Wednesday, May 27, 1998
Israeli rock star interprets poetry melodically
MUSIC: Little known in U.S., Broza will display fiery style in
Royce Hall
By Megan Dickerson
Daily Bruin Contributor
Someone tunes a guitar in the background as the child cradles
the telephone.
"Dad? Dad!" the small voice hollers into the room. "Phone!"
The instrumental harmonies stop short, and Dad reaches the
phone, softly asking his 8-year-old son Adam to hang up the phone.
Finally, David Broza, the Israeli urban folk rock superstar who
takes the Royce Hall stage in a concert Thursday evening, is ready
to talk.
"You never know how many kids are in the house," the father of
three says, laughing.
While the name David Broza may not ring a bell for the average
American, stop any teenage girl on the streets of Jerusalem and it
will elicit more than just polite recognition.
Lustful adolescents in Tel Aviv airports mob the man New York
magazine praised as an "Israeli Bruce Springsteen." He shares bills
with Bob Dylan and Sting, and maintains the highest grossing album
in Israel. The New York Times hails his fiery style, which can
segue from James Taylor to the Gipsy Kings in seconds, as having a
"narrative flow like a short story, blending comfortably with his
dramatic folk pop tunes." All this for a man who lives in a New
Jersey suburb and combs New York book marts with nary a glance from
the public eye.
This relative American anonymity materializes as both a boon and
a bust for Broza. Relocating to the United States in 1984, site
unseen, he initially found it difficult to break out of his
specialized, and often stratifying, musical niche.
Broza speaks with a blanketed accent not easily attributable to
any ethnicity, a by-product of both his American integration and
his cosmopolitan upbringing. He says he can now perform rollicking
songs in English for 30 minutes in a Dayton, Ohio, club, and switch
to "Bedouin Love Song" or a Hebrew ballad without an audience’s
second guess. This linguistic code-switching seemed hard to come by
when he first began playing New York gigs.
"It was evident that I was not American, and it put up a lot of
barriers for me, believe it or not, in show business," Broza says,
home in New Jersey after an Israeli tour. "People right away notice
there’s a difference, and weren’t that interested."
To an outside observer, it seems like this difference would act
as a compelling hook for a burgeoning musician, especially in a
melting pot like New York.
"I would think so too, but it was the exact opposite. So what I
did was kind of immerse myself in American culture through poetry,
and it took me about six years," Broza says.
The son of a British immigrant father and an Israeli-born
folk-singer mother, Broza attended boarding school in England and
grew up in Spain. Performing in Madrid bars, and later in the
formidable arena of the Israeli army entertainment unit, he says he
developed a fierce stage style as a matter of survival.
"I was playing in all kinds of situations where music was the
last thing people wanted to hear, and the most healing thing,"
Broza says. "So to grab people’s attention, I really had to kick
ass. You become very energized, and you learn to cut right through
their inability to concentrate, put yourself in the foreground, and
capture their imaginations for an hour or two."
These are exactly the gripping qualities Broza looks for when
scouring book stores like the Gotham Book Mart for poetry that he
can put to music. Unlike many folk singers, Broza does not write
his own lyrics. Instead, he searches for a piece of poetry with a
mesmerizing beginning and story line, adapts the words to song, and
sends a recorded copy to its author, if he or she is still
alive.
Broza has adapted the messages of poets ranging from leading
contemporary Matthew Graham to Walt Whitman. No living poet has
refused him collaborative rights; in fact, Graham and other poets
send him new material they feel is suitable for song.
Singer Sheryl Crow’s mainstream success with the song "All I
Wanna Do" further validated Broza’s approach. Crow based the hit on
a piece by Wyn Cooper, a poet who attended some of the workshops
Broza conducts for writer’s conferences.
"It’s almost like editing a book into a screenplay. You can go
really far from the original story and you can stay real close to
it," Broza says. "I don’t think I can interpret exactly what the
writer writes about, because they write from first experience – I
write from second experience. But I adapt it to make it like it’s
my story."
Broza’s own musical journey leads him to venues all over the
United States and to Israel twice a month. He tries to include his
three children if possible, having performed harmonies and
lullabies with them on stage. Yet since the Broza family entered
American anonymity early in the children’s lives, until recently,
the children never realized their father’s overseas mob appeal.
So, when a reporter calls from Jerusalem or from the United
States, they take it in stride, gloriously unaware that thousands
of teenage girls would pound down their door for a glimpse of the
Israeli superstar.
But in Los Angeles, he’s "just" another electrifying,
well-traveled, up-and-coming artist recording an album with a
Grammy Award-winning producer.
"It’s a very, very energetic, fierce show," Broza says. "I’ll
try to blow your mind out."
CONCERT: Tickets to the 8 p.m. Thursday concert are $25, $22 and
$19, $15 with UCLA ID. For more information, call (310)
825-2101.
UCLA Center for the Performing Arts
David Broza has gained an international reputation as Israel’s
modern troubadour of urban folk rock.