by dan pine
staff writer
As a teen, musician Yoel Ben-Simhon worked overtime to hide his Moroccan accent. It embarrassed him because back in 1970s-era Israel, being a Jew with an Arabic background just wasn’t cool.
It is now.
Ben-Simhon has leaned on his North African roots to master the oud, the Arab lute. He’s played the world’s great concert halls, recorded several CDs and even contributed to Hollywood film scores. Now he’s set to make his Bay Area concert debut with “Here Comes the Sea Followed by an Ocean,” a new piece performed by lute players from around the world.
The concert takes place Sept. 23 at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco. It’s a presentation of the San Francisco World Music Festival 2007.
That esoteric title comes from a line supposedly spoken when the famed 13th-century Persian poet Rumi and his father walked by. The Rumi reference is key: “Here Comes the Sea Followed by an Ocean” draws on his poetry to delivery a message of global love and unity.
Ben-Simhon is all for it. He will perform the piece with two Azerbaijani lute players, two Chinese musicians and an Iranian percussionist, all unknown to him.
“This is the first time I worked with these people,” said the Tel Aviv-based musician. “We are used to it in the professional music world. We meet and we know how to play. All we need is to play in the groove.”
For Ben-Simhon to reach the pinnacle of the oud universe (and there is one) is remarkable considering he only started playing the instrument eight years ago. Before that, he mastered rock guitar, jazz piano and operatic vocal performance. Traces of jazz and classical do make their way into his music, but first and foremost he celebrates classical Arab music, which has grown popular in Israel and around the world.
It wasn’t only his Moroccan heritage that pulled him in that direction. He remembers all too well fighting with the Israeli Army in the first Lebanon War, taking arms against a sea of Arab foes.
“After the trauma of being an officer in the war, holding a gun and shooting people, you don’t want to go back,” he says. “You want to fix the world a little bit. If we learn about Palestinians and the other ethnicities, we will be able to respect, forgive and cherish each other. We all want love and happiness.”
Music has been Ben-Simhon’s path to that goal. While a student at the Mannes School of Music, he attended an oud concert, an experience that, he says, “stunned me. I was shocked to hear that classical Arabic music has so much complexity. Classical European music has 12 notes in an octave. Arabic has 24 notes. It gives you double the vocabulary.”
Ben-Simhon began studying the art form. At the same time, he settled in the United States, first in Los Angeles, and later in Manhattan, where he served as professor of Jewish and Arabic music at City College of New York. He also formed his own band, Sultana, which performs original and classical Arab tunes. Its members are Arab and Israeli, Muslim, Christian and Jewish.
Sultana has toured across Europe and North America, though Ben-Simhon says his dream is to play a concert in his parents’ native Morocco, a country he has visited before.
“Morocco is the most liberal country in the Arab world,” claims Ben-Simhon, who speaks Arabic. “When I traveled there, I felt very comfortable and welcomed. But they knew I was Jewish after the second sentence.”
That’s because traditionally there is a pronounced Jewish accent in Moroccan Arabic. Ben-Simhon compares it to a Yiddish accent in spoken English.
Now living in Israel for the first time in 15 years, Ben-Simhon says he experienced a bit of reentry culture shock. But it’s nothing a little sweet music can’t cure. He intends to bring that sweetness to the stage of the JCC later this month.
“Music gives you amazing powers,” he says. “Hopefully audiences will see that and be inspired to learn about ‘the other side’ politically, spiritually and socially, which can lead to better understanding.”
“Here Comes the Sea Followed by an Ocean” takes place 7 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 23, at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, 3200 California, S.F. Tickets: $18-$22. Information: (415) 292-1233 or www.jccsf.org/arts.
CopyrightJ, the Jewish news weekly of Northern California