Seven years ago, Israeli musician Idan Raichel never thought he’d be touring the world and meeting some of the planet’s greatest musicians. But he has become well-known with his collaborations with artists from places like South America and India, not to mention Ethiopia and Australia. JTNews spoke with Raichel as he prepares to make his third visit to Seattle to perform at Dimitriou’s Jazz Alley on March 2 and 3. Here’s a transcript of the interview:
JTNews: Outside of Israel, where have you been touring?
Idan Raichel: We are lucky to perform — not a lot of Israeli bands are performing outside of our region. We’ve been performing nonstop for the past six or seven years from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to Sydney Opera House and then Central Park, New York. We’re touring all over Europe, we performed in South America, so actually it’s really all over.
JT: Where do you see that you have the most fans?
Idan: I don’t know, because I can’t measure it by people. I performed last month — just to compare — I performed for President Obama for Martin Luther King Day, and then, the day after, I landed in Israel and visited kids who’ve got cancer and I performed one-on-one with a four-year-old kid, just one-on-one.
I can tell you that it moved me almost in the same way. So I can’t measure it by how big the place [is] that we perform. On one hand, we sold out the Sydney Opera House and we performed at Central Park, New York, then, in Montevideo, Uruguay for like 20 people in a jazz club, and it’s a totally new audience and it can be as exciting.
It depends on the music and the connection that you have with the people.
JT: Since you’ve been on the road so much, when you’re touring, do the cities or areas of the world you visit give you inspiration for new music?
Idan: I think that there are inspirations for new music, mostly it’s coming from the people and from the places. For me, the easiest way — it’s not the time performing — for me, it’s just me going and meeting people, and by touring I’m blessed to be able to travel all over with this band and to meet more and more audiences all over.
JT: So how do you find musicians where you’re touring?
Idan: Sometimes they are writing to our Web site, asking if they can send some demos there or asking if I can check their own MySpace, which is great. Sometimes I contact people who I found [to be] interesting.
Back last year I saw a great violinist who played in the street in San Francisco, and he was really one of the very best violin players I’ve ever heard. I asked him if he’s free tonight, and he said yes. I said, “You know what? Just come for a sound check in 30 minutes.”
He performed with us in The Gardens in San Francisco — like 3,000 people, and it was was great, the audience loved him, some of them knew him from the streets of San Francisco. So it was really, really nice.
We’ve been working with around 85 musicians, today the youngest is 16, oldest are 83 and 89, so we are crossing over as much as we can.
JT: Do they record with you or do you work with them again when you’re done back home?
Idan: Mostly the meetings are very random, and not for a long time. Many of the artists have their own solo careers. The only steady people that I have are the people that are onstage with me.
JT: I’m interested in learning your process for writing and integrating the different world sounds. Do you hear something from other musicians that you feel would be perfect for your sound and grab them wherever they are? Do you bring everyone into studios in Israel or wherever you’re recording?
Idan: I’m writing on the road, sometimes I’m recording on the road. We have a mobile studio that we set up in around 15 or 20 minutes in each hotel room, like Mayra Andrade from Cape Verde. It’s just random.
I met Grammy Award-winning india.arie — we met in D.C. and we booked a studio and we were just jamming on in the studio.
Sometimes with 80, 79 years old, Yehie Tzubara, we went and recorded him in a living room because he’s not used to studios and all this environment in a studio. It’s better for him to record in a living room, or something that looks like a living room, where he feels so much more comfortable. We have got no rules with this. It’s coming from the people, so it’s important that people will feel comfortable with the situation.
JT: How do you turn that into what might go onto a record?
Idan: Actually, I don’t know. For me, every time that this happens and I see the CD in bookstores or I see it on iTunes, I say, “Whoa, if somebody would have told me, would have asked me to do it all over again, I wouldn’t even know how to start.”
I think this is why every track sounds different from another, because me and my co-producer, Gilad Shmueli, we just open the mike and see what’s going on, and I have to tell you it’s kind of a scary process because now, every time when they ask me, “Are you going to have another album?” I say, “I don’t know, I don’t know. It depends on the people.”
I don’t know — I don’t even know how to start.
Nowadays the band is in such good shape, the band sounds so good I really want to record some live performances and maybe to release a live performance, because [I’ve] never heard the band so, so good, And it’s one of the best live bands that I ever worked with. I used to play keyboard with pop singers, [but] they’re really one of the best live bands. You can’t beat it, the team that is playing [for] like seven years, all the time. They know each other, we know each other by every note. We really match.
JT: So you can integrate the person like in San Francisco and the band knows what to do?
Idan: Actually, people who are joining us like this violinist there, they are just coming to the sound check, and once we feel that there is some communication on the basic level, on the sound check, [he will] continue on stage. There must be some thing, some spark to connect to.
JT: In a lot of ways, just being Israeli and recording with so many different people from so many different nationalities is a political act. How do you see politics entering the music hall because you’re Israeli?
Idan: Yeah, we are, as Israelis and as proud Israelis, we carry on our back our history and our region and the politicis of our region, but I definitely can say that I think a project such as this project can show the other faces of the Israeli society and mentality and reality, and also we can show and welcome artists from the other side of the borders here in the Middle East who join this project. I would love to have musicians form Iran, from Syria, from Lebanon who would join this project.
JT: What sort of walls do you feel like you’ve broken down as a musician that diplomats have been unable to do?
Idan: I think that mostly when students are coming to our concerts, they just experience the music. When a politician is coming and giving a speech on a campus, you know he’s a politician, he’s representing something. Music, I think much more, you can understand it in so many ways, it’s very straight, it’s very open.
JT: How has all this touring and meeting so many diverse musicians improved your own abilities?
Idan: It’s mostly shown me that as time goes by I know less and less. Less and less, yeah. Suddenly you meet these amazing classical musicians, amazing traditional musicians, amazing producers. You know, it’s like King Solomon used to say, the more learn, you know less. And as [much as] you travel, you understand that you see less, you see you’ll never catch it all.
JT: What’s on your iPod?
I”ll give you a list — like shuffle 6:
Shoshana Damari, one of the great divas of Israeli music ever, Cecilia Bartoli, a great classical singer, Dave Matthews Band, Erykah Badu, Björk, Daft Punk, Groove Armada, Figaro, Eviatar Banai, Israeli singer Eviatar Banai, Elliott Smith, Ry Cooder and Ali Farka Toure, Depeche Mode, more and more…
JT: What else before we sign off?
Idan: I’ll be happy to meet as many musicians as possible. Everyone can write to info [at] the Web site, send us some links to some of their music, it will be great to meet.