A creative residency offers many pleasures – uninterrupted time, freedom from domestic chores that allows for deep connection to work, stimulating company of fellow creative artists. One of the greatest pleasures is connecting with artists from other countries, and the surprising gifts they bring.
Here at Fondacion Valparaiso, Lucy Elkivity is a visual artist from Israel. Her cultural heritage is like mine – Ashkenazi; that is, Eastern European Jewish – but hers is via Uruguay to Israel, mine via Norway to Canada.
Together with Tanja from Sarajevo and Yesim from Istanbul, we’ve traded musical passions that incorporated Jewish creativity: obvious ones like Sephardic music from North Africa and the Balkans, Klezmer music from Eastern Europe; and less obvious ones like Argentine tango and Gitano flamenco.
Lucy surprised us all by introducing us to major innovators in modern Arabic music, two Iraqi-Jewish brothers who lived in Kuwait and Baghdad. Saleh Al Kuwaity (Hebrew name Tsalah Elkivity), was Lucy’s father-in-law. His music, composed and played in Iraq with his brother Daoud (David), was renowned throughout the Arab world.
Even Umm Kulthum, the great nationalist Egyptian singer, made the song Saleh composed for her a staple of her repertoire.
Like most musicians, the Al Kuwaity brothers were more interested in playing violin and oud than in politics, and looked to music as a way to transcend differences. They lived in times where politics had inevitable consequences for Jews living in Arab lands, and in 1951 they moved to Israel, where they soon became touched by politics, or at least cultural hegemony of another kind:
www.haaretz.com/culture/arts-leisure/from-the-king-s-palace-to-a-ghetto-of-oriental-music-1.189427
Only recently has their music, and important influence on Arabic music, become public again:
Enjoy their traditional music here:
and the traditional and contemporary stylings of the same music by a younger generation of the family, Israeli performer Dudu Tasa:
Hi Kitty
So you did it! Thanks!
Just one correction: Salah name was not Shaul. In Israel also he remains Salah or Tsalah.
I hope next week I will send you the cds.
A big hug
Lucy