Subscribe to Print Edition | Fri., April 17, 2009 Nisan 23, 5769 | | Israel Time: 00:33 (EST+7)
Haaretz israel news English
web haaretz.com
Haaretz Toolbar
Diplomacy
Defense Jewish World Opinion National
Print Edition
Car Rental
Books Haaretz Magazine Business Real Estate Joy of Giving Travel Week's End Anglo File
Last update - 05:56 16/04/2009
WATCH: Israeli musician uses YouTube to create new music
By Ben Shalev
Tags: youtube, israel news 

Thru You, the Internet music project by musician-producer Ophir Kutiel (Kutiman), which has chalked up millions of views on YouTube since it was posted about a month ago, is genuinely brilliant: an astonishly simple idea that has given rise to a wonderful work of art. From his home studio, using a computer and relatively simple electronic equipment, Kutiel has created a cultural intersection that gathers together, in a completely incidental manner - and lots of groove - serious issues of identity and technology. The doctoral dissertations in sociology are already in the works.

How come nobody thought of it before? That's the first question that Thru You raises. But there you go, no one did. Kutiel, 27, is the first to have conceived of trawling the endless ocean of YouTube, fishing out of it more than 100 homemade music video clips of vocals or a single instrument and then editing them into seven videos. Each video is a kind of orchestra of individuals, a symphony of the anonymous. The bass player who looks like George Costanza from "Seinfeld" does not know the black girl who has heard too much Rihanna, but thanks to Kutiman they are making moving music together. And this is just one of many examples.


Advertisement

The connection among all these unknown people provokes two contrasting feelings. On the one hand, it is moving, because it rescues the lonely from the isolation of their wretched room - which of course is no different from that of their online audience - and makes them part of something larger. On the other hand, it further underscores their anonymity and its irredeemability.

The "stars" of Thru You don't just sing and play instruments: They bare their souls. The young mother with the baby in her lap singing "One day I will find my soul, there must be one for me too," a different black girl who sings "I'm New" and a white boy who delivers an impassioned speech in favor of the legalization of cannabis in a perfect Jamaican accent, because that is how he feels, Jamaican, even though his appearance place his origins in Germany or Sweden or the United States.

Thru You of course touches upon the seamy side of reality shows in its various manifestations and in its modest way it even offers a momentary remedy for it. The clips recorded in bedrooms are reminiscent of "Big Brother" as well as of questionable Internet video diaries, but the participants in Thru You are not turned into animals and they don't strip. Their desire to be heard and to become famous is reminiscent of "American Idol" and its Israeli clone, "Kochav Nolad," but their way of expressing themselves is different from that of the young contestants on these shows. They are not making saccharine dramas out of nothing, they are not faking emotions and they are not trying to sound larger than life. Most of the young female singers who appear in Thru You are far more reminiscent of spaced-out young English trip-hop singers than of Celine Dion. Not that there is a dearth of young women on YouTube who are trying to sound like Celine Dion. They simply don't interest Kutiel.

Another interesting thing about "Thru You" is the way it combines the two greatest revolutions in music in recent years. The first is that of sampling. "Thru You," like innumerable albums from the past 20 years, is a collage of cut-and-paste. This technique has pretty much worn itself out in the past few years, and now Kutiel has come along and grafted it to a newer revolution, the Internet revolution, and has made it newly fresh and vital.

Alongside its conceptual depth, Thru You is also an excellent musical creation - haute couture from simple scraps of fabric. It is true that funk rhythms, which serve as the foundation for most of the clips, are characterized by the fact that whatever you lay on top of them sounds good, but nevertheless one cannot but marvel at Kutiel's engineering of the clips. This is a technical achievement, but it is primarily an aesthetic achievement.

Even though Kutiel himself did not play a single note in Thru You, it is very reminiscent of his debut album, and particularly of its fascinating combination of a tight and focused soul groove and a hallucinatory, psychedelic aspect. The groove expresses joy and freedom; the psychedelia adds a significant dose of melancholy. This is a perfect soundtrack for a work like Thru You, which presents the basic human longing to sing and to make music, with its beauty and its pain.

Related articles:
  • When electronic meets acoustic
  • Israeli conductor Barenboim to perform in Egypt for first time
  • Welcome to AqsaTube: Hamas' 'jihad audio-visual' Web site
    • Bookmark to del.icio.us  
     
    Hebrew harmony
    Watch American Idol star Adam Lambert singing in Hebrew
    Top recipes exposed
    Try the cheap way to eat in some of Tel Aviv's top restaurants
      1.   thru you.... 11:14  |  amos 16/04/09
     Haaretz Hot Topics
    Air strike in Sudan
    Israel 2009 election results: Voter breakdown
    Conflict in Gaza
    Israel vs. Hamas
    Iran: Nuclear and regional ambitions
    More Headlines
    22:55 Netanyahu demands Palestinians recognize 'Jewish state'
    22:43 IAF destroys booby-trapped Gaza building near Israel border
    22:59 Barak urges Russia not to sell Iran anti-aircraft system
    22:48 'Hezbollah planned huge terror attacks in Tel Aviv'
    20:44 Livni to Mitchell: We don't gain from stagnant peace process
    20:02 Court: Dichter cannot be sued in U.S. over 2002 Gaza bombing
    21:47 U.S. professor becomes first Jew to win 'Arab Nobel Prize'
    10:47 WATCH: Daily news round-up from Israel
    23:08 Israeli conductor Barenboim gets Egyptian ovation
    14:21 Peres: Talk of IDF attack on Iran is 'not true'
    18:14 Egypt detains nine Bedouin over smuggling to Israel, arms trade
    18:23 Hamas murals depict abducted IDF soldier Shalit in 30 years
    19:06 U.S. immigration panel denies Demjanjuk request to reopen case
    22:10 Restaurant recipes exposed: Make the dishes the experts make
    05:56 WATCH: Israeli musician uses YouTube to create new music
    Previous Editions
    Special Offers
    Advertisement
    Spring Specials-Dan Hotels
    Jerusalem from 179$. Tel-Aviv from 223$. Herzliya from 336$
    The Meier on Rothschild Tower
    Masterpiece Residence in the Heart of Tel Aviv
    Dead Sea Skin Care
    Quality cosmetics from the Dead Sea. Coupon code HAARETZ for 12% off!
    Camp Kimama Israel 2009
    The best place for your children this summer
    Eldan Rent a Car
    Israel's leading car rental company offers you a 20% discount on online reservations
    Jewish Singles Personal Ads
    Find the love of your life on JDate.com
    Junkyard
    Junk a car - get free towing nationwide and a tax-deductible receipt
    Home | TV | Print Edition | Diplomacy | Opinion | Arts & Leisure | Sports | Jewish World | | Israel 2009 election results
    Site rules | Makom: Engaging on Israel | Search engine marketing
    Haaretz.com, the online edition of Haaretz Newspaper in Israel, offers real-time breaking news, opinions and analysis from Israel and the Middle East. Haaretz.com provides extensive and in-depth coverage of Israel, the Jewish World and the Middle East, including defense, diplomacy, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the peace process, Israeli politics, Jerusalem affairs, international relations, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, the Palestinian Authority, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the Israeli business world and Jewish life in Israel and the Diaspora.
    © Copyright  Haaretz. All rights reserved