Idan Raichel Project Concert

Last night I went to an Idan Raichel Project concert in Jerusalem sponsored by MASA. There were easily a thousand other people at the concert who are also in Israel on MASA-supported programs. Apparently MASA holds Idan Raichel concerts a couple of times a year because they are so popular.

I started off the night with a wonderful Skype conversation with my dad, although I had to cut it short so that I could get ready and catch the Egged bus to Jerusalem. It's about a 30 minute walk from my apartment to the bus station in Ramla, and then it takes about 5 minutes to get through the security at the bus station and walk to where the buses depart. But I was really worried about missing my bus, so I moved really fast and managed to do it all in just over 20 minutes. Which meant that I actually caught the earlier bus. This bus was absolutely packed, and the driver just kept letting people on. I was one of the last people on, and joined the other 10 people standing in the aisle. I then moved and got to sit on the floor right up next to the driver, which enabled me to fully experience the very steep turns that we were doing at rather high speeds.

When I arrived in Jerusalem I promptly got really lost, and had to have another person from my program come and show me how to get to the concert. We were very early, and walked around the big exhibition building for a while before deciding that we were hungry and should really go get some falafel before the concert.
 

When we got back from getting falafel I met up with Devora and Noam, who I sat with during the concert. It was fabulous to be at the concert with people who were also not so into MASA’s introduction video, the overt heteronormativity by the singers and dancers, and the lack of Arab, Palestinian, or Mizrahim acknowledgement throughout the concert.

The music was good, although I understood almost none of it. Idan Raichel himself didn’t seem to do much besides play the piano for a couple of songs and walk around on stage, but one of the main singers, this Ethiopian woman, was absolutely amazing. She sang a bunch of Amharic songs, and was she just owned the stage and knew exactly what she was doing. By the end of the first couple of songs, everyone was out of their seats and dancing, including people from MASA’s Board of Governors (identifiable by their nametags, and their age.)

The ride home was much less exciting, as I just took the chartered bus with other people from my program back to Ramla.