Question

Hello and blessings, I read the post with great pleasure, but I didn’t really understand your definition of Mizrahi music. Is every singer of Mizrahi origin who sings automatically a Mizrahi singer? If so, then Yehoram Gaon’s songs are also Mizrahi music, and I’m sure nobody would agree with that. In my opinion, one has to distinguish between Mediterranean music and Mizrahi music. Mediterranean music is music that draws from Arabic music into the Israeli medium; for example, Dudu Tassa and Mark Eliyahu, among many others, have songs of a very high level that draw from Arabic music. I think Ziva Shamir’s distinction is more accurate. The level of songwriting is indeed usually lower in Mizrahi music, but I don’t think it’s nearly as pronounced as people make it out to be. For example, in my view songs like “The Flower in My Garden” or “Another Minute and You Disappear” by Zohar Argov (who is clearly considered part of Mizrahi music), and also older songs by Eyal Golan, are written at a level that is no lower than the songwriting in songs by Shlomo Artzi / Arik Einstein (maybe Eyal Golan a bit less so). That’s not really a fair comparison, because the songs of Zohar Argov and Eyal Golan were written by lyricists, whereas Arik Einstein and Shlomo Artzi usually wrote for themselves. So one could talk about popular Mizrahi music whose writing level is poor, but it seems to me that this is connected to pop songs in general; even pop songs with more Western (“Ashkenazi”) music are written at a very low level. In my opinion, even if there are certain differences that could justify saying that Mizrahi music is generally lower in quality, when you actually examine it the differences are negligible, and to focus on them seems to me like mere nitpicking. I’d be glad to hear your thoughts on the matter.