BEN FISHER
Does the Land Remember Me
Ben Fisher is an American singer-songwriter who recently spent
three years living in Israel – on the seam dividing East and West Jerusalem –
where he worked as a writer and editor for the Jerusalem Post.
On Does the Land Remember Me, a collection of 17 songs – 16
original compositions and Anaïs Mitchell’s “Why We Build the Wall – Ben
explores the history and people of the State of Israel and the Palestinian
territories from a variety of points of view in what must be seen an effort to
explain, to understand and to humanize.
Some songs, like “The Shell Lottery,” about the founding of Tel
Aviv, or “Heavy Gates of Gaza,” based on a 1956 speech made by Moshe Dayan
following the murder of a young kibbutznik by Palestinians from Gaza, are sung
from Israeli perspectives. Others, like the title track and “Yallah to
Abdullah,” are sung through a Palestinian lens reflecting on places
Palestinians left or were expelled from.
Other songs bridge the divide. In “1948,” Ben
shows that on purely personal levels, the hopes and dreams of parents and
children on both sides of the War of Independence were more similar than
different. And in “Day is Done,” a song about a terrorist bus bombing, he
leaves us to ambiguously wonder if the mother mourning the death of her son in
the last verse is the mother of a murdered Israeli or of the Palestinian
bomber.
Among the most poignant songs is “For Petr and Ilan,” inspired by
the 2003 death of Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli astronaut, in the Space Shuttle
Columbia explosion, and by the death of a boy named Petr Ginz at Auschwitz
during the Holocaust. Ramon, whose mother survived Auschwitz, carried a drawing
by Petr with him into space.
Does the Land Remember Me is a well-researched set of songs
in folk and folk-rock settings that offer much food for thought.
–Mike Regenstreif
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