Jerusalem to San Francisco and back, to a bar

There’s zero like a immeasurable teeming garb to get a vibes levels soaring, a toes tapping, and even a hips shaking. The Hoodna Orchestra caters to all a above, and afterwards some.

The 12-piece unit has been pumping out spreading rhythms and ear-catching tunes for 6 years now, putting out an album, a garland of singles, appearing adult and down a country, and creation a peculiar incursion to unfamiliar climes. Hoodna’s sophomore release, Ofel, is now out and a rope is now crisscrossing a country, with a gig report holding in a container as partial of a Manofim Arts Festival in Jerusalem (October 26, 1 p.m. during a Meir Davidov Garage on HaUman Street in Talpiot), as good as shows during a Mitzpe Ramon Jazz Club (November 1), Wunderbar in Haifa (November 22), Abraham Hostel in Tel Aviv (November 28), and a Yellow Submarine in Jerusalem (December 8).

If we were to try to specify Hoodna we could, plausibly, specify what they do as Afro-beat, though they are disposed to trip into straight-ahead jazz, blues, despondency and several other stripes of African-rooted sounds. That stands to reason if we take into comment that we have a dozen musicians on a stage, or in a recording studio, together. At times a crew lineup rises to 14 and, informative common denominator or not, there has to be a far-reaching widespread of nuances and low-pitched idioms in a common brew too.

“I’d contend that’s right,” records drummer Rani Birenbaum, who has been with Hoodna given shortly after it was founded. “The immeasurable infancy of a players come from a low-pitched credentials we could associate with jazz.” That, Birenbaum notes, indispensably involves a stylistic continuum that takes a artists along all sorts of astonishing exploratory byways and highways. “In general, people that grow adult in this [jazz] tradition tend to believe a arrange of epiphany, and rise interests in other areas.”

When we have 12 players with a identical open-ended ethos, we are indispensably going to finish adult with a multi-stratified sonic offering, full of textures, colors and seasoning that usually offer to heighten a ultimate artistic offering. “I’m not certain that any member of a rope got to African song in a same way,” Birenbaum continues. “Maybe some of them usually detected a song after they assimilated a group. But we could contend it is something many of us share. We are into all sorts of African stuff, mostly groove-based music.”

That sounds like a winner. Groove is a low-pitched partial that tends to squeeze people’s attention, and afterwards gets them, well, grooving.

WHEN AN ARTIST, or band, slips into slit mode, before we know it they have a assembly eating out of their hands, naturally in a best clarity possible.

While Africa might be a core multi-stratified genre container of a Hoodna gang, Birenbaum says there’s lots in there that meets a ear. “We live in era, in a lot of fields, and positively in a song field, in that we are unprotected to such a far-reaching operation of cultures. We have reached a indicate during that we suffer an roughly finish fusion, with a extended widen of influences.”

That, says a drummer, is utterly loyal of this partial of a world. “I consider Israelis, in ubiquitous not only in music, are generally means to take on opposite baggage, and adopt them and to use them in utterly a healthy way. They dive into all kinds of low-pitched traditions and catch them. We do that flattering impressively.”

All 12 players move their skills, particular colors and seasoning to a garb fray, nonetheless listening to Ofel, some seem to mount out some-more than others. Electric guitarist Ilan Smilan wrote 8 of a 9 marks on a new record that also includes a cover of “Breathe” by British electronic song organisation The Prodigy, so he has vital submit in a approach a manuscript incited out. Baritone saxophonist Elad Gelert’s guttural floating also leaves his unmissable sonic impress on a band’s sound. Jerusalem-born Gelert spent several years in New York, honing his jazzy acumen, before returning to Israel a integrate of years ago.

Birenbaum hails from Jerusalem and like Gelert also relocated to Tel Aviv after a prolonged tarry stateside. But, while a reedman was formed in New York – that is, after all, a art form’s tellurian epicenter – Birenbaum lived on a other side of a continent in San Francisco. It was adore that primarily led a drummer westward. “My partner during a time wanted to investigate during an art propagandize there,” he recalls. Although a attribute valid to be reduction than enduring, Birenbaum got some profitable prolonged durability combined value from his time on a West Coast. “Unlike some of a others in Hoodna, we didn’t investigate jazz during high school. In fact, we got into it in San Francisco, when we was 22 or 23.”

Like utterly a series of jazz artists of his and progressing generations, Birenbaum was wooed by a unequaled textures of one of a pioneers of fashionable jazz. “A crony played a record of [saxophonist John] Coltrane. It was [the 1964 release] Live during Birdland. His delivery of ‘Afro Blue’ on a record was amazing. It unexpected grabbed me. Before that jazz, for me, had been something we listened in movies. we never suspicion of it as something I’d wish to play myself.”

WHILE IN San Francisco, Birenbaum extended and stretched his low-pitched believe and sensibilities. “I had this tradition of going to Amoeba Music, an huge record emporium there, each integrate of weeks, and I’d buy a front of something we didn’t know.”

It was something of a hit-and-miss pursuit, though one time he strike loyal and well. “Once we happened to buy a CD by Mulatu Astatke, a first father of Ethiopian jazz. That was a startling revelation, and we fell in adore with a song really quickly.” He was shortly hands on with a genre. “I schooled a beam and rhythms of Ethiopian music. That done a disproportion with how we approached percussion.”
Birenbaum’s West Coast tarry left an memorable symbol on his low-pitched approach of thought. “I enjoyed vital a opposite lifestyle there, and we was unprotected to a lot of song we didn’t know, as a Jerusalemite,” he laughs. “I got into hip-hop, and nation music, bluegrass, Latin and African music.” All of that, and more, find their approach into what he does currently with a Hoodna Orchestra.

After returning to Israel, Birenbaum done a vital from personification in all kinds of setups, blues-based acts and groups that played some-more normal forms of jazz, such as Dixieland. Ultimately, however, it was an evidently non-musical square of work that brought him together with a Hoodna troupe.

“A while after we came behind to Israel, we found myself owning a bar in Tel Aviv. Some aged pals from Jerusalem and we got together and got a pub going in Florentin.” The name of a pronounced watering hole only happened to be Hoodna, and a multi-coloured array of artists played there. One day a garland of musicians who’d book into Hoodna asked Birenbaum to assistance them find a operation space for a rope they were environment up. “That’s how a rope started,” says Birenbaum.

“That was a commencement of Hoodna. They played during a bar each Tuesday afternoon for years, and took their name from a bar too.” The guys still accommodate adult each Tuesday, though it is now a morning container and changed to a new venue about a year ago.

So, when he’s not pouring pints of beer, we can Birenbaum behind his drum set with a rest of a Hoodna clan. “The rope is great. We all suffer operative together after all these years, and we keep looking for new stuff. We’ve played with a few Ethiopian musicians and we are always looking for guest artists.” Any takers?

For some-more information, revisit facebook.com/hoodnaorchestra/.

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