10/2024

Our memories are a compromise between the past and the present.
Even a familiar track of recorded music may appear different after some time absent from our ears.
We are left with the choice to either leave our memories imprisoned in the dark corners of our minds, to rot and die, or to be imprisoned by them, to ever let them shape the sense of our identity.
This is a unique month for memories in the middle east, because we all remember and relive the pain of the past year. Are we the prisoners or are we the imprisoned? Are these roles we take upon ourselves are as different as we think?

We would like to highlight two Hebrew tracks this time:

The 2nd track of this month’s playlist was written by Hanoch Levin, composed by Zohar Levi and sang by Israel Gurion. In it a soldier calls to his father from the grave “Don’t say that you have made a sacrifice, for it was me who sacrificed. And don’t speak highly of me, for I am so very low in the ground, my father”.

ואל תאמר שהקרבת קורבן
כי מי שהקריב הייתי אני
ואל תדבר מילים גבוהות
כי אני כבר מאוד נמוך, אבי

In the 7th track, by Shalom Gad from his 2012 album “Talmei Eliyahu”, the narrator describes a “Vacation in mount Sinai, all refugees of fire and ice. We were two thousand and a bit, and all we wanted was to forget”.

חופשה בהר סיני, כל פליטי האש והקרח
היינו אלפיים וקצת וכל מה שרצינו זה לשכוח

Sometimes all we want is to forget, and still we can’t help but remember.

Sergey Kuryokhin, Autumn, 1994
ישראל גוריון, אבי היקר, 1970
INSHOW-HA, Lemon, 2017
Triantafillos, Enas Katharos Egoismos, 2001
Discorpse, Social genocide, 2018 – https://discorpse1.bandcamp.com/track/social-genocide
Nekropsi, Lim, 1996
שלום גד, חופשה בהר סיני, 2012 – https://shalomgad.bandcamp.com/track/–77
Takako Minekawa, Phonobaloon Song, 1997
Michel Godard, Zefiro torna e di soavi accenti, SV 251, 2011
Maro Ajemian, Cage: Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano, Sonata V, 1959
Rick James, Super Freak, 1981
Angelo Branduardi, La Pulce D’Acqua, 1977