Posted on 03/08/2005 4:39:37 AM PST by SJackson
Rozan Khouri performs at the fifth annual Aravision festival of Israeli Arab singers on Saturday night.
Last Wednesday, the competition to choose the song that would represent Israel at this year's Eurovision song contest, screened live on Channel 1, topped the day's TV ratings, and instantly electrified the career of winning singer Shiri Maimon.
On Saturday night, 10 Israeli Arab performers competed in the fifth annual Aravision festival of Israeli Arab singers at Neveh Ilan outside Jerusalem, with Rozan Khouri, a 23-year-old cellist and singer from Ma'alot Tarshiha, near Nahariya, emerging victorious with a love song called "Not You" – to precious little impact beyond the Israeli Arab sector.
The competition was, for the first time, broadcast live, on Channel 2 – apparently because franchise-holder Tel-Ad wanted to make a play of social responsibility at a time when the commercial Channel 2 licenses are up for grabs.
But the ratings were dismal, and coverage in the mainstream Hebrew media was negligible.
Yet Khouri's victory is significant – if only because the winner of the annual Aravision goes on to sing at the Arab equivalent of Eurovision, the International Song Festival of Casablanca.
And there, uniquely, while the other participants will compete as the formal representatives of their home countries, Israel's entrant this year, as in past years, will appear as the representative of the "Arabs of 1948."
Because of a complicated time-lag arrangement, Khouri, who comes from a family of musicians and is currently completing her MA in musicology at the Hebrew University, will only sing at the 2006 festival. At this year's International Song Festival, to be held on March 26, it is the 2004 Aravision winner, Mohmad Asade, who will represent the "Arabs of 1948." Asade is a manual laborer from Deir el-Asad.
"We want to participate in the International Song Festival," says Yousef Salem, a political scientist and cultural activist from Acre who acts as the Aravision festival's spokesman.
The category "Arabs of 1948," he adds, is one "everyone can live with. I hope in the future, when there is peace, we will able to represent our country."
The Ministry of Culture had no immediate response to an inquiry from The Jerusalem Post regarding its attitude to this 1948 "category" and regarding whether the Israeli Casablanca participants receive any state funding.
Salem complains at the lack of interest in Aravision in the mainstream Israeli media, asserting that "the spotlight is turned to us only in a negative context... The Aravision's message is that we love life and peace, but obviously nobody wants to hear us talking about these things."
Things do not look any brighter in the Arab world, he acknowledges.
"They don't want to normalize relations with us [Israeli Arabs] because we are Israelis, and so we find ourselves in a situation of a total media embargo."
Still, he adds, North African countries are more tolerant than other Arab countries, "where decision makers have a psychological barrier against accepting us. I don't know what they're afraid of."
The Aravision festival is produced by the Algorbal association, which promotes music and theater in the Arab sector. Each year, the event showcases 10 singers, who are selected from 150 candidates. The singers each perform one solo song and all 10 perform a group song.
"The idea," says Salem, "is to give young musical talents a taste of stardom. There is a winner, but the competitive element was really introduced as a way of bringing some action into the production."
Khouri says she was initially hesitant about entering Aravision, but was encouraged by her father, the artistic manager of the Tarshiha band, which has performed in Israel and abroad – including several appearances at the Egyptian Opera in Cairo.
"I finally decided to participate because of my dad, and because of the wide exposure the festival receives in the Arab sector," Khouri says.
While she was thrilled at the recognition she has received in the Israeli Arab sector, overall, she says, Israeli Arab musicians feel "encouraged and supported by no one. Our most successful artists are all living abroad. There's no way for us to have a musical breakthrough here."
According to an Israeli Jewish musician, who has worked closely with Israeli Arab musicians, "the Aravision, in terms of the sound, the stage set and the lighting, was a couple of levels above the Israeli pre-Eurovision contest, which is a kind of caricature of Israeli music. The Aravision showed a lot of respect for its audience without trying too hard to impress."
Nonetheless, he adds, in terms of their artistic merits, both events were equally mediocre. He adds that Israeli Jews treat what he calls "Palestinian Israeli culture" with "the same kind of disdain with which Jewish singers from the Arab world were treated here until Middle Eastern music broke through to the Israeli mainstream in recent years."
The Eurovision Song Contest is hilarious. Israel won it once I think. The British entry has already done a Janet Jackson malfunction on national TV.
Khouri says she was initially hesitant.......
Going by her name she is Christian Arab
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.