Just as the sun began to set on Brooklyn’s tenth annual African Festival, a special banner was unfurled announcing the New York-Israel Cultural Cooperation Commission’s support of the event. This caught me by surprise. Then the Ex-Centric Sound System, a Tel Aviv-based Afro-Fusion band, took the stage.
The group, composed of two Israelis and two Ghanaians, quickly had the audience grooving to their mix of electronic music, dubbed and live African chanting, and a wide range of Western and African instruments. The Ghanaians, dressed in colorful African clothing, danced, chanted, and played traditional instruments. The T-shirt-clad Israelis played Western instruments, one on the electric bass and the other on a drum set. If there was one common thread uniting the bunch it was long hair–dreads were flying everywhere.
The Ex-Centric Sound System released their first CD, Electric Voodooland (Loud Records) in July 2000, toured the US twice this past summer, and has received positive feedback from both audiences and critics. Vibe said of their album: “Ex-Centric Sound System transport ancient wisdom–haunting harmonies, ghostly vocals in Creole and Amharic, Rasta grounation drumming–on the back of modern sonics. This is spiritual food in the pop-music desert.”
The Ex-Centric Sound System is the creation of Yossi Fine, the band’s Israeli bass player and producer, and Nana Dazie, a Ghanaian dancer and drummer. Fine has African roots of his own; his mother is a black woman from the West Indian Island of Martinique and his father is an Ashkenazi Israeli. Fine’s mixed heritage is apparent from his long black dreads, deep olive complexion, and dark eyes. After a 10-year stint in New York, where he performed with renowned musicians such as jazz great Gil Evans, rockers David Bowie and Lou Reed, salsa star Ruben Blades, and the hip-hop group Naughty by Nature, Fine returned to Tel Aviv.
Dadzie, the son of a chief of Ghana’s Fante tribe, came to Israel in 1987 after hearing there was potential to earn a living there. In Israel, he taught traditional West African drumming and dance, first in the resort town of Eilat and later at Bar-Ilan University. Dadzie recalls that initially it was challenging to teach African dance and drumming to Israelis, who for the most part weren’t familiar with African culture. In recent years though, says Dazie, African culture has become fashionable in Israel. “Now,” he says, “you see a lot of people going in the street carrying African drums in their hand.”
Shortly after returning to Israel in 1997, Fine, who had long been interested in African music, attended a performance of Susuma, Dadzie’s dancing and drumming troupe in Tel Aviv. Soon the two were jamming together. One thing lead to another and in 1997 the Ex-Centric Sound System was born.
Adevo Savour, a Ghanaian woman who learned drumming in Israel with Dadzie, and Michael Avgil, an Israeli of Moroccan descent who, like Fine, spent years performing in New York, round out the band. Savour adds a dynamic stage presence as a dancer and the unusual sight of an African woman drumming. (In Ghana it is extremely rare for women to perform on the drums.) Avgil complements the Ghanaians’ African percussion on a Western drum set.
In Fine’s recording studio in Tel Aviv, appropriately named “King Solomon’s Shack” after the king of Israel who is reputed to have been the lover of the African Queen of Sheba, Ex-Centric Sound System creates “Black Music”–the term Fine uses for music of the African Diaspora. While the most readily apparent influence is Ghanaian music, a wide range of African music is incorporated, as well as hip-hop, reggae, and rock. “Me and Yossi, we are coming from…reggae, jazz, funk, R and B, and a lot of African music too,” says Avgil. “And Nana and Adevo they bring the African style into it, the African flavor…we combine it together like Western music meets African music.”
What distinguishes the Ex-Centric Sound System from other Afro-Fusion groups is the band’s extensive use of both live and electronic vocals from many different African languages. Ironically, Fine, who has never even been to Africa, is responsible for this aspect of the band’s music. Fine has researched African music extensively while living in Israel and America and has compiled a vast library of recordings that he draws upon for the band’s music. “I just listen and listen and listen to stuff and whatever sounds the best that’s what ends up being on,” he says. “I don’t care about the language because really I don’t understand it.”
Israel may seem like a strange home for a band that merges Western and African music. Fine does say that his Jewish heritage has played a role in his connection to African music. He explains that the strong Jewish connection to the past has stoked his interest in exploring his African roots. “Jews–especially Israelis–know what happened in the past,” he says. “Being an African you have a sense of where you came from, but you don’t know exactly what it is because you don’t have written scripture.” And music, Fine says, is his way of connecting to his black heritage.
But the band’s members say that the fact that the band came together in Israel is largely incidental. And Fine and Avgil emphatically deny that the band’s music is at all Israeli. “The mentality of this group from day one was not Israeli,” says Fine. “The last thing that I was interested in was to make it in Israel.”
In fact, the Ex-Centric Sound System may not be calling Israel its home for much longer. After the success of this summer’s tours, the group is ready to take their message to a global audience. Fine says they are planning a move to New York. With the Israeli-Palestinian conflict raging, Fine says Israel just isn’t conducive to making music right now: “The vibe is not good.”
