There don’t appear to be too many musical bases Ittai Binnun hasn’t touched during his two decade-plus career thus far. For starters, the 50-something artist plays a veritable arsenal of instruments, mostly of the wind ilk, but there are also a saz (long-necked lute) and keyboards in his multifarious locker, alongside his clarinet, ney, and various other flutes.
Over the years, Binnun has come up with a broad swath of projects that have taken in sounds spawned by many of the numerous cultural strands that flow through Jerusalem. He has also flexed his nimble fingers and hefty lungs past the confines of his hometown, reaching out into desert environs and beyond.
All of which informs his latest release, a four-number EP called Home, which anchors his forthcoming gig at Confederation House (April 18 at 9 p.m.).
Binnun will share the stage with the other members of his current quartet – British-born guitarist Joe Taylor, bassist Michael Mizrachi, and drummer-percussionist David Dagmi. It is a suitably stratified affair dipping into all sorts of ethnic fields, jazz, flamenco, reggae, and even a touch or two of rock-infused sentiments.
I have followed Binnun’s long and winding musical road for some years now, and there ain’t a dull moment in there. You never know which way he is going to turn.
His discography and performing bio include a couple of releases by a band he fittingly called AndraLaMoussia. The group moniker means “chaos” in Hebrew – albeit from a Greek etymological origin – which reflects the manifold nature of the genre and stylistic musical enterprise.
The AndraLaMoussia albums – a self-titled effort and Bet – present a whirlwind of sounds, rhythms, colors, and textures from all over the show. They are also very Jerusalemite efforts, reflecting the variegated sonic ethos and cultural baggage that pulsate in the very fiber of the capital.
But now Binnun is looking to extend his creative palette to ever more adventurous climes, while maintaining a restless quest to achieve some degree of inner peace and a sense of security. Since, at least, Oct. 7, 2023, neither of those qualities has been readily available to any of us in this troubled country. Like the rest of us, Binnun has been through the emotional wringer and back, and that, unsurprisingly, has impinged on his artistic endeavor.
After October 7: music, mourning and home
“I could hardly play any music for months after Oct. 7,” he says. “I only played depression music. I was incapable of producing something that could help someone forget about Oct. 7, even for just a few minutes. I decided that, after that terrible day, I would only engage in things that related to that.”
Music – one could certainly extend that to art in general – hath healing powers, and I wondered whether steeling himself and somehow pushing the pall of sorrow to one side, and picking up his clarinet, ney, or saz, might have induced some kind of beneficial cathartic process for Binnun.
“I played music in my studio, for myself,” he admits. “But outside, in the outside world, I felt as if I was in a shiva [period of mourning]. And I wasn’t going to burst into a shiva and start playing something like ‘One, two, three o’clock rock,’” he smiles grimly, referencing the seminal Bill Haley 1950s feel-good number “Rock Around the Clock.”
The jolt to the system, and the pervasive sense of insecurity that the Jews were no longer safe in the State of Israel, the proclaimed Jewish homeland, in the wake of the barbaric Hamas attack on our southern communities two and a half years ago, continue to reverberate deep inside Binnun’s personal and musical consciousness.
He is now looking to address that with the toolbox he has closest to hand. “I take this big lump of stone I call home, and the larger piece of land, our country, which I call home, and I am trying to expand the concept of home. In musical terms, too.”
He has the requisite track record.
“I had a project which I ran under the title of Music from the Streets of Jerusalem, which was AndraLaMoussia. I said that’s a sufficiently flexible notion to allow me to do what I want musically,” he chuckles. “But that also related to the concept of Jerusalem as something that connects.”
Indeed, it is all well and good casting your bread crumbs upon the rippling waters but, in so doing, you run the risk of losing your way.
“I am always searching for an idea that ties everything together. It is not just a collection of ideas. It’s not free jazz, even though I try to make it free,” he smiles.
He feels it is time to venture into fresh pastures. “Perhaps Jerusalem is no longer adequate for me as a home,” Binnun muses. His back catalogue provides the dialectical collateral. “I started inventing places. I had Bulvaria,” he says, harking back to a musical project he rolled out a few years back based on a fictional country with its very own jumbled-up language. There’s more. “Then we created Music from the Central Desert. I engaged a lot in Mauritanian directions, music that comes from the Sahara but with my sound, my ideas.”
The Binnun philosophy seems to follow a sort of yin-yang dynamic. He is constantly sending out feelers every which way, while keeping his radar settings firmly focused on a core safe harbor. “I think of home. What is a home? Where is it? Does it actually exist somewhere? My music is so geographically diffused.”
A first-generation Israeli of Canadian-Swiss parentage, Binnun has a split sonic personality that was set in motion by music that is close to his Jewish heritage. “When I was a kid, I had a vinyl record, of my parents, with klezmer music,” he recalls.
We are not exactly talking Giora Feidman or any of the other front grid proponents of the genre that hails predominantly from the Jewish communities of Central and Eastern Europe. “It was sort of Bnei Brak-style, really bad,” he laughs. “When I listen to it today, it sounds terrible.”
Inferior quality or no, Binnun had unwittingly taken his first infant steps along his ongoing artistic odyssey. “It was because of that klezmer record that the clarinet became my first instrument.”
But there were other musical – and social – seams to mine. “When I was 16, I started playing saxophone and got into jazz. I wanted to impress the girls, and I got into rock.”
That hormonal-infused pathway into artistry wended its merry way for a while before a foray to the Far East changed Binnun’s take on life and music.
“After the army, I went to India for the first time. I started learning to play sitar.” That was to prove to be a short-lived and painful experience. “I played until my fingers started bleeding. I realized that I either had to move to India and spend 10 years trying to master the sitar, or give it up and try something else.”
He gave his sore fingers a well-earned rest and got into something a little more cerebral and spiritual. “I studied theory, a little on the religious side – Hindu. I studied with a teacher who was a monk.” He also brought eclectic baggage to his teaching efforts. “He came from an Indian family from California, and he had a PhD in astrophysics. He had an interesting approach, through swaras dharma – ‘music is my religion’ in Sanskrit, I think – as a spiritual approach.”
That also involved some deft sonic maneuvering. “When you sing – also with instrumental music – you sing, hear the pitch with your ear, and then correct the sound.”
Wouldn’t it be easier just to make sure the sound is right the first time? Binnun came back at me with a surprising professional observation. “Even [late feted Italian opera singer Luciano] Pavarotti didn’t get the notes right from the start. He’d sing, hear it, and adjust.”
It is, Binnun says, a matter of trial and error. “The more you practice that, the quicker you are able to correct the intonation.”
It is not just a vocal minefield. “The clarinet also goes off-key. I always have to make all sorts of micro adjustments. I don’t really know what they are. My tongue moves a little, and the lips. It’s just a matter of practice.”
BETWIXT REELING off new ventures here, Binnun has spent lengthy sojourns in very different cultural and musical domains.
“In recent years, I have cast a line or two in the direction of India,” he notes. “I go there every year to play with local musicians. I don’t play classical Indian music per se. I connected there with a group called The Raga Fusion. They engage in world music, including Balkan music, Turkish, a lot of Indian, funk, jazz, and even a little rock.”
With his ever-eddying musical flow, that suits Binnun to a T. And it comes across, loud and clear, in Home.
The EP opens with “Afro Blue,” a number written by Cuban-born percussionist Mongo Santamaria in 1959 and subsequently covered by the likes of titan jazz vocalist Abbey Lincoln.
Binnun’s version plies a very different channel of exploration, plowing stylistic furrows that are closer to the textures and rhythms of this cultural melting pot.
It kicks off with a bass-anchored groove, before Binnun lays down a lilting clarinet line which suggests a klezmer flavor. Dagmi anchors the score with some subtle shuffling on his drum kit. The guitar solo shifts the pursuit firmly toward flamenco domains. All four musicians have their say but manage to convey their presence with a minimum of brawn. Binnun even drops in a modicum of jazzy intent as the number plays out. It is quite a marker.
“She’ifa” offers more than a gentle whiff of Indian seasoning, as the guitarist on the recording – Omri Porat – ekes out sitar-leaning hues on electric guitar.
“He’s a serious student of ‘Indiaology,’” Binnun laughs.
The title of the song imparts some intriguing subtext. “She’ifa means ‘inhalation’ or ‘aspiration’ [in Hebrew]. That’s a number I came across in India, which is based on a simple melody.”
It was the result of one of those precious moments when the muses drop by. “I was walking back to where I was staying, in the jungle, after a gig, humming a tune. It was only when I got back to my room that I realized that it wasn’t something I’d heard before. I recorded it on my phone before I went to sleep.”
But he wanted to make doubly sure he hadn’t just picked up on an air that had wafted past his alert ears. “The next day I played it to one of the other musicians, and he said: ‘It is all you,’” Binnun laughs, doing a pretty convincing Indian accent in the process.
Mind you, the version of “She’ifa” the members of the Confederation House audience are likely to hear will probably be less Indian-leaning than the recording. “Joe doesn’t play guitar like a sitar,” Binnun advises.
That said, the live reading will still – pardon the pun – have plenty of cultural strings to it.
There is, indeed, a curative side to the endeavor. “When I came upon the melody, I realized straightaway that I have to get it out there because it encourages good breathing,” Binnun says. That would surely be a boon of immeasurable value to all of us in these parts these days. “The melody boosts the respiratory system. I knew I had to record it live, with all of us together in the studio at the same time.”
One may assume that this Saturday evening’s rendition will be suitably animated.
HOME ALSO features an old-new work, “San Antonio.”
“I wrote that for AndraLaMoussia, but I never got around to recording it,” Binnun explains.
“And there’s ‘Dialogue,’ which is a cover version of my own score, which I did record with AndraLaMoussia.”
I guess it’s fun to have the luxury of revisiting a previous effort and infusing it with street-level nous and professional experience accrued in the interim, and adding the musical expertise and fresh standpoints of new siblings in creative arms. “We took it to a completely different place. We took an ethnic acoustic number and went for a jazz-electric version. I like it.”
It’s a fair bet the folks who go along to Confederation House will dig it, too, and benefit from the positive vibes and life-affirming energies the foursome will, no doubt, bring with them as they take us on a globe-trotting odyssey of layered textures that should tug on the heartstrings and may even get some toes tapping. We may even derive some sense of homey snugness in the process. We could do worse than follow Binnun’s lead.
“Wherever I lay my clarinet, that’s my home,” he laughs, riffing on the 1962 Marvin Gaye number “Wherever I Lay My Hat (That’s My Home).” We could do a lot worse.
For tickets and more information: (02) 539-9360 and
www.confederationhouse.org