By the year 2000, after almost a decade of incubation, rap music finally broke into the musical mainstream in Israel. Unlike in other places, rap in Israel never became associated with a specific social group; its adherents, performers and consumers reflect the diversity of Israeli society. Thus, as I have previously demonstrated (Dorchin Reference Dorchin2012), the foundation for the development of the local rap scene rested mainly on a shared stylistic orientation rather than any political agenda embedded within ethnic or racial identity. In this article I delve further into the meanings attached to Israeli rap by the rappers themselves; I argue that in spite of significant variation in musical and lyrical content, all Israeli rappers share a similar perception of rap, manifested by an explicit intention to provide their listeners with what they call ‘a message’. An early hit song by the pioneering rap group Hadag Nahash (Snakefish), called Lazuz (‘To Move’ 2003), articulates this artistic approach:
These lyrics are rather characteristic of the first wave of Israeli rappers, and crystallise what soon became a matter of convention among them, suggesting that a message is not an element hidden within the text but rather an issue to be declared and discussed.
Combining a festive atmosphere with serious commentaries is not unique to Israeli rappers; as a musical form based heavily on lyrics, rap was claimed to represent the hardships and articulate the truths of the black-American neighbourhoods from which it emerged (Keyes Reference Keyes2002). Today, while rap is circulated worldwide, rappers still seek to ‘keep it real’; i.e. to portray the realities of people in any place where it takes root (Mitchell Reference Mitchell and Mitchell2001a). But how are we to understand the meaning of ‘truth’ once it becomes a repeated, popular mantra? In what follows I demonstrate how the globalised ethos of ‘being real’, conveyed by (mainly) electronic and online media, attributes great value to the idea of making-a-message, thereby rendering the practice of message making an important guideline for practitioners of the style.
Instead of exploring varied messages conveyed by different rappers, my intention is to illuminate how the motif of message making itself retains strong connections to the issue of being real or true. The first section of this article features a text analysis of Israeli rap songs and interviews I have conducted with rappers. The analysis follows a word-system approach (Aphek and Tobin Reference Aphek and Tobin1988) in order to reveal the core semantic devices being used. This approach demonstrates how messaging is hailed by rappers as their prime goal, and apparently elevates it beyond what they see as ‘meaningless’ pop. I conclude that the act of crafting a message becomes a meta-message in its own right. In the subsequent section I illustrate how ‘keeping things real’ as a global convention of rap is being connected to a well-rooted expressive tradition in Israel, known as ‘Dugri talk’, that emphasises straightforwardness (Katriel Reference Katriel1986). Hence, in spite of its transnational appeal, we can see how rap grants significant local meanings by way of its expressive execution. Finally, I highlight how the ‘sacred’ mission of messaging is translated, and to some extent betrayed, during performance. My discussion will thus move from the linguistic aspects of rap to the expressive and performative ones. In a sense this strand also leads from the individual stage of writing to the more socially based stages in which the style is communicated to and negotiated with the crowd.
This study is based on anthropological research carried out between 2004 and 2008; participant observations were conducted mainly but not exclusively in selected nightclubs and concert venues where the local scene has been established. In addition, the transcripts of 15 formal open interviews with rappers, DJs and entrepreneurs were analysed. Analysis was made in accordance with a semiotic word system approach (Aphek and Tobin Reference Aphek and Tobin1988), holding that any language is comprised thematically of systems and subsystems of emic notions organised internally that refer to one another. Exposing layers of referential relations between core themes and notions reveals the interdependence between word systems and subsystems within the text, and hence enables one to extract its inner logic. The same word system analysis was also conducted on a corpus of some 350 rap songs. As hinted above, Israeli rappers treat their texts as a serious matter and expect their listeners to do the same. ‘I feel much more committed to what I have written in a song than to what I have said in a press conference’, explains Muki.Footnote 2 ‘In conversation I cannot pause and sharpen my text while a song can take me three years until I find the exact word I am looking for, the words in songs are exactly what I wanted to say.’ These words help us understood why it is so common for rappers to refer their interlocutors to song lyrics.
Careful categorisation of word systems extracted from the texts revealed four overlapping themes. The first is a definition of rap as an artistic realm made for true expression of the self. Under this idea we can see how rappers view rap performance as more than a mere ‘show’. The second theme presents hip-hop as the most up-to-date style in Israeli music. Local rappers see themselves as vanguards that work in ‘real time’, keeping Israeli music in line with what happens in the rest of the world. The third theme locates rap in opposition to what might be defined as artificially engineered pop products. It is here that the dichotomy of real–fake is most clearly exposed. The fourth theme is one in which truth is associated with a sense of direct expression that best reflects one's opinions or mood. Here the fundamental idea of expressing one's truth is translated into a performative approach that validates the ethos of a straightforward delivery.
The language of truth
Music made by Afro-Americans has long been associated with the politics of resistance and viewed as an alternative source of knowledge (Levine Reference Levine1977). In fact, since the era of the American civil rights movement scholars rarely refer to ‘black music’ beyond its political aspect. Paul Gilroy, in his seminal work The Black Atlantic (Reference Gilroy1993), showed how explicit political articulations among the oppressed black public had to be converted and coded implicitly within artistic expressions. Alas, many works that deal with black music tend to take the political aspects embedded in it for granted and even treat the supposed political component as the key for artistic value (see, for example, Kofsky Reference Kofsky1970). And so, while black music was appropriately examined by Gilroy (Reference Gilroy1993, p. 37) as a ‘politics of transfiguration’, less sophisticated works attempted to assess it as a mere reconfiguration of politics.
Yet ‘the message’ as a core aspect of rap is as much an outcome of recent developments as it is the product of social history and cultural traditions. According to Greg Dimitriadis (Reference Dimitriadis2009), it was only during the 1980s – a time when rap moved from open stages into music studios and became mainly a product designated for mass consumption – that messages became a prominent feature of the music. As opposed to early formations, when rap songs were a ‘loose mix of boasts, brags, artist-audience routines and short narratives’, the radio-oriented rap took on the form of a ‘tight, thematic track, one that explores the trials and tribulations of poverty’ (Dimitriadis Reference Dimitriadis2009, p. 26). From within the studio, rap took on a more mediated form, aimed less at sustaining live events and more at sustaining records. And while the commercial goals of this move are self-evident, it also generates a whole range of social and artistic shifts. Dimitriadis reminds us that studio technology enabled a higher degree of ‘verbal complexity that demands close repeated listening, foregrounding an intricate word-play that could not be absorbed in live performance’ (Dimitriadis Reference Dimitriadis2009, p. 56). In accordance, and alongside consolidating their position as media stars, rappers drew on new social positions, pretending to be ‘artists’, ‘poets’ and ‘pedagogues’.Footnote 3
Against this backdrop, one may note that the point in time in which Chuck D coined his oft-quoted statement that rap is the ‘CNN of the street’ ironically indicated its departure from this role, in that the very branding of a style overshadows its actual function. Indeed, as part of the entertainment industry rappers had to invest more in public images and less on routine face-to-face correspondence with crowds. In that respect, building one's image as a politically aware artist is also part of the process of positioning within the industry. From this point onward the main debates within hip-hop culture would focus on the appropriate ways to (re)present black communities and on which artists, practices and discourses empower or denigrate them (Rose Reference Rose2008). It is therefore clear that the reinvention of the rap song as a message carrier involves competing narratives of truth and its preferred representations.
Since rap broke into the Israeli musical mainstream long after its popularisation in other regions, it could perhaps be expected that local rappers would find various approaches to domesticating the genre's stylistic diversity and internal debates. Israel is not a unique example in this respect, however, since scholars have repeatedly shown that rappers around the world harness their mastery of hip-hop's stylistic elements, and appropriate the narrative of racial discrimination that underpins them, to make a firm claim for locality. Following Tony Mitchell's early work (2001a) more recent focus on the lingual dimensions of hip-hop has emphasised locality as an outcome of both forms and contents, for example converging American rap and English vernaculars with indigenous music, local idioms and local-oriented social commentaries (Alim et al. Reference Alim, Ibrahim and Pennycook2009; Terkourafi Reference Terkourafi2010).
From this body of work it is important here to highlight a few modes through which the sense of locality is claimed by rappers and by the scholars who study them. Perhaps the most dominant is one that gives voice to the experiences of marginality of immigrants and indigenous people within national and neo-colonial social orders (cf. Gross et al. Reference Gross, McMurray and Swedenburg1994; Mitchell Reference Mitchell and Mitchell2001b; Androutsopoulos Reference Androutsopoulos and Terkourafi2010). While many of these communities are comprised of what may be called people of colour, in many instances the social marginality itself marks community members as non-white (cf. Simeziane Reference Simeziane and Terkourafi2010). A second mode, which is closely related to the first, is one in which rap is used to confront hegemonic narratives of integration and social solidarity, usually by those excluded from such narratives (cf. Fernandes Reference Fernandes2003). Rap is thus being used to racialise allegedly racially homogenous societies and to infuse racial reasoning where this is regarded as illegitimate (cf. Shabtai Reference Shabtai2001; Condry Reference Condry2006). A third mode of claiming locality invokes a sense of national or tribal identity by drawing on the imagined past (and future) of the relevant social entity (Urla Reference Urla and Mitchell2001; McDonald Reference McDonald2009). I have elsewhere illustrated how Israeli Jewish rappers cling to an essentialist perception of black culture to portray a glorified Israeli past and to offer an ideal image of their own society (Dorchin, forthcoming).
Thus, the paradigmatic perspective guiding most contemporary study of hip-hop is that ‘global real talk, while easily glossed as keepin’ it real, is better understood as a global ideology that is always pulled into local ways of being’ (Pennycook Reference Pennycook2007, p. 112). What makes ‘the real’ so confusing in rappers’ speech is the fact that such an assertion is not self-evident and must be validated through performance. For many rappers, including Israelis, the appropriation of black music is an act intended to fortify the sense of being ‘real’ but it nonetheless carries the potential of coming off as fake. It is against these multiple dimensions that truth for Israeli rappers takes the four different formations recognised through the textual analysis described above: as a realm for artistic truth, engagement with up-to-date styles, positioning as anti-pop, and as a forum for straight talk.
Hip-hop as an artistic truth
John Jackson (Reference Jackson2005, p. 176) wrote that ‘in hip-hop, realness is the most valuable form of cultural capital (whose) mandates frame most internal debates’. This sentiment was carefully enacted in the case of Israeli rappers. When asked what attracted him to hip-hop, Muki said it was ‘the ability to speak of anything, whether it is on parties or God or freedom or peace. The ability to speak about it in a real way, this is hip-hop’ (emphasis added). Put this way, ‘realness’ is not associated with a certain repertoire of subjects but rather with the way they are treated by the artist. Indeed, one aspect of being real is to demonstrate a non-discriminatory approach and to talk of whatever one feels like without considering other people's opinions. In his song Eich kor'im li (‘What I'm called’) rapper Quami (2005) states that ‘I make no considerations, I just fuck considerations off, this is my theory and truth, ashkara!’.Footnote 4 As shown here, the claim for making no excuses rests not only on what the rapper chooses to address but also on how he articulates it.
There is an intrinsic conflict, however, in proclaiming one's realness from a stage; it is the stage that gives rappers the opportunity to prove themselves while at the same time it underscores the performative nature of the event. In February 2006, during a concert by the rap quartet Hashevet (‘The Tribe’), one of the members took time between songs to say, ‘Our songs are all truth, any word is carved in stone, real incidents.’Footnote 5 His friend then added, ‘I speak just the way I sing [rap], at eye level’.Footnote 6 In colloquial Hebrew, to speak to someone ‘at eye level’ means to speak as equals. In the context of the concert, with the performer physically situated above his audience, this statement can be understood as an effort to eliminate the gap between the performer and his audience. As their songs present them in the guise of charismatic performers, the rappers use the breaks between songs to restore their image as ‘regular’ people, hence the statement about the apparent sameness of talking and rapping. The comments made by the rappers while on stage are therefore part of the same semantic manoeuvre, intended to undercut any perception of the rappers as mere entertainers.
This dynamic can also be seen in a concert by the duo Peled and Ortega (12 May 2008). In a break between songs, Peled approached the audience saying, ‘whatever goes on here, it is all us! If you go up, if you go down, the good things that are going on here and the bad things, it is all us, it is all truth.’ This sentence derives from the same conflict presented above but refers to it in a more deliberate way. Unlike the previous example, in which the aspect of performance was strategically blurred, here the rapper offers the potential of high and low moments as a way of explicitly demonstrating the ‘realness’ of the performance. Although decidedly a different tactic than that of Hashevet, Peled's strategy reflects the same argument: that rap is an extension of everyday life and not just staged entertainment. The motif of truth that acknowledges the ‘lows’ in a performance suggests a rapper is at the mercy of himself; the only thing he or she can offer the audience is his/her real personality along with its good and bad moments. This act also contains a sense of confession that enhances the overarching message of sincerity. It calls on audiences to evaluate low moments equally with high ones as part of a deal that defines hip-hop as a unique artistic form.
Contemporary style as truth
The history of popular music in Israel can be viewed through its complicated relations with influential international trends. Rock, for example, gradually took root from the 1960s onward alongside many of its artistic and aesthetic elements. However, as Regev and Seroussi (Reference Regev and Seroussi2004, p. 137) note, in the process of ‘Israelisation’ local rock was neutered from many conceptual aspects associated with the term Rock (e.g. rage, sexuality, hedonism, etc.). It seems, then, that each generation must cope anew with the translation of international trends in a way that will reduce the divide between Israel and the world, and rappers have explicitly embarked on this quest since the very early stages. The first hit single by Hadag Nahash from 2000, a song called Lo Mevater (‘Not Giving Up’), is a manifesto explaining the group's artistic decision in a period in which rap was still strange to Israeli ears. In their lyrics they say:
Musical production is another dimension marked by rappers as requiring particular improvement in an effort to equal non-Israeli standards. This is perhaps not surprising, since hip-hop is a more studio oriented and less instrumentally based type of music. However, rappers point to a larger problem that apparently characterises Israeli music in general, as Quami explains:
Israeli music has been stuck in a groove for years. The sound of rock records for example is poor, even when the musical quality is good. Why is this? Because the standards aspired to (here) are local ones, not Hul standards. American recordings from 1976 sound better than Israeli recordings in 2005. (Interview with the author, 28 September 2005)Footnote 8
This statement has to be understood beyond the immediate stylistic or technological aspects; in regard to the question of truth, rappers’ efforts to match international recording standards are aimed at giving them a better opportunity to express themselves. When asked what was missing in the local music prior to the introduction of rap, rapper Subliminal replied:
Text and context. We [rappers] came and all of a sudden started to talk politics. But it is not only political talk that was missing but mere talk. I felt as if Israeli music has no text, only blah-blah-blah and no one actually knows what he is singing. … In the aspect of sound too, it ‘flies’ different now. I had to build my own studio to make my own mixing and mastering because no one [producers] ‘spoke’ the low levels of hip-hop here. (Interview with the author, 24 October 2006)
According to the rapper, the context was needed in order to make the text become possible. Producers were not ‘speaking’ the language of hip-hop, and the language of pop, which they did speak, said nothing. Hence, building studios and acquiring new producing skills are all aimed at supporting the final end product of a valuable message. Rapper Kashi repeated this point:
Look what we have now: Miri Mesika, Keren Peles, Har'el Skaat, Aya Korem and all these [Israeli pop singers]. Come on man, we moved fifty years back in time. These are pretty songs that anyone can hum but it's fucking unconnected to anything that happens in the world nowadays, (Interview with the author, 2 July 2006)
The innovation rappers aspire to is directed towards a better and updated articulation of the Israeli way of life as they experience it. Bringing Israel closer to ‘what happens in the world’ is a means of producing a more loyal representation of contemporary reality. Subliminal (2006) summarised this notion well in his song MC Netto (‘Net MC’) by stating, ‘Sub speaks S.M.S. you speak yonot-do'ar [carrier pigeons]’, where his pronunciation of the Hebrew term for carrier pigeon, although incorrect in formal linguistic terms, followed that of contemporary spoken Hebrew. Introducing contemporary everyday speech into poetry is closely related to the employment of up to date SMS technology; both cultural devices (language and technology) distinguish the young rapper's experience of Israeli-Hebrew culture from an old and apparently more ‘appropriate’ one.
Truth as anti-fashion
‘Whether in the words of academic theorists, journalists, fans or musicians, the music industry frequently appears as a villain’, wrote Keith Negus; it appears as ‘a ruthless corporate “machine” that continually attempts to control creativity’ (Negus Reference Negus1996, p. 36). This narrative gets an additional meaning as the white-dominated music industry is accused of co-opting black musicians and artificially reproducing the raw quality of their music for commercial ends (Mahon Reference Mahon2004). As Israeli rappers associate this sense of rawness positively with notions like truth, authenticity and reality, the collaboration with the music industry is an issue to be discussed. Referring in her song to the local starlet Roni Superstar, female rapper Shorty raps:
Presenting the pop-icon as a puppet implies she is under the full control of her music-industry ‘puppeteers’ and lacks self-awareness, will or independent opinion. This is why the starlet is compared to a shiny package that offers nothing original. Similarly, another female rapper, MC Shiri (2005), uses the metaphor of a doll to convey her intentions:
The song, entitled ‘It's hard to be a girl in the hip-hop business’, presents us with a set of words that acquire similar meaning within the arching dichotomy between rap and pop. The doll is passive, something to be dressed up for a show. The rapper, on the other hand, claims she ‘doesn't make pop’; her music is not made for pleasure, it demands listening and unlike a pop song or a bubble it aims to last. The message identifies pop with artificiality, shallowness and ephemerality whereas real rap (unlike ‘fake rap’) is identified with meaning, sincerity, unique personality and viability. Rumour, a fleeting unverified piece of information, also stands in opposition to the kind of content rappers intend to supply; the rumour is associated here with the gossip that surrounds pop icons and helps to build (or ruin) their images, having no necessary connection to their musical content.
Shiri's song draws a line not only between pop and rap but also between real rap and fake rap. Kashi also points to the same definition, saying:
Sometimes this whole thing seems to me like a fraud, like a big lie. Sometimes I say to myself what a bummer that music is built on conventions because it gives even the worst rapper the ability to learn the conventions and start making lies; to lie to the world and present it in the guise of music. (Interview with the author, 2 July 2006).
Understanding the rapper's intentions, we might still wonder how to distinguish the real from the fake. If Israeli rap is about (mostly) non-black people experiencing black music, how can we define real music against a lie that is served ‘in the guise of music’?
In that respect, the case of Subliminal is perhaps the most telling, as no other Israeli rapper has exhibited such a complete adoption of the American style, in terms of music, attire and performance, as he has. This ‘American’ appearance led many to refer to him and to his crew as ‘wiggers’ or ‘wannabes’ (Shor Reference Shor2002). Some of his colleagues, however, pointed to a subtle dimension of truth that critics, lacking an intimate understanding of hip-hop, tend to overlook. Rapper Fishi Hagadol (Big Fishi) says:
People can say a lot of things about Subliminal but he got it, he knows what real rap is and that's why he survived. He knows the history, he knows the culture and he knows hip-hop. Why has he ‘got it’? Because he knows what a rapper has to go through to have a good show while others (rappers) just watch MTV, they see something that is separated from reality. They do not see the whole picture; the rap battles you have to maintain on the street and the clubs you have to perform in in order to make it to MTV. (Interview with the author, 14 July 2005)
What defines Subliminal from other people, according to Fishi, is his long-term commitment to the style of rap and to its demanding rites of passage. Hence we are presented with two categories of show which are in close proximity to notions of realness: Subliminal puts on a ‘good show’ because it is based on an in-depth study of hip-hop, whereas others’ shows are not as good because they are based on secondary learning from the media. Subliminal's ‘survival’ (success) is due to the fact that he acknowledged hip-hop as the cultural property of another group before (re)making it his own. Fishi presents such an intimate acquaintance as the only legitimate way to turn this strange cultural model into a local and personal reality.
Against this backdrop it is not surprising that Subliminal himself renounces the analogy people make between him and Afro-American rappers, and by doing so reclaims the truth embedded in his music:
The reality here (in Israel) is not the reality there (in America). If you see a policeman here chasing someone you will probably side with the policeman because that someone is perhaps a terrorist or maybe stole someone's purse. People here are more like a big family, whereas there everybody tries to kill one another, or at least that's how it seems. The ‘good guys’ are the Negroes and the ‘bad guys’ are the white policemen. This is not our world, man, for me it's only a movie, it's good for television. (Interview with the author, 24 October 2006)
Defining reality from non-reality (when speaking of the good and the bad guys he adopts a mocking pronunciation), Subliminal tries to refute the criticism that labels him a fake. In order to do so he actually flips the criticism around, claiming that it is his critics who adopt unreal movie-like narratives of blackness as a basis for the analogy they suggest.
Unlike Subliminal, some rappers chose a reversal strategy by rejecting hip-hop stylistic components as means to persuade others of their truth. Quami's most identifiable trademark, for example, was originally his Afro hairstyle, which he later decided to abandon in order, as he explained me, to feel more true to himself. In a cultural realm in which stylistic components constitute valuable capital, renouncing one's distinguishing signifier may bear high costs, as Quami explains:
They [the audience] accepted me more as a rapper when I had this huge Afro, it made sense to them. Even if I looked like a freak-show, for them it made more sense, it seemed to suit the show better. But I'm interested in the music more than the show. (Interview with the author, 28 September 2005)
The dichotomy between the music and the show denotes the opposition between true and false, real and unreal. As the Afro hairstyle made the rapper look like a ‘freak’, the music provides him with means to express his personality. Preferring the music to the show is therefore an effort to keep things real; the rapper rejects shallow stylistic aspects and is willing to cope with the possible consequences of this rejection.
Truth as straightforward expression
Here the meaning of truth is based on the perception that only free speech would express exactly what the rapper wanted to say and in exactly the right manner. The strong association of black music with ghetto street life alludes to a plain, unsophisticated form of straight talk. Rapper Muki summarised this perception, mentioning that ‘Bob Marley once said that a song that an eight-year-old kid cannot understand is not a good song’ (Interview with the author, 12 January 2006). These words give us a clue to the rapper's own approach for writing.
In regard to the use of language, both in writing and delivery, rap can be seen as regular talk being intensified. Avoiding poetic expressions refers to the idea of truth on two levels. First is an intention to present things as they are, bare and free of any unnecessary flowery phrases. We can therefore see what the rapper may gain by reminding his listeners that ‘I speak just the way I sing, at eye level’. Second, if a song is a way to say something about life, as rappers often repeat, then plain talk better serves this end. Rapper Mesika explained this perspective, ‘people want to hear what you have to say without too much “oh my pretty darling” and stuff like that. Tachles, if you have something to say, say it; if not just shut up!’ (Interview with the author, 10 August 2006).Footnote 11 Mesika sees the phrase ‘Oh my pretty darling’ as something whose sole purpose is aesthetic, and therefore not getting to the point. This is not to say that romantic expressions have no place in rap songs, but that rap is supposed to strike a chord with speech as used by real people in real life. The economy of a language aiming to be as direct and practical as possible brings rap into close proximity with one of modern Hebrew's most identified characteristics, known as dugri speech. Below, this aspect of vernacular speech in Israel is explained and explored to show how the literal strategies explored thus far are being put into action.
Speak Dugri: straight talk in Israeli culture
Dugri speech usually means straight or direct talk and is an identified character of Israeli discourse. In her comprehensive study, Tamar Katriel (Reference Katriel1986) shows how this strategy of discourse has become part of the local ethos, one that defines the desirable relationships within the Israeli cultural community. As a matter of style dugri encourages people to become open with one another by speaking in a direct manner that might be considered rude or aggressive in other cultural contexts. Whereas the notion of dugri describes the typical communication strategy, Katriel also shows how the term itself can be used to emphasise its own nature. For example, dugri can be applied as an adverb (as in: ‘I'll tell you dugri, what you are saying is bullshit’), or as an adjective (‘this man is all right, he's always dugri’).
Like many other words, dugri was adopted by Sabra Israelis from their Arab neighbours.Footnote 12 However, as Katriel shows, the different meaning attributed to the word in colloquial Hebrew explains it as a major cultural device in Jewish-Israeli society. In Arabic, dugri means to tell the truth and hence would refer the listener to what one is saying. In Hebrew, on the other hand, the term emphasises one's effort to speak openly and hence it refers the listener to how one says something. Whereas in both languages the term is associated with qualities of sincerity and honesty, for Arabic speakers it connotes being true to facts, whereas for Hebrew speakers it implies being true to oneself. In the transition from Arabic to Hebrew, then, dugri departs from a mere claim of objectivity, becoming a vehicle for the construction of certain intersubjective relationships. Katriel (Reference Katriel1986, p. 11) makes this point clear, saying ‘dugri in Hebrew can be said to color or structure the interpersonal domain: it is uniquely concerned with persons and their interrelations as behaviorally manifested in and through speech’.
The cultural derivation of sincerity from explicit or straightforward talk was an appropriate ground for the Israeli implementation of rap. American rappers often justify explicit talk by claiming it as a reliable depiction of the harsh environment in which they grew up. This approach is at first more reminiscent of the Arabic application of dugri than the Hebrew one. However, the stylistic kernel of any rap is not in the lyrical content itself but rather in the use of language, what Katriel (Reference Katriel1986, p. 2) calls ‘the tonal coloring given to spoken performance’. This stylistic colouring is said to keep music close to its social base, and in so doing to prove artists’ devotion to their audience. Typical titles like ‘Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z’ (by Tupac Shakur Reference Shakur1993) are therefore revealing in both content and form.
And yet Israeli rappers’ orientation toward dugri speech can hardly be seen as a matter of convention in local popular music. Scholars have already mentioned that Israeli performers, as early as the 1960s, failed to deliver an authentic experience of rock and pop since they were trying to translate the relevant English notions to appropriate Hebrew phrasing (Regev Reference Regev1995; Taub Reference Taub1997). For example, when the Anglo-American term ‘baby’ was translated to the Hebrew ‘buba’ (doll), it did not retain the authenticity it held in rock and moreover made local everyday talk more poetic and artificial. Against this backdrop we can re-examine a statement like ‘Sub speaks S.M.S, you speak yonot-do'ar [carrier pigeons]’ (see above), where the validity and innovation derives from converging contemporary technology, common use of English terms and common Israeli expressions (yonot do'ar) that ignore appropriate grammatical standards.
We might further exemplify this idea with reference to a specific case. In November 2013, Israel was shocked by the sudden death of Arik Einstein, widely regarded as ‘the greatest and most influential Israeli singer and musician of all time’ (Wikipedia 2014). Einstein was a prominent representative of the Sabra generation, an Israeli-born singer-songwriter whose work beginning in the 1960s signified an alternative to the old-fashion and often pompous poetry of the nation's formative years. Three days after Einstein's death, Matan Sharon, a rap critic, dedicated his column to listing musical samples excerpted from Einstein's songs by local rappers. ‘There is no better way to show respect for Einstein, the most dugri-music person there is, than to make dugri-music’, Sharon wrote (Reference Sharon2013, emphasis added). Sampling someone's music is often interpreted as sign of respect, but it can also be carried by other motivations, as the example of the group Shabak Samech shows. Shabak Samech, also the first local Israeli rap group, were the first to sample Einstein's music. In their 1995 debut album they sampled an Einstein song from 1968 called Mekofef Habananot (‘The Bananas Bender’). The original song was a collaboration between three major forces of the (then) young generation of Israelis, writer Meir Ariel, composer Shalom Hanoch, and singer Arik Einstein. The song itself is a humorous tale about a dwarf who goes out during the night to give fruits and vegetables their unique shapes. As the song tells it, although the dwarf continues his ancestors’ tradition of night-time fruit-shaping, bending bananas is his own original trick and masterpiece. In their updated rap version, Shabak Samech turned the original chorus on its head by using the term bananot (bananas) in its alternate meaning, as a common slang for banot (girls). Hence, the mastery of ‘bending bananot’ now acquired a whole new sexual meaning upon which the rap verses further elaborated.
In retrospect, the metamorphosis of the song signifies two phases of innovation in Israeli music. The original song marked a shift from poetic and nationalist song writing toward a more secular and individual type of expression. However, it still featured genuine Hebrew, fine singing and sophisticated instrumentation. This genuine professionalism was the subject of jokes in the later version. Shabak Samech was a group comprised of young boys around the age of 20 whose desire, as their lead rapper Muki told me, was ‘to smoke, get laid and make a fuss (in the media)’. Although their version of the ‘bananas bender’ does not necessarily show disrespect to the original, it revitalises the song by making it relevant to their updated reality. Thus making ‘dugri-music’ is a matter of speaking one's mind and doing it in strict everyday idioms.
One of the main characteristics of dugri talk, as Katriel explains, is its orientation for actual action and firm devaluation of speech gestures. This began, in part, with Zionism's intention to distinguish itself from diasporic Jewish cultures in which submissive Jews used their adroit speech skills as professional and political resources. Katriel writes:
Dugri speech … derives its force from the contrast between words, talk (diburim) and deeds (ma'asim). In this dichotomy, diburim is often qualified as stam (mere talk) and ma'asim are interpreted as socially oriented actions, manifesting full commitment, in the spirit of the nation building ethos to which this cultural contrast should probably be traced. (Katriel Reference Katriel1986, p. 25)
Apparently this orientation is hard to imply through musical performance, as music is by definition classified as a form of expression and not as a mere deed. However, retaining close connection to its actual social environment, rap aims to maintain this action-oriented music. An example of this is a long tradition in rap, in Israel as elsewhere, in which rappers describe themselves as soldiers with words and rhymes taking on the metaphor of weapons (McDonald Reference McDonald2009). We might here recall Mesika's statement ‘Tachles, if you have something to say, say it; if not just shut up.’ Tachles literally means ‘purpose’ or by extension ‘to become practical’, and it has close connections with dugri because both utilise talk as a lever to promote deeds.
Rappers further clarify these intentions by sharpening the alleged difference between rap and ‘regular’ pop. Muki, for example, opens his 2001 debut album with this:
Hadag Nahash opened their own debut album from 2000, rapping very similar words:
I turn on the radio hearing the same songs
That are sung by the same singers
Full of ego and showing-off
There is satiation, almost suffocation
From non-musical music that says and does nothing
Enough, enough, enough and enough,
We ate too much of all that
When he compares the microphone to a sword the rapper presents himself as a warrior and respectively presents rap as sort of (martial) art that can make an impact. Readiness to fight for something (the Jedi reference alludes to fighting for justice, a theme that is further elaborated in this particular album) gives the rapper his integrity and differentiates him from pop singers whose supposed sole motivation is their ego. Pop singers are presented as having a lack of unique personality (‘same things’, ‘same songs’, ‘same singers’) and since their (non)music says nothing it also lacks the potential to do anything.
Pop, then, as rappers see it, is nothing but showing off; following Katriel's explanation we might say that its words do not deliver ideas but rather mask the fact that there are no ideas behind it. Rappers, on the other hand, claim to use words that depict their opinions in the most accurate way even at the price of being scathing and impolite. In his song Eich Kor'im Li (‘What I'm Called’) Quami makes this point as clear as possible, spitting:
If I would like to say that ex-prime ministers are getting paid
The money that could be allocated to the unemployed
And to fired people, and that the treasury shits on us
I will say this, I will say this
And if I would like to say that women are humiliated here
That there is no minimal respect, place with too many fools
And that any violent man should have his dick cut off
(ouch) hard to hear this? Fuck you!
This is the ultimate realisation, although dramatised, of the ethos of dugri as a moral concept. According to this ethos people are expected to reveal their thoughts and feelings to one another in a plain and direct manner. This sense of exposure aims to make sure no issue will be swept under the rug and that a high level of sincerity will be maintained within interpersonal relationships.
Modes of discourse and their meanings
The Quami song quoted above is an example of dugri speech in its most naked form, but it is not to suggest that all Israeli rappers tend to express themselves in such an explicit way. In fact, most rappers seem to elaborate on the issue of message making as an artistic ideal rather than to simply plant strong messages within their songs. This is strange since, as we saw, all of them tend to emphasise their sense of independence, sincerity and indifference to questions of decency. The explanation for this paradox is that Israeli rappers, in the process of introducing the Israeli public to hip-hop, highlight stylistic and ethical contours of their new style in an effort to distinguish it from other popular genres. For this reason it is more important to explicitly embrace an in-your-face attitude as a sort of unique cultural capital than to realise it in practice. The impression of being dugri is achieved by Israeli rappers through what I shall call an ‘inclusive mode of discourse’, that is, an attitude of regulating the clarity of one's words in order to elicit widespread identification from among heterogeneous crowds. My idea of the ‘inclusive mode’ is based on similar practices that were described previously by Aphek and Tobin (Reference Aphek and Tobin1989) in the context of fortune telling and by Dalit Simchai (Reference Simchai2009) in her study of New Age entrepreneurship in Israel. In the first case the researchers diagnosed a strategy they called an ‘omniscopus use of language’ (Aphek and Tobin Reference Aphek and Tobin1989, p. 46) in which general patterns of discourse employed by fortune tellers enables clients to cast, absentmindedly, specific content that is relevant to them. In the second case Simchai showed how New Agers strive to offer alternatives to Western capitalist orders and are inspired by eclectic tribal and non-Western images and practices. Typical themes that characterise New Age discourse, like holiness, holism, energies, ritualism and naturalism, distinguish the group's self-image by their general rather than specific nature. As I will demonstrate, the apparent dugri speech produced by some rappers is actually non-specific and hence has great inclusive potential. Like the discourse of New Agers, it strives to gather a heterogenic audience into a group of hip-hop faithful, a subculture that sees its music as alternative and expects it to be more than ‘just’ music. As with the case of fortune tellers, this rap is articulated through schematic forms that invite each listener to imagine the possible meanings of the scheme on his or her own terms.
A performance by rapper Roy Edri presented the similarity between rap and New Age to me for the first time, and it exemplifies how inclusive discourse is being operated. At the time I attended his concert, Edri hosted a television hip-hop show called Dibur Tzafuf (‘Dense Talk’) on the Israeli Music Channel. In colloquial Hebrew, ‘dibur tzafuf’ means an openhearted conversation about a serious matter, so it could be seen as a later incarnation of dugri. ‘Dibur Tzafuf’ was an appropriate title for a rap show as it denoted the artistic character of rap and also invited viewers in for a ‘dense talk’, a supposed break from the sequence of banal pop programmes. But in contrast to his tough image as a television host, in which he implements exaggerated body gestures and American rap lingo, Edri's stage performance is rather calm; it was perhaps this contradiction that helped my conceptual bridging of rap and New Age scenes. In an introduction to a song called Ba Me'Ahava (‘Comes from Love’) Edri says, ‘I come from love because I see that you come from love too’. The song itself says:
Melody frees the soul
Though the situation is horrible (I) give a good word
Speak to the next generation
May we all know success, my song is also yours
When we're down, when we're up, all together
May we all have love, my prayer your prayer
May it bring blessings for another season,
All together let's hear
Who comes, who comes, who comes from love
Edri wishes to present his words as dense talk, i.e. a serious conversation. Alas, his remarks about a ‘horrible situation’, ‘freeing one's soul’ and sending words ‘for the next generation’, all seeming to allude to serious matters, are not further elaborated and actually lack any specific reference. Likewise, mentioning prayer denotes ‘meaningful’ themes like faith and determination that can be easily interpreted within the stylistic framework of rap and apparently differentiate it from light-headed pop. Despite the apparent seriousness of the words, the rapper's terminology does not present a clear message but rather a blurred one, which enables a wide range of listeners to identify with it.
As one may realise, such a discursive strategy is inclined to dismantle potential controversies. This is surprising, given the common image of hip-hop as explicit talk, and the expectation that rappers’ quarrelsome attitudes would naturally find full expression in the most confrontational situations (i.e. racially charged issues). At least in Israeli rap, this not the case. In the summer of 2005 Israel was in turmoil because of the Disengagement Plan and evacuation of Jewish settlements from the Gaza strip. One week prior to the execution of the plan (9 August), with the public split between supporters and opponents, and demonstrators flocking to the streets across the country, I went to see rapper Fishi Hagadol (Big Fishi) in Tel Aviv. At a certain point of the concert Fishi turned to the crowd and said: ‘recently everybody is talking about the hitnatkut [disengagement], everywhere you hear about the hitnatkut, so I will tell you my opinion about the hitnatkut.’ At that point he paused and the audience tensed in silence. Fishi's audience is quite familiar with his tendency to speak, sometimes at length, between songs and usually responds enthusiastically to him. This pattern explains how unusual the silence was that night, and it indeed indicated the explosive potential of the subject at that point in time. After a short pause, he said, ‘I think we were all disengaged a long time ago’. Stress was relieved immediately; shouts and whistles now took the place of silence.
As a matter of routine, shouts and whistles by the audience signal support, agreement or identification with the rapper's words. But in this case we may ask with what exactly the audience agreed or identified. ‘We have all been disengaged for a long time now’, repeated Fishi, ‘we are disengaged from ourselves, from one another, we are not sensitive anymore to each other. Only unity will eventually bring anything to end up for the better.’ What does that mean? Being in the early stages of fieldwork I had been hoping to hear some of the provocative statements for which rap is notorious. Disillusioned, I wrote that night in my field notebook:
Any listener can take these words in any direction he wants. It is possible that Fishi wanted to see more compassion for the evacuated settlers but this is also such an ambiguous message that I'm not at all sure this was his intention. This is an art of ambiguity, of speaking vaguely, that disguises itself as talk about principles, values and social matters.
Clouded at the time by my disappointment at Fishi's ambiguity, his words now reveal themselves as a deliberate strategy of the ‘inclusive mode of discourse’ – language that is intentionally vague but structured so that almost anyone can identify with and find meaning within it. We might conclude that in matters of performance, being honest is less about what one is saying and more about how one is saying it. This is not to suggest that rappers have nothing precise to say or that they are always likely to blur their messages, but that blurring messages in itself does not weaken, and sometime may even enhance, the impression of being honest. Moreover, since rappers and their audiences do not comprise a homogenous group, then precise statements may turn out to be too precise and may put a barrier between the performer and the crowd. During the dramatic summer of 2005, for example, in the aftermath of the evacuation, the press quoted rapper Muki as saying: ‘[we] ought to “get into” them [Jewish settlers], to break their bones, load them on trucks, throw them in some corner and shut their mouths.’ Muki had already alluded to his ‘left-wing’ opinions in a few successful hits with lyrics such as ‘everybody is talking about peace, no one is talking about justice’, but these were abstract enough to be acceptable to a wide range of listeners. These clear and scathing remarks, then, a rare example of such refinement, resulted in firm denunciations of Muki from within rap circles and from the Israeli public. The examples of Fishi and Muki demonstrate the difference between crafting a message as an inclusive stylistic frame and message making as an uncompromising practice.
Along with the carefully vague messages, in the early stages of my fieldwork I was also surprised at the difficulty of capturing song lyrics during live performances. Since rappers repeat both in song lyrics and private conversations the meaning attached to messages, I presumed they would make an effort to deliver their lyrics loud and clear during concerts. A group called Parvarim Refugeez (PR) supply a striking example of a performance in which the vocals are indeed loud but not at all clear. The group is comprised of some eight core members whose performance renders the strong impression that they share a tight bond of friendship. During the concert they continuously break into one another's talk, teasing each other, joking and laughing as if they were playing to themselves in private and not to a paying audience. Such simultaneous talk eliminates all possibility of understanding what is said. At the same time, it still seems that band members have a lot to say; their exaggerated gestures allude to emotional conviction and to the sense of seriousness they attribute to whatever has been said up there, amid the dense cloak of noise. Therefore, although the performance provides a sense of seriousness, it does not translate into any clear verbal content.
At some points, though, it happens that you may capture a fragment of a sentence that comes out clearly before being swallowed again into the verbal tumult, like a picture that is sharp for a second before getting blurry again. In one concert (29 October 2005), for example, a band member turned to his friends between two songs and managed to say, ‘do you remember how once at the town centre in Makabim …’ before his words were covered with a barrage of enthusiastic comments. Makabim is the group's hometown and the enthusiasm this sentence evoked among the other band and many audience members alike clearly revealed they all know what he referred to. But I and some others in the audience were left wondering what did happen there once, and why this particular moment was the right time and place to recall this particular episode. After attending more than a few subsequent concerts by PR it became clear to me that such breaks in communication were not an accident but a pattern. Once understood, questions about exactly what happened in the sleepy suburb they came from became less important than the fact that it consolidated the group of friends as we see them today. Precisely by insisting on performing as if they were still in their parents’ garage, the group persuades us of its realness and integrity, as if they are not putting on a show at all.
The PR case presents a different manifestation of the inclusive mode that may be called ‘partial discourse’. Here the sense of inclusiveness is achieved by the pattern in which correspondence is continually interrupted. In the introduction to the song ‘Kikar Party’ (‘Square Party’, PR) rapper McDady G manages to say ‘the next song is dedicated to …’ before his voice disappears within those of his friends. A few seconds later, in the midst of the song, a fragment of a sentence caught my ear saying: ‘… you ruin everything you have built …’ but was then swallowed back by the noisy choir and musical accompaniment. In a simple sense these sentences failed to make their mark since they remained unfinished. However, this also left the impression that meaningful statements had been made; their very partiality prevents them from becoming too specific or too committed while simultaneously inviting us to evaluate the potential meaning of what could have been said (or even was said, although we could not hear it). Once again we see how rappers’ inclusive attitude is being achieved by abstract and non-specific discourse that presents itself, via different performative means, in the guise of a direct and decisive one.
Summary
American rap and modern Hebrew seem to be strange bedfellows. However, the case of Israeli rap reveals that both hold straight talk as a desirable goal. Although crystallised within different cultural contexts, the musical genre of rap and Israeli dugri speech both encourage plain, clear and explicit expression and associate it with certain moral standards. For its Israeli practitioners, the typical command of rap to ‘keep things real’ serves to reinvigorate their own cultural preference for unsophisticated sincerity. But the convergence offered in Hebrew rap is not always a matter of smooth blending. On the contrary, as rap became a popular genre, its own conventions, including the sense of ‘realness’ and straight talk, have become highly stylised. Hence, when Israelis appeal to rap they face an innate paradox: how to operate within the superstructure of a desirable style in a way that still denounces stylistic clichés?
As I have shown, this conflict is closely related to the meanings attributed by rappers to the notion of message and to the issue of being true. Rappers’ speech can be understood as a pendulum-like movement between restricted codes of style and the ability to transgress them; while they must prove their mastery of the relevant cultural capital of their chosen style, they must also, and to no lesser a degree, defy certain stylistic manners in order to prove their sense of individuality (Hess Reference Hess2005).
One last example may demonstrate this innate paradox. A song called ‘Mister DJ’ (Shorty 2005) is a collaboration between rappers Shorty and Quami in which they ridicule some of their colleagues’ tendencies (and maybe even their own) to take themselves too seriously. In particular, they humorously criticise rappers’ pretension to value lyrical content over musical pleasure:
So here I come to ruin the party
I love to see it when the dance floor gets empty
Hey, why are you dancing ha? Why are you dancing?
Calm down all of you and just listen to the lyrics
They say nothing but since we are rappers
Let's pretend they do, got it? The lyrics?
As we can see, the rappers take the option of not being serious seriously, and attribute great meaning to texts which are allegedly meaningless. Their words support the main argument made here, that any act or verbalisation by rappers is meant to convey a message, even (and maybe especially) when the rapper pretends not to make a message at all. Rap is therefore always about meanings, a claim that becomes clearer, ironically, in moments when rappers deny this very claim.
Against this backdrop we can also understand the special importance attributed to notions like truth and reality. Efforts made by rappers to mediate ‘their truth’ to the crowd sustain the act of message making, while at the same time the persistent references to ‘the message’ support the image of being true. As cultural capital and ethos in rap, the message is an extra-textual and extra-linguistic issue; its existence is not self-evident within songs but rather one that has to be proved, verified and discussed. In that respect, notwithstanding the myriad differences between them, making a message and being true is the sole meta-message that consistently binds rappers the world over into a cohesive stylistic community.
