Ovadia Hamama
PR Photo
Jewish rock in the holy land
Ovadia Hamama releases a Jewish/Israeli rock album dealing with spiritual matters relevant to Israeli reality
When was the last time you ran into a rock album with a song written by Judah Maccabi? Or a title song translating a Hebrew text to Spanish? “Heaven and Earth”, Ovadia Hamama’s fifth album, is similar to nothing else. If you insist on defining the album, there are two possible definitions: Israeli rock and Jewish rock.
It is Israeli rock in the deep meaning of dealing with spiritual issues relevant to Israeli reality. It is Jewish rock because of the ancient prayers sung in a modern way that only accentuates their beauty, and because of the creation of new prayers, including some that would be gladly embraced by the godless, and because of the encouragement to fulfill the Jewish calling to “get up and change the world.”
The content of the album is at least as significant as its music. This is expressed by the pale-blue cover featuring a pair of clear hands holding a sphere with sea, sky, earth and a dove. Jerusalem is in the center, sending light up to the heavens. Hamama himself is playing, his head bent to his guitar. By his own description, he is “looking with eyes who are constantly searching for poetry, and who find it usually in the place where man is torn between the opposites.”
Hamama sings about the connection between heaven and earth, thought and feeling, melody and lyrics in the fascinating song “Isaac Wasn’t Blind”. Another song is titled “The World Is Beautiful”. This is not a new-age type of admiration. Hamama is not blind to the hardships, but he insists on the beauty.
And there is also politics, best exemplified by the song “Beloved Land”: “Are you already awakened from the false dreams of the land of Euphrates or the failed dream of peace?” There is representation of both left and right, of their mistakes and their truth.
Hamama chooses to walk a thin line in this aspect. A small misstep and he would tread onto didactic and simplistic territory as far as the message of the songs. But he is careful, and observes the world in a critical way. His self awareness does not take away from the honest naïveté of the album.
In the thick of creation
The peak is in the prayer “Ana B’Koach” (Please with Strength), played generously on the radio. It is performed in a minyan, meaning with ten singers, Ehud Bannai among them, who really raise it up to the sky, at least in sensation. There is also a moving family song, “The Letter”, where Meir Hamama, Ovadia’s father, reads a letter he wrote to his family in Iraq in 1949. The background melody is by Hamama, and his young children join in in song to the chorus he added.
The orchestrations are mostly rich, and the instruments are varied and plentiful in a way that realizes, both in the sense of realization and of reality, the spirit of the piece. But they mostly serve each song and illustrate it. For example, in “Prayer for Rain” the percussion sounds like African drums in rainmaking ceremonies, and create a dramatic sense of distress and insecurity. The rain then comes at the end of the song, bringing with it release and relief: the prayer was answered.
Hamama produced this album himself, and impressively so. Despite this, the album contains 18 songs and plays for an hour and 15 minutes. This is too long, and a brutal reduction would have bettered the piece. Hamama is aware of this. In the end notes of the booklet he addresses his wife in thanks: “I apologize to Aliza for being unable to listen to your advice this time and let a few songs go. I admit there is some bulk, but these songs are bound together to create one entire creation.” He is right.
