Bar’s meeting point

Bar made aliya with his family from Rabat, Morocco, at age six. The Bars joined thousands of other olim who flooded here from around the world in the wake of the establishment of the state.

By BARRY DAVIS
Shlomo Bar (photo credit: ARIEL VAN STRATTON)
Shlomo Bar
(photo credit: ARIEL VAN STRATTON)
Shlomo Bar is a hard man to pin down. At the age of 71, with close to 40 years of earnest musical derring-do behind him, the iconic percussionist- vocalist shows no signs of slowing down.
The founder member of the Habreira Hativit crossgenre group has been blazing his own, highly individual trail across widely ranging musical terrain since the mid-1970s, regardless of industry trends or sociopolitical shifts. Bar is the irrepressible and instantly recognizable frontman of the group that coined the East-West musical idiom here.
It is safe to say that there are few more thrilling sights on the local and international music scene than watching Bar pound a hand drum almost into submission – throwing his head back in undisguised ecstasy and singing some heartfelt lyrics about his Moroccan roots, life in this part of the world or practically any other social-cultural context going.
Bar made aliya with his family from Rabat, Morocco, at age six. The Bars joined thousands of other olim who flooded here from around the world in the wake of the establishment of the state. Like many other newcomers, the family’s accommodations and residential surroundings were not exactly plush, and they initially set up house in Be’er Ya’acov, then a ma’abara (transit camp) just to the east of Rishon Lezion.
The septuagenarian has come a long way since those humble socioeconomic beginnings – and, a couple of weeks ago, his contribution to cultural endeavor in Israel was right royally recognized when he was awarded an honorary PhD by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. “I am sure my parents would have been proud to see me at the ceremony,” says Bar in a surprisingly understated manner.
It’s not that Dr. Bar is prone – pardon the mixed musical metaphor – to blow his own trumpet when it comes to his own standing. While he comes across as such a forthright character when talking about music or sociopolitical matters, he adopts a far more modest stance when talking about his own achievements.
Even so, Bar was very grateful to have the chance to wear a fancy gown and mortarboard in Beersheba. “It is a great honor and very flattering,” he says. “I feel I want to serve my culture, my language and our common memory. That’s what really interests me.”
Bar also maintains a clearly defined approach to life, and society around him. When he offers an opinion on something, for example about the level of spirituality in everyday life, he does so with unflinching clarity. “There is something so powerful in Jerusalem.
When I go to the Western Wall to pray on Shabbat, suddenly you come across a bunch of people you’ve never met before. You meet someone who can read from the Torah, and someone else knows something else. It’s amazing how all these things happen in Jerusalem,” he says.
Around three years ago, Bar moved from Herzliya to the trendy Florentin district of south Tel Aviv, but is less appreciative of his current surroundings.
“Here, it’s all about materialism, and putting on appearances and playing games.”
Sounds like Bar isn’t having too much fun in his relatively new locale. When I suggested that having a hard time in Tel Aviv might offer an avenue to more creativity, citing the timeworn cliché of the suffering artist, he comes back with a darkly jocular observation. “I’m still a struggling artist,” he says with a hearty laugh.
And he’s still creating, after a dozen record releases with Habreira Hativit over the years, and umpteen performances and great acclaim all over the globe. Bar continues to pursue his muse with relentless intent, seeking out all kinds of sonic and cultural synergies in the process.
As such, he recently took part in an intriguing interdisciplinary project, in tandem with veteran rock drummer Meir Yisrael and long-serving rock and blues guitarist Mickey Shaviv. The said confluence produced material for a CD which, when it eventually comes out, will be called “Meeting Point.” It is an apt title, and one which reflects Bar’s credo, his take on music and life in this multicultural society of ours.
It is also a left-field line to which Bar has tenaciously stuck throughout his career to date. “I have never been part of the mainstream, and never will be,” he declares, adding that he is not exactly enamored with the way the industry has evolved. “There is still no distinction between serious music and commercial music. It’s one of the most repulsive things there is, producing all sorts of things that have absolutely no artistic or historic value. It’s all predefined formats, and you know exactly how they pan out. They are convenient for marketing.”
Bar’s ethos goes beyond the strict confines of music.
“I believe that it’s hard to produce true art from capitalism,” he posits, expounding on his anti-capitalist hypothesis.
“There are certain cultures – predominantly in the East – that know how to preserve and develop their cultural memory. Once [late 19th century-early 20th century Nobel Prize-winning Indian polymath] Rabindranath Tagore said that if our art changed continuously, we would have no justification for our past.
Art in the West is constantly changing.”
Then again, Bar himself has been through quite a few creative transformations himself, constantly feeding off multifarious channels of expression and musical avenues. Indeed, he was at the forefront of the musical movement in the 1970s which embraced the sounds of rhythms of diverse, not to say disparate, musical disciplines.
One might even say that Bar was a man ahead of his time, and preceded the eventual emergence of the world music scene by a few years.
The original lineup of Habreira Hativit, for example, included Indian-born violinist and sitar player Samson Kehimkar, who played in the band for close to 30 years before succumbing to diabetes in 2007. Bar has referred to Kehimkar as his spiritual and musical mentor.
The group’s personnel has featured plenty of musical heavyweights of various cultural and musical ilks over the years. The starting roster included Yisrael Borochov, who originally played bass but has since taken up a wide array of instruments, founding fellow cross-cultural band East-West Ensemble after leaving Habreira Hativit. Veteran Iranian-born santur player Menasheh Sasson has been with the group for 30 years, and Ilan Ben-Ami spent two decades with the band, adding western textures on electric guitar.
Bar’s highly energized sonic outpourings notwithstanding, he says his ultimate aim is to find inner tranquility. “If you want to create you need to shut up,” he states. “There is all this chaos in the Western world. Creativity comes out of quiet; it’s a sort of process of observation, inner observation. First of all, you have to find the essence of your own joy and happiness.”
The latter idea naturally conjures up a memory of one of Bar’s first, and most enduring, hits – “Yeladim Zeh Simha” (Children Are Happiness) – which he wrote for, and performed in, a musical called Kriza (Hysteria), based on a play by Yehoshua Sobol that premiered at Haifa Theater in 1976. “Yeladim Zeh Simha” and another number Bar wrote for Kriza, “Etzlenu Bikfar Todra” (At Our Place in the Village of Todra), gained instant popularity and launched his musical career.
Both songs were included in Habreira Hativit’s debut release, Origins, which came out in 1979.
Bar’s brief, albeit highly successful, brush with thespian endeavor did not prompt serious thoughts of getting into theater, however. “I have absolutely no acting ability,” he admits. “It’s a wonder that [now-93-year-old American-born documentary theater director] Nola [Chilton] asked me to do the music for the play.”
Kriza turned out to be something of a defining event in the country’s sociopolitical evolution, echoing the frustrations of Sephardi olim – like Bar – who felt they’d had a raw deal from the predominantly Ashkenazi powers that be. The musical ran for over a year, at a time when seismic political and social changes were afoot, and during the lead-up to the 1977 general elections – in which Labor was ousted from power for the first time since the creation of the state.
With the benefit of almost four decades’ worth of hindsight, it is not at all surprising that Bar was around when the country was in the throes of a political transition.
The honorary doctorate offers some sort of closure for the still-feisty 71-year-old. “At the end of the day, you could say that I survived on the basis of my faith, and thanks to all the people who have supported me along the way,” notes Bar. “I was delighted to receive the award, and I am happy I was able to preserve my parents’ teachings and way of life, to bring all of that into my work.”
Bar also says he primarily feeds off his Jewish roots.
“I don’t relate to Judaism as a religion, but as a culture – my culture. Moses interests me more than Shakespeare.
Shakespeare, of course, was a genius, but as a Jew you first have to learn about Moses, about his mystical side, not from a Hellenistic point of view.”
Ultimately, however, for Bar it is always about the music. “I am not a practical person, and I don’t really know how to handle banking matters and all sorts of other day-to-day stuff,” he declares. “I sit in my ‘cave’ and burrow into my own consciousness and ideas, and try to create music.
“I could pay the bills and take care of other stuff if I really wanted to, but that doesn’t interest me at all. I just want to make music.”