Israeli singer Geva Alon salutes Jewish poet icon

Geva Alon has a thing about English. The vast majority of the material the 45-year-old singer-songwriter-rocker has put out over the past 22 years has been in English. In fact, there is just one Hebrew release in his discography to date, Tihyee Itee (Be With Me), which was released in 2014.

That naturally leads to all sorts of music created by American, British, and Canadian artists. A couple of years ago, Alon teamed up with cellist-vocalist Maya Belsitzman and internationally renowned singer Ester Rada to pay tribute to the late legendary Canadian troubadour Leonard Cohen at Beit Avi Chai in Jerusalem. The threesome is now reprising the Cohen-based show with a seven-gig national tour kicking off at the Performing Arts Center in Beersheba on September 2 (8:30 p.m.). It will be followed by slots in Ashdod, Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Jerusalem running through September 18. American-born journalist and author Matti Friedman is also in the program mix. He will enlighten audiences about some of the backstory to Cohen’s life and work, based on research he conducted for a tome he put out last year, in English and Hebrew, called Who By Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai.

The first part of the book title comes from a song that appeared on Cohen’s 1974 record New Skin for the Old Ceremony which, in turn, feeds off the Unetaneh Tokef liturgical passage of the Yom Kippur mussaf service. The second half references the astounding fact that, as the Yom Kippur War raged and threatened Israel’s very existence, Cohen came over here from his hideaway abode on the Greek island of Hydra to perform for IDF troops in Sinai, sometimes within close earshot of incoming Egyptian fire.

Growing up on Kibbutz Maabarot, near Netanya, with three older brothers who were into all sorts of pop and rock, meant that Alon was well-versed in English-language commercial fare. Neil Young and Led Zeppelin came into the youngster’s sonic awareness early on, but it took a little longer for him to latch onto Cohen’s peerlessly evocative and plaintive body of work. 

“I really got into that later on in life,” Alon notes. Then again, there may have been some subliminal precursors to his subsequent artistic learning curve. “There are songs, like “Susanne” and “Hallelujah,” which play all the time, and you don’t consciously know where or when you first heard them,” he says, citing one of Cohen’s signature numbers from his 1967 debut album Songs of Leonard Cohen and a track off Cohen’s 1984 release Various Positions, which eventually gained popularity following the inclusion of John Cale’s cover in the 2001 blockbuster animated film Shrek.

The first run out of the “Who By Fire” project drew Alon deeper into Cohen’s layered body of work. “When I got the call from Beit Avi Chai, for me that was an opportunity to dive even more deeply into this material. I was delighted to immerse myself in it, into the lyrics and music, and to perform them,” he says.

Throwing himself into his works

There’s nothing like getting to grips with a work of art, where and when it really matters. “Whenever you sing a song, you understand it far more deeply than you do when you just listen to it. It is like seeing a suit in a store and then you put it on. You put the song on. You feel it on you,” Alon chuckles. Interestingly, in musical verbiage, texture is an important element as, naturally, it is in the matter of sartorial elegance.

Alon not only mined deep strata of Cohen’s catalog; he also explored contiguous areas that informed Cohen the man and Cohen the artist. That filters into the upcoming tour. “The show focuses strongly on Cohen and his bond with Israel and his Judaism. People who have come to our shows have said they were surprised to learn about his close ties with Judaism. That is very moving.” That, according to Alon, may partly explain why Cohen ventured into a war zone in 1973. “Going to dangerous places and singing was also an expression of that feeling of Judaism.”

WHEN ALON is not doffing his derby to Cohen, he gets on with writing, recording, and performing his own material.

His latest album, I Never Land, is due out next month with a string of launch gigs lined up to showcase the new release. I noted that quite a few of Alon’s lyrics talk about struggling with life. “Making music is tough,” he observes. “I recently read a quote from David Bowie in which he said, ‘If you’re in a comfortable place you’re not making art.’ It’s always a struggle.”

And it is not just the process of creation that can be challenging. Life circumstances often exacerbate the situation as well. “This album was recorded and ready before October 7,” says Alon. “We thought the war would last a month or two. But it simply doesn’t end. So we said we need to release it. I couldn’t wait.”

Even so, Alon could hardly ignore the ongoing regional disaster. “I deliberated over whether this was the right time for a rock and roll album. I was hesitant about it.” He got some gentle pushes in the desired direction. “People told me this is actually the right time for the album, that they wanted to hear something sane, something normal, not just quiet ballads. You hear that on the radio all day long. I wouldn’t say the songs on the album are particularly happy songs, but, energy-wise, they come from a different place. People have responded warmly to the songs. They said they don’t want any more self-pity.”

Leonard Cohen, perhaps, would have gone along with that.

For more information about the Who By Fire concerts – https://www.bac.org.il/specials?projectID=18669

For more information about the Geva Alon concerts – https://fanlink.tv/gevaalontour?fbclid=IwY2xjawEgsTpleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHd2sLnxcyXP_ery51JDflN_TeTD9G_UZ4nr2RF96d6Q90OESPUI6dB9Khw_aem_bgX-Py98unke9SHLYf9JyQ