Shotei HaNevuah interview

Interview with Shotei HaNevuah
http://www.foools.com
http://www.israel-music.com/the_fools_of_prophecy/

by Benyamin Bresky,
as broadcast on http://www.IsraelNationalRadio.com










ISRAEL NATIONAL RADIO: OK, this is Roi Levi. You are the lead singer of Shotei HaNevuah.

ANSWER: I wouldn't say the lead singer. I would say one of three singers.

ISRAEL NATIONAL RADIO: What else do you do in the band?

ANSWER: Mostly I write, sing, play guitar and dance.

ISRAEL NATIONAL RADIO: What is Shotei HaNevuah? What kind of music do you do?

ANSWER: We are six old friends that know each other for years and years. We started to perform under this name in 1998.

ISRAEL NATIONAL RADIO: Where did you all grow up?

ANSWER: The band consists of me, Gilad, Amit, Shimon, we grew up in Metulla up north and started playing together when we were eleven years old. Gilad's mother and Amit's mother were high school friends and they gave birth on the same day in the same hospital to Gilad and
Amit. So the families were friends. We met for an unforgettable evening in 1988. Amit came to Metulla and we played together and it was magical. We lost touch for a few years when we went traveling. We met again in 1994 with Amit. Basically Amit, the bass player and musical producer and Idan the drummer, are brothers. Avraham is also a very old friend from up north. Assaf the guitarist is also an old friend that Amit met in the USA actually when they studied music
together.

ISRAEL NATIONAL RADIO: When you first started playing at eleven years old did it sound like it does now?

ANSWER: I think we always were attracted to grooves of all kinds. We have some ballads. But mostly we like the beat that you can dance to. But we go along many styles, many styles of music that you can move to. We weave elements into it.

ISRAEL NATIONAL RADIO: What does your name mean and why are you called that.

ANSWER: Shotei HaNevuah is The Fools of Prophecy. The name came into my head a few years ago. It's a play on words. It is written somewhere in the Tanach that after the Second Temple was destroyed, that the prophecy was given only to children and fools. It's kind of
written in a negative way but we thought we can pour light on it in a positive way. We were also very engaged in, like, loosing conscious. Like, once you don't think about what you're doing, you might be doing the right thing. You know what I mean.

ISRAEL NATIONAL RADIO: I heard some musicians say they kind of loose themselves in the music when they play.

ANSWER: Exactly. Yeah.

ISRAEL NATIONAL RADIO: I notice a lot of your songs are long. You get into a long groove there.

ANSWER: Yes. That's what we're talking about.

ISRAEL NATIONAL RADIO: And what's with the donkey.

ANSWER: The donkey?

ISRAEL NATIONAL RADIO: Yes.

ANSWER: The donkey, she is a friend of ours. She joined us about four years ago. We met her. She is also our spiritual teacher. She teached us things that cannot be verbally pronounced. About generations. Generations of life apart from generations of human beings and Jews and Arabs and the regular history that you are taught. She taught us the element of generations of life. Usually when we think about two thousand years of exile, we think about our history. And other people think about their history. But there is the history of G-d which is the history of nature. Along a period of 2 thousand years other things happen that are generations of flowers, generations of different kinds of life forms. And donkeys is also an example of generations. Like for example here, there are many generations of donkeys that are in the holy land that nobody speaks of and they are very important. They she was teaching us a bit about that. If we listen to the silence of a donkey, we might learn something.

ISRAEL NATIONAL RADIO: I thought maybe the donkey represented being a fool. I mean, I thought, the donkey was like an example of a foolish animal…

ANSWER: Yeah but it's not true. If it represents something, it represents prejudiced thinking. Like the donkey is a fool. The donkey is not at all a fool. You can ask zoologists and they will tell you that a donkey is more intelligent then a horse. And we are also very interested in whipping the dust of all the fixations in ways of speaking. Like, the donkey s a fool, the Jew is a cheater…

ISRAEL NATIONAL RADIO: So there's an actual real donkey?

ANSWER: Yeah.

ISRAEL NATIONAL RADIO: Do you...

ANSWER: She's here with me at the moment.

ISRAEL NATIONAL RADIO: Do you take it to the concerts with you?

ANSWER: Not yet. She is humble. There is a chance that she will come
to Tel Aviv and give some autographs.

ISRAEL NATIONAL RADIO: You have a concert coming up in Tel Aviv soon.

ANSWER: We actually perform every night.

ISRAEL NATIONAL RADIO: Where do you perform?

ANSWER: Tonight we have a gig in Tel Aviv. Basically we have a gig
every night lately.

ISRAEL NATIONAL RADIO: Is it just you or is there an opening band too?

ANSWER: There are a few artists that are guest artists on our gig. At the moment we have guest rappers and guest player. We also have a very talented saxophonist.

ISRAEL NATIONAL RADIO: What are the different instruments that you use in the band? It's not just guitars, drums and bass, right?

ANSWER: Yes. We have what you call, ethnic instrument. Like jumbush which is a Turkish string instrument. You can hear it on our second album. Also other traditional ethnic instruments alongside modern instruments like synthesizers and programmed beats and bass and drums and everything.

ISRAEL NATIONAL RADIO: Is your new album different then the first one? Did you try and make it different.

ANSWER: I don't think we tried to make it different but we were different. People change.

ISRAEL NATIONAL RADIO: How does it feel to hear you music on the radio? You're getting a lot of radio play now.

ANSWER: Yes. More then before. How does it feel? Sometimes it's strange. Sometimes you're doing something else and you suddenly hear your own voice on the radio. Basically it feels good because the radio is a stage and we do what we do to be heard.

ISRAEL NATIONAL RADIO: What does the symbol mean on the cover of the album? It's like a Magen David?

ANSWER: Yeah. With pomegranates. This old symbol of Judaism is not passe. And it will always produce fruit and bloom. Every year like the pomegranate does.





ISRAEL NATIONAL RADIO: Where do you want to go now with your music? New tours? A new album?

ANSWER: We've organized a tour as we speak in the US. And of course we'll do a third album

ISRAEL NATIONAL RADIO: Do you know where you're going to play in the US?

ANSWER: We were invited to play in San Francisco. We will check out where to play else where like New York or LA.

ISRAEL NATIONAL RADIO: Anything else that you want to say about you or your music?

ANSWER: I want to thank the audience for coming to the concerts and for responding to our grooves and to our message. We would have been nothing without them.

ISRAEL NATIONAL RADIO: It says on your website that you're on a mission.

ANSWER: Every living person to some extent believes that there something for him or her to do here. And we know it. That what we do is what we were born to do.

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