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Asaf Avidan

By Jesse Kornbluth
Published: Apr 06, 2014
Category: Rock

The music of Asaf Avidan caused the child to make the rare visit to my office that was not about money.

As ever, her assessment was blunt: “She is awful.”

This is a valid reaction — you either love Asaf Avidan or hate Asaf Avidan.

Just one point of fact: Asaf Avidan is a man.

An Israeli man.

Whose first CD is the biggest selling independent record of all time in Israel.

Whose first hit was remixed, became a #1 song in Europe, with 123,000,000 views on YouTube.

For all that, he’s barely known in the United States. And although he has a cult here, I’m not sure that millions will get past the voice to the lyrics and the emotional experience. Because the voice is an upper-register mix of impossible-to-marry giants: Leonard Cohen, Nina Simone, Janis Joplin. [To buy “Different Pulses” from Amazon, click here.]

Where, you ask, did that voice come from? And is it for real? Let him tell it:

The way I sing came from the reason I started singing. I was a successful animator up until about 2006, and because this reason to sing the blues [after a breakup] was so sudden in my life and so painful, I really needed for it to be physically difficult. I would find myself going higher on the scales, making it more difficult and screamy. I think that level of emotion brought me to these high scales, and that’s what people hear now. They hear the emotion.

Once you accept the voice, you can hear the emotion in the lyrics.

I’ve always been a person who needs to stand out and to feel the spotlight; otherwise I feel uncomfortable. Because of this I don’t go to concerts. I hate being part of an audience. I have to be on stage. I need to feel special. I need to be seen.

Consider the lyrics of “Different Pulses,” the title song of his most recent CD:

My life is like a wound I scratch so I can bleed
Regurgitate my words, I write so I can feed
And Death grows like a tree that’s planted in my chest
Its roots are at my feet, I walk so it won’t rest

Oh, Baby I am Lost…

I try to push the colors through a prism back to white
To sync our different pulses into a blinding light
And if love is not the key. If love is not a key.
I hope that I can find a place where it could be

I know that in your heart there is an answer to a question
That I’m not as yet aware that I have asked
And if that tree had not drunk my tears
I would have bled and cried for all the years
That I alone have let them pass

Oh, Baby I am yours…

Here’s the official video:

A gorgeous video, a powerful beat. But if you want pure Avidan, here’s the solo version, which stops everything I’m doing when I hear it:

“I’m not some kind of cat dying quietly by the roadside under a car,” he says. “I’m a cat having death throes on the hood in front of the dashboard.”

I find those death throes gorgeous.

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