"Everybody can take the blues and make it their own – or relate to some form of blues when they hear it. The Blues also have a good mythology to it, which is very important, because music isn't just sounds, it's also a context."

Yaron Ben-Ami: A Blues Poet in Middle East

Yaron Ben-Ami has been listening, playing and breathing the Blues for over 25 years, ever since he first heard Leadbelly on a tape given to him by a friend. For many years Ben-Ami played old-time Blues at gigs in Israel, The USA and Europe. His own songs reflect not only his deep Blues roots, but also a variety of influences, both musical and lyrical, from old Russian folk songs to French chansons. Yaron Ben-Ami, a musician and sometime poet, lecturer in Jewish history, and translator, plays music and tells stories about the covert and overt connections between the blues and Hasidism.

Photo by Ira Khait

Ben-Ami took parts in a number of projects, including Blues duo The Undertakers and the Tom Waits in Hebrew project Used Songs. He has played a variety of venues, from bars to festivals and from concert halls to demonstrations. Also he has shared the Blues with Robert Belfour, Merl Saunders, KM Williams and Jorma Kaukonen.

Ben-Ami is currently recording an album of his songs for Nobody's Fault Productions. In addition to playing the blues, he also lectures on history. In his gruff voice, Yaron hollers on life, people, god(s) and the land of Israel, as well as love and relationships - always remembering there is nothing less common than sense...

Interview by Michael Limnios

When was the first time you felt the need to play the blues? How does music help re-discover yourself?

I studied the piano in my early teens and played a few boogies, and I liked it – but it wasn't yet a NEED. But then I decided to switch to the guitar and learn it all by myself. Then, one evening, I heard Rollin' and Tumblin' – I don't even remember by whom, it was at a friend's house – and I knew I had to play THAT. Learning how to play that, all by myself, on a new instrument, was a revelation: music doesn't have to be this thing with a lot of rules!

How do you describe Yaron Ben-Ami sound and progress, what characterize your music philosophy?

I guess I have a rough sound – both in my guitar playing and in my singing. My biggest challenge is figuring out how to sound delicate at times. I guess my progress has to be measured by how well I can move from rough and forceful to delicate and forceful… Since I play without a band most of the time, the idea behind my music seems to be how to access the whole range of emotions, all by myself.

Photo by Sivan Tzadok

What experiences in your life have triggered your ideas for songs most frequently?

Growing up and living in Israel can be a very confusing experience: the high hopes and ideals that were supposed to guide it (and sometimes do), the tragedies that preceded it, the violence that is inflicted upon it and that it inflicts upon others, the sense of always being judged by everybody (Israelis and non-Israelis), the tension between thousands of years of history and ultra-modernism, the impossible tension between blinding beauty (of land and people) and sometimes terrible suffering. I think these experiences inform most of my songwriting, even when I write about other subjects.

Some music styles can be fads but the blues is always with us. Why do think that is? What does Blues mean to you?

The blues is deceptively simple: all you need to start out with is three chords (well, one really: the other two are merely decorative) and have a decent sense of time. The question about blues is not how to play it, but how to make it ring out. And there's no set answer to that. So basically, everybody can take the blues and make it their own – or relate to some form of blues when they hear it. The Blues also have a good mythology to it, which is very important, because music isn't just sounds, it's also a context. To me, the Blues is a point of view on life: it's hard to summarize it in a sentence, but it's something like: we're all alone here, and in all likelihood we're going to have it very rough, but sometimes we can share our feelings through this music, and feel a little less lonesome.

Which is the most interesting period in your life? Which was the best and worst moment of your career?

I've had the good (?) fortune of having an interesting life (the flip side is that it's never peaceful…), so this question is really hard for me to answer. The best moment of my career (so far) will be when I release my album, in about a month. The worst – well, there were gigs when I played to just the barman… but even that had its own weird charm.

"I think Blues and Jazz, Just like Ladino Romances and Klezmer freilechs, were a folk music created by persecuted people, trying to assert their own voice and their own identity, while at the same time being influenced by everything around them."

Why did you think that the Blues music continues to generate such a devoted following in Israel?

I think there are several reasons for this. The Blues scene in Israel has been slowly evolving and growing for decades, with every "generation" of die-hard Blues folks laying the ground for a bigger "next generation", and I think it blossomed and really took off in the last two or three years. There have always been American-born Israelis who carried the torch, such as Eli Marcus and Ted Cooper and Assaf Ganzman. And there have always been Israeli-born Israelis who got hooked on this – like Geri Eckstein, or Avner Strauss. On a deeper level, The Blues is all about helping you confront troubles, and it's a long time since we've had reasons for optimism here.

Which memory from Robert Belfour, KM Williams and Jorma Kaukonen makes you smile?

Robert Belfour: We were sitting backstage before his show here, and he was telling us about his childhood, and how his mother would make him go to church. I asked: what did you learn from church? And he replied: all the values my mother taught me – to take care of myself, to carry myself like a man, to be dignified. I asked: so what did you learn from the Blues? He said: the same thing.

KM Williams: The wonderful Rev Williams is, of course, a churchman, and I think his visit in Israel, with all its biblical implications, really touched him. Anyway, he started calling us by biblical names: Jonathan Bar Rashi, his drummer here, was John the Baptist; Yamit Hagar, the incredible self-made promoter, was Mary; Hippy looking Israeli bluesman Ori Naftaly was Jesus, and his girlfriend, Blues singer Eleanor Tsaig, was Mary Magdalene; And I, being 2.07m and longhaired, was Samson…

Jorma Kaukonen – not a smile, exactly, but a very heartwarming gesture: Mr Kaukonen was here a week after my father died. I wasn't even sure whether to go meet him at a party given to him, but was persuaded to go, and when I met him and he learned of my father's death, he played Death Don't Have No Mercy to me. I was moved to tears.

Photo By Ronen Goldman

What are some of the most memorable gigs you've had? Are there any memories which you’d like to share with us?

In the summer of 2011 we've had a wave of demonstrations and protests against the injustice of Israel's economy and social services. I played in a lot of demonstrations that summer, including a demonstration of 15,000 people in Kfar Yehoshua, in the valley of Jezreel – that's where the notion of Kibbutz was invented, and where a lot of what's best about Israel originated. I was onstage singing about revolution for all these people, and they responded – and the whole thing just felt great.

Also, when I was living in San Francisco in the late 1990's I had a sort of a punk-Blues band, called The Owl And The Hawks. The late, great Merl Saunders lived in our neighbourhood, and one time we got him to play with us. Our drummer, Blue Lew, who was friends with him, brought him over before the show started, so I can tell him what songs he's going to play with us, and I said: Good Morning Blues in G and How Long, How Long Blues in A. Blue Lew was looking a little anxious and said, don't you want to sing them to him, so he knows what you're talking about? I looked at Merl, who's been playing for decades, and Merl looked at me, and we both knew he played these songs more times than I've had hot dinners, and we just burst out laughing… Because he only said he'd be coming in the last minute, we couldn't get a decent keyboard for him – all we had was one of those Casio keyboards, maybe five octaves, and plugged into a bass amp… well, it was PUNK-Blues band. Anyway, I call him on stage, I count-in Good Morning Blues, and suddenly this WALL of sound is coming from behind me. He was such a great musician. It was physically powerful – nearly knocked me off the stage. Turned out a great gig.

Which meetings have been the most important experiences for you? What is the best advice ever given you?

I guess you mean musically, right? Not necessarily meetings as such, but seeing John Lee Hooker live – that was an irreversible experience, Or seeing John Hammond live. I guess the two most important actual meetings were with Danny Tzukerman, a fabulous Israeli musician and bluesman – we played so much together just the two of us at home, and I learned so much from him; the other was a great guitar player I once knew, called Dolev Avissara. He gave me a very important piece of advice: if you can sing it, you can play it.

Photo by Ira Khait

Make an account of the case of Israeli blues scene and what characterize it? Which is the most interesting period?

The thing about the Israeli Blues scene is that it grew from the bottom up – for a long time, there wasn't a big audience for the Blues, so nobody played the Blues because it was a way to success. People played the Blues because that's what they really wanted. I think that gave a lot of freedom for the musicians to just do their thing. Right now the scene is picking up and growing – and it will be interesting to see how this sense of freedom will play out.

What has made you laugh lately and what touched (emotionally) you from the Israeli scene?

Like a lot of other blues scenes, the Israeli blues scene can get into convoluted and pointless arguments about what is Blues and what isn't. That always makes me laugh. I'm always touched by Noam Dayan's playing – I am lucky enough to be his friend and to have played with him both onstage and off, and he just hits all the right notes in all the right ways to get me going.

What mistakes from the local blues scene would you wish to correct?

This is something I feel quite strongly about – this happens not only in Israel, but in many other Blues scenes outside the USA: there's little or no dancing. As a performance art, Blues started out as dance music; somewhere along the way, when it began to be appreciated as "serious" art, especially outside the USA, it lost that quality about it. Obviously this also has to do with changing dance fads, but still – I'd love for there to be more dancing in Blues shows.

Photo by Yaniv Grady

What do you miss most nowadays from the Blues of past? What are your hopes and fears for the future of Blues?

I think the thing I miss most about the Blues of the 1920s and 1930s is that it was such a local form of expression: when you listen to people like Charlie Patton or Sleepy John Estes or people like them – they're singing about specific places and people that they know, and to me – that's part of what makes their songs so direct and powerful. A lot of current blues purposefully tries to be as general as possible – to make every story that it tells sound as if it could happen to anyone, anywhere. In a weird way, I think that makes it less accessible and less touching.

I think, in general, the Blues field today is clearly divided into two camps: preservationists and adventurers. Preservationists try to sound as much as they can like things that have already been written and played, in order to keep alive the original sounds of the various Blues genres, whereas adventurers try to take the form and adapt it to their own unique experience. In fact, as far as attitude is concerned, I think the adventurers are closer to the original spirit of the Blues, so even though I fully appreciate what preservationists are doing – I hope to hear a lot more adventurers.

What are the lines that connect the legacy of Blues and Jazz with Poetry and continue to Sephardic and Klezmer?

Well, obviously we could discuss musicological aspects, such as the use of pentatonic scales, and the fluidity of time and beat; but on a deeper level, I think Blues and Jazz, Just like Ladino Romances and Klezmer freilechs, were a folk music created by persecuted people, trying to assert their own voice and their own identity, while at the same time being influenced by everything around them. That means that in all of them, there's poignancy, a sense of hurt and sense of perseverance and strength against all odds: a sort of get-your-jollies-while-you-can attitude. Some Greek music that I heard is like that, too. Poetry is just a name for being able to use words musically to make a point.

Photo by Shir Lapid

What's the legacy of Blues in the world culture? What is the relation between music, poetry and activism?

Oooh, that's a big question. One important legacy is that you don't have to be musically literate in order to play great music. Another important legacy is just the realization that a type of music that was originally a private thing of a rather small bunch of people, like the Clarcksdale musicians and audiences in the 1920's, could evolve to become a worldwide idiom. And another important legacy is that nobody but yourself is responsible for your own dignity and bearing.

As for music, poetry and activism – it take a huge leap of faith to set out to make changes in the world. To be able to even consider such an effort, you need to feel very strongly about it – and music and poetry are all about stirring your feelings. That's why revolutions all over the world have such a strong musical aspect to them, with their own songs – not always songs about revolution, but songs that appeal to the lives of the activists.

Let’s take a trip with a time machine, so where and why would you really wanna go for a whole day..?

Well, the answer to that may change, depending on my mood when you ask me – whether to spend a day with the 17^th century Jewish pirates of the Caribbean, or ride with Marco Polo across Asia or whatever – but in the context of this interview, I'd love to spend a Saturday around Dockery's plantation in the mid-1920's: go to a fish fry, jam with Tommy Johnson, drink with Charley Patton, possibly get in a fight with Son House and try to make it with Louise Johnson. That ought to be good fun.

Yaron Ben-Ami - website