It’s all Greek to her

Jerusalem-bred Nataly Oryon’s Tel Aviv concert will celebrate the music of a different Mediterranean country.

By BARRY DAVIS
nataly 521 (photo credit: courtesy)
nataly 521
(photo credit: courtesy)
There was absolutely nothing in 30-year-old Nataly Oryon’s earliest years to suggest the artistic direction she was ultimately to take, even though it was clear from the outset that music was going to be her thing. “I started singing, at home, when I was four,” she says, “and that was that for me.”
Now, a full quarter-century later, she is deeply immersed in the world of Greek music, some of which she will present at a show at the First International Bank of Israel (FIBI) House auditorium on Tel Aviv’s Rothschild Boulevard at 8 p.m. on January 17. The concert is part of FIBI’s ongoing Culture and Community program.
Oryon does not come from a particularly musical home. “My mother sang a bit around the house, and my father built some flutes – he liked playing them. But that was about it,” she recalls. But she was made of sterner musical stuff, making up her own songs, even as a small child, throwing herself into her newfound musical love with unrestrained glee and with boundless diligence.
“I’d stay at home all day and listen to music on the radio – all that ’90s pop stuff – and on TV, and I’d sing the songs over and over again until I got them down pat. I also learned English that way.”
When she eventually encountered the music of the country across the Mediterranean Sea, there was no stopping her. “I did part of my army service in Ashkelon,” she says, adding that she didn’t get her career jump started in khaki. “I wasn’t in an army band. I did active service.”
Being stationed there proved to be a lucky break for her. “While I was in Ashkelon, I started hearing Greek music all over the place. There was a lot of it there, and it started to make an impression on me. It really got to me.”
Things just took off from there.
“I began to study the music and the history and everything to do with Greek culture,” she says. “I also learned to speak Greek.”
But it wasn’t just a matter of getting by on the streets of Athens. “I learned how to pronounce things the right way in speech, and also with my singing. I am constantly consulting Greek friends and experts on how to say certain words. That, of course, is very important for my singing too.”
It’s not just Greek music that works its magic on Oryon. “I like lots of things from the 1950s and way back to the 14th century,” she says.
That’s an enormous temporal and cultural spread, but interestingly it does not include anything contemporary.
“My interest in music stopped, more or less, with the advent of rock and roll, when things started getting more repetitive and less creative and adventurous,” she explains.
Oryon’s current show celebrates a century of rebetiko music, the Greek genre that originally took in a disparate range of urban Greek folk music which closed ranks with the upsurge of the art form’s popularity beginning in the 1960s.
The original rough-and-ready form of rebetiko – and its unbridled origins – naturally appeal to Oryon, who has always carved her own path through the music. “I am an autodidact,” she declares. “I never wanted to study in the cocooned world of academia. That wasn’t for me. I have always had an individualist approach.”
As a teenager, she dallied with the idea of singing with Ankor, the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance youth choir, but that didn’t last long. “I’m simply not suited to structure,”she says. “I am a rebel and I always go my own way.”
That can be something of a doubleedged sword, although Oryon says she is now reaping the benefits of all the hard work she has put in. “I know people who studied music in formal frameworks and then they suddenly have to get to grips with the reality outside the institution’s walls,” she notes. “I have been there from the start. I have experience of the way things really are and can manage much better.”
This is evident from her unrestrained enthusiasm for her chosen musical path. She has also managed to hook up with some accomplished fellow musical travelers, including her closest collaborator, guitarist and arranger Hezi Chait; violinist Daniel Hoffman; and bass player Tal Ronen.
Chait is also Oryon’s sidekick in performing Neapolitan songs, her other musical love. Here too, she followed her own muse into the history of the music from that most colorful of southern Italian cities.
It is one thing to perform Greek music here, where, even if there are those who know and love the genre well, we are still talking about “foreign lands.” It is an entirely different matter to do it where it really matters.
“I have sung in Greece and the audience has really loved it,” she says proudly, adding that the Greeks don’t consider her to be intruding on their turf. “Not at all. They really appreciate the fact that I perform the songs the right way and that I do it out of respect for their music. I had the same when I performed in Naples. That was a wonderful experience.”
Oryon’s repertoire for her January 17 date in Tel Aviv covers an expansive artistic domain and includes a number called “Ta Smirneika Tragoudia” – a contemporary song that references material of the past; and something which originates from these parts – “Shai,” written by Israeli composer Sha’ar Levy and translated into Greek under the name “To Doro” which, naturally, means “gift.” The concert song list also includes a nod in the Greek Jewish direction in the form of the plaintive Greek-Ladino song “Misirlou,” which is based on a text that stems from the Jewish community of Saloniki.
“I want to keep the flame of Greek music alive here and elsewhere,” says Oryon. “I really believe that if you do something with honest intent, and well, the public will catch on.” There is no doubting her sincerity and honesty.
Nataly Oryon will perform at the First International Bank of Israel House auditorium at 42 Rothschild Boulevard, Tel Aviv, at 8 p.m. on January 17. For reservations: (03) 513-0001. Tickets are free.