Shye Ben Tzur’s compositions seamlessly blend Indian sounds with Western music. While here, he chatted with Shrabasti Mallik about his connection with the Sufi gharana of Ajmer, Hebrew traditions and his forthcoming album
For Shye Ben Tzur, landing in India was no less than a homecoming. He is perhaps the world’s first-ever Jewish Israeli qawwal, who has been living and making music in India for over a decade now. “But I have come to India after almost a year,” he informed before adding that he was more than happy to be back and was looking forward to spending “a very inspiring winter here.”
listening to his qawwalis, it’s hard to imagine that the US-born, Israel-bred Shye started his musical career singing hard rock. It was his attraction to the sufi and qawwali and his eagerness to learn the music that brought him all the way to India. And there was no looking back. “My life was changed the moment I came to India,” he recalled, “It felt like I had found an ocean where I needed to plunge.” Ben Tzur found his guru in dhrupad master Ustad Zia Fariduddin Dagar. He lived in his house, soaked in the music and eventually tried his hand at creating qawwalis of his own.
Though he learnt Urdu, he chose to write his lyrics in Hebrew. “Hebrew is a language geared towards holiness,” he explained, “and since these prayers come from my heart, it is natural that I would use my own language, which I love. I write a lot of poetry and compose their music and the qawwals from Ajmer sing some of them.” Despite his close association with Sufism, he has not changed his religion. “Sufism is a mystical path,” he explained and added that “mystics are very different people from what I am. I am one who knocks on the door of the saints and thank them if they answer me.” He has composed music for different Sufi poetry such as those of Khazrat-Nawab-Khadim Khasam Gudri Shah Baba from Ajmer apart from many other compositions in Hebrew — a form unknown to many.
His genre, he said, “is world music which amalgamates the best from both Indian and Western music.” He has travelled almost all over the world, enriching his taste with the culture of every country he’s visited. That perhaps accounts for the curious hybrid nature of his music — where intensely devotional poetry is sung mostly in Hebrew by Indian singers, although some songs are in Urdu and Hindi. What’s more interesting is that he composes music to his own Hebrew poetry.
When asked about any anti-Israeli/Jewish sentiments he may have encountered, he seemed indifferent, “Sure, there were all kinds of small incidents but I hardly remember them.” The reaction was similar when he was asked about the sentiments back home in regards to his growing closeness to the Muslim world. “If you look for problems, you will have problems,” he said, “Better to concentrate on the beauty that surrounds us.”
After his last album in 2010 he is currently working on an album and will begin its recording this winter in India. He explained the reason for the four-year delay, “After the album there were many live concerts, then I shifted to Israel and there was a lot of travelling involved. To come up with an album you need to have full commitment of time and also a vision. It took me some time to get a clear vision of what I wanted to do next.” The new album is going to be an exploration of Indian traditional music merging with Western sounds. “I fuse instruments of both cultures together. I will be collaborating with Murad Ali, sarangi and Zakir Ali and Zaki Ali qawwal,” he said. He, however, seemed happy about the fact that the country is embracing music genres from all over the world. “With exposure to the Internet, YouTube and other social media, people have become more curious and have acquired a taste of what they like,” he said. He added that it is primarily due to YouTube that many aspects of music, which are not part of the mainstream media, are available to people. People who attend concerts have an understanding of what that are about to listen and have a clear idea about what they love. He said, “Now, there are a lot of passionate people who listen to music with an open mind.”
Speaking about his performance at DIAF, he said that the show is homage to Daniel Pearl. “We are dedicating the concert to him. We are living in a time when we constantly read so much about aggression, violence and political agendas that we have come to believe that music is the only thing that will bring people together,” he said and added that Daniel Pearl was a great lover of music. He informed that the audience will get to listen to a lot of new compositions. “We have come up with new Sufi compositions for old poetries,” he explained. He believes that when he plays music, every minute is new. He added, “Performances always involve a lot of improvisation and exploring new things within the moment on stage itself. When you improvise, something new always comes up.”
As a lover of music he likes to listen to an album from the beginning to end, which sometimes becomes a tad difficult for him in an age where everything seems to run at rocket speed. “Sometime limitation gives you direction. It is not about the mechanical tool that plays the music as much as the state of mind and I love listening to music — I like to take out some time and immerse myself into it,” he said. He feels that in the generation of iPad and DVD’s, the age of vinyl records has faded away. He informed that there are talks and movements trying to bring back the lP records and popularise them.
Much has been made of the fact that Ben Tzur’s music — merging Hebrew with Islamic-Sufi traditions — speaks of peace and reconciliation. He emphasised the fact that his music has no agenda. “I am not making any political statements,” he said, choosing his words carefully and rephrasing them until he was sure he has been properly understood. “If someone says that my music bridges these two cultures, my answer would be that I don’t see much need for a bridge because I don’t see much of a difference between them. May be I am blind, but nothing feels foreign,” he rounded off.