Monday Music: Israeli Indie Scene Grows Up

Singer Asaf Avidan Image by Dudi Hasson

By Ben Shalev May 14, 2012

Crossposted from Haaretz

Singer Asaf Avidan Image by Dudi Hasson

On Friday evening, in the children’s area of the Yaarot Menashe festival complex, you could hear a young mother calling her child, “Geva, come, the show is starting soon.” Since there aren’t many 5-year-olds named Geva, and because Geva is the name of one of the stars of the Israeli indie scene, one could toy with the idea that little Geva was named after big Geva, singer Geva Alon. There’s a good chance that isn’t actually the case, but at that moment, in light of the large number of children running around in the festival area, and in light of the tightly knit communal atmosphere in the place, one might be tempted to fantasize about the small Israeli indie nation as a cultural body in which young parents name their children after the heroes of the scene (“Asaf, Yehu, stop fighting and go play with Uzi and Daniela”).

Children are part of the landscape of the independent music festivals that have sprung up in recent years, but there seemed to be more of them than ever at the Yaarot Menashe festival, which took place this past weekend, in a forest in the north, somewhere between Megiddo and Yokne’am. If at the previous indie festivals the vast majority of the audience was composed of people aged 20 to 30 (an estimation, of course, not a fact) who had not yet begun raising families, the 2012 Yaarot Menashe festival was a gathering of young people and families.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO