His Master’s Voice

Long before Ben-Tzur moved to India in the late 1990s,he was a rock music vocalist of a band called Sword of Damocles. “Life changed after I heard Ustad Zaakir Hussain and Pandit Hari Prasad Chaurasia live in Jeruselem. I was 19 then and the depth of their music was mindboggling. On a scale of limited notes they were producing some endless music. I immediately knew that India will be my home,due to its vast ocean of music,” says Ben-Tzur.

After some mindless search around India,Ben-Tzur found his guru in the famous dhrupad vocalist Ustad Zia Fariduddin Dagar and trained for several years under him. “Dagar sahib is a strict guru. It was only after meeting him that my music got some direction,” he says. The quest for music then led him to the manganiyar community of Rajasthan and to the sufi singers of Ajmer. There he met Gudri Shah Baba,head of the Gudri sufi lineage. Ben-Tzur lived among the sufis of Ajmer,immersing himself in their music and poetry. He also met sufi scholar Dr Zahurul Hassan Sharib who taught him Urdu and educated him about sufi culture. After his frequent visits to Sharib’s house,he met and married his daughter Sajida,a Muslim who now divides her time between Tel Aviv and India. But,though he is versed in Urdu,Ben-Tzur always sings in Hebrew. “It is the thought in the poetry that matters. I can express the ideas best in my own language. Sometimes,during concerts in India,I stick to Urdu and Hindi,” he says.

Has there been any hostility for merging Semite with Islamic cultures? “Never. If you come with love and open heart,there are only good feelings.” He plays a song from Shoshan; the words are unfamiliar but not the music,the rhythmic daze of Rajasthani khartaal,dhol,tabla,sarangi and flute. As you listen on,the words and the music merge into a composite whole — the sound of one.