When Sonia Rutstein went to Hostage Square in Tel Aviv last week, she sat down at the piano of former hostage Alon Ohel and played John Lennon’s “Imagine.”
“I felt a very deep connection there – a sense of the ‘shechina’ [holy spirit] stronger than when I visited the Kotel,” the Baltimore-based singer/songwriter who performs under the moniker SONiA Disappear Fear told The Jerusalem Post on the last day of her weeklong visit to Israel, which saw her perform five shows in six days.
Jewish and openly lesbian since the beginning of her musical career, Rutstein has been a masterful purveyor of politically conscious alt-folk for decades. She began her career in the late-80s folk-punk scene with her band Disappear Fear along with her sister Cindy, and since, as a solo artist, established herself in the world of LGBT, Lilith Fair, and alt-folk artists.
And the name “Disappear Fear”?
“I had worked at the Rape Crisis Center – they were looking for a new name – I came up with ‘disappear fear’ but they went with Baltimore Center for Victims of Sexual Assault. So I ran the name by Cindy, and she liked it. It was applicable to many situations,” said Rutstein.
After seven years together, Cindy left the band, and when Rutstein carried on solo, her record label, the acclaimed roots music home, Rounder, wanted her to keep part of the name, so she became SONiA of disappear fear.
“It just morphed into SONiA Disappear Fear,” she said.
With Rounder, she released a series of well-received albums of rugged folk rock with pop overtones. Her heartfelt and quirky songs recalled artists like the late Jill Sobule, Dar Williams, and the acoustic melodies of the Indigo Girls, who sang backup on Rutstein’s 1994 album Disappear Fear, along with the iconic Janis Ian.
Her follow-up album, Seeds in the Sahara, was produced by Roy Bittan, longtime pianist with Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, and featured Lucinda Williams’s guitarist Doug Pettibone.
Pretty heavyweight credentials, but Rutstein, who also performed last year alongside Bruce Springsteen at the annual Light of Day benefit show at the Count Basie Theater in Red Bank, New Jersey, to raise money and awareness to end Parkinson’s disease and related neurodegenerative diseases, is content these days to perform solo acoustic to small appreciative audiences wherever they may be.
In Israel, she performed at the Jerusalem Folk Music Evenings, the Neve Shalom Music Festival, the Rodeo Club in Haifa, and at the Shorashim Folk Club in Karmiel.
“I think the audiences in Israel have a deeper appreciation and really listen to the songs,” said Rutstein. “I don’t think about what the lyrics will mean for a particular audience. I just let it grow and present it with an open palm.
“At the Rodeo Club, there was a table of Russian speakers, and, at first, they were talking and ordering food and not really listening. Then I did this intense song called “Abraham,” and it got really quiet. The next song, everyone had their cameras out and was filming. I’m not even sure they were understanding it but they got it through the music.
“One time, I performed at this women’s festival in Helsinki, and they didn’t understand English at all, but they cried at this song I wrote for my dad. They just got it. For me, that’s the greatest compliment, because it meant that the music was expressing what I was feeling, and not just the lyrics.”
Despite her punky persona, Rutstein is a bona fide throwback to the liberal folk singing days of the 1960s (her first musical love was Phil Ochs, and, in 2011, she released an album of his songs called Get Your Phil). Aligning herself with LGBT and peace movement causes, and performing at like-minded festivals and events, her public identification with Israel has created a collision at times with those in her camp who see Israel as the bad guy in the conflict with the Palestinians, especially since October 7.
“Yes, it does clash and become uncomfortable sometimes,” she said. “I have this one friend-slash-fan who told me that it was a very bad choice for me to go to Israel, that it was even antisemitic of me, whatever that means, it was tarnishing my reputation, and all these other things he could think of that would hurt me. The only response I have is that beauty is fleeting but dumb is forever.
“I think the situation with the perception of Israel is so simple that it’s just too difficult to comprehend, so I’m not going to be able to change that; I can only continue to visit and to communicate my experiences.”
Those experiences must have been good, because Rutstein said she plans to make her musical pilgrimage to Israel an annual event.
“It’s been 12 years since I was here last, and it’s not going to happen again. Everyone kept saying it wasn’t the right time to come, but I knew I had to get back and see what was happening in Israel since October 7,” said Rutstein, who is spending much of her time caring for her ailing wife, who is suffering from brain cancer. “I plan to be back next November.”
After her triumphant week playing with and for the Israeli people, she’ll be most welcome.