wyclef Jean featured her at Carnegie Hall and introduced her as “The Hip-Hop Violinist.” Next it was Jay Z, then it was Kayne West, she says. “You cannot give yourself the title. Someone else should give it to you. That’s how they heard my music.”
It can’t be easy for a white Jewish Israeli girl to enter the world of hip-hop.
“The way that I play is so elusive; they thought, ‘she cannot be white playing like that,’” Ben-Ari says.
Ben-Ari is always quick to point out her Israeli roots. “I’m very proud of the fact that I grew up in Israel and it gave me a different perspective.” She doesn’t experience racism or anti-Zionism, she said.
“I experience exactly the opposite. They always find a way to connect with me because I’m from Israel.”
Ben-Ari wants to represent her country well. “I’m paving the way for Israeli image, because I believe our image is what creates a domino effect, and how the world sees Israel and Israelis.
“Israel is a wonderful place with wonderful people — it’s not reflected on television, it doesn’t reflect the great quality of Israeli people as people, and Israeli people are doing extraordinary things all the time coming from struggle.”
Peace and acceptance is very important to Ben-Ari, as reflected in her first single, the hit “Symphony of Brotherhood,” featuring a Martin Luther King Jr. “I have a dream” clip (available at www.myspace.com/miribenari).
Another important cause for Ben-Ari is Holocaust awareness. She has partnered with the Israeli hip-hop band Subliminal on a song, and started a new campaign called Gedenk, which means remember, to raise Holocaust awareness.
“My family and I believe that it’s very important to remember history, not to repeat the future,” says Ben-Ari, who had family that died in the Holocaust.
After she takes her band to Israel, Ben-Ari will finish her next album. And it will not be hip-hop, but rather all instrumental, with soul and R&B influences. “It’s very new, it’s hard to label it — it’s so groundbreaking it’s hard to get record companies [on board],” she says.
“Every time I do something different, then after it succeeds, they say, ‘yeah.’” Nonetheless, she’s pushing on. “I believe in what I do.”
Will she ever go back to hip-hop?
“I’m not leaving hip-hop ... I don’t need to go back,” Ben-Ari says. “I am the hip-hop violinist.”
Amy Klein is religion editor at the L.A. Jewish Journal.
CopyrightJ, the Jewish news weekly of Northern California