Making Room For Yemenite Hip-Hop

One of dj handler’s neglected sides gets an airing.

East meets West: Erez Safar, aka Diwon, aka dj handler, in full Yemenite regalia on the streets of New York City. nina safar

by George Robinson
Special To The Jewish Week

When you wear many hats, you have many responsibilities. Sometimes you find yourself neglecting your own projects in order to meet your obligations to others. Just ask Erez Safar.
In his incarnation as dj handler, the head of the record label Modular Moods and shemspeed.com, his Jewish music Web site-cum-clearinghouse, Safar has spent a lot of time promoting other artists like his longtime friend and collaborator Y-Love, and such rising talents as DJ Balagan, Smadar and Kosha Dillz. Add to that the annual Sephardic Music Festival and a profusion of gigs for the entire stable, and Safar suddenly hasn’t got much time to devote to Diwon, that Yemenite Kid, who will be artist-in-residence at The Jewish Museum as part of a new exhibit.
That

rankles a little. You see, Diwon is Erez Safar.
“Time-wise, I wanted to do this for a while,” Safar says, “But other stuff intervened.”
This story, however, has a happy ending in which everyone gets what they want. The increasing success of Modular Moods and shemspeed — and their stable of musicians, DJs, MCs and the like — has enabled Safar to expand his tiny staff. Money begets person-power; person-power begets time.
“Now I can manage it and hire people to run it,” a relieved Safar explains. “That frees up some of the time to focus on my own stuff.”
In this case, the “stuff” is an attempt to meld the Yemenite music he grew up with and the hip-hop style and attitude his generation has made its own.
“I’m steeped in the Yemenite [musical] traditions,” he says. “My grandparents lived in Addis Ababa and Yemen, then moved to Israel pre-1948. My work on the Sephardic festivals sort of jump-started my interest in exploring that music again.
“Basically as a DJ I was always trying to make Sephardic music more accessible to young people,” he continues. “There was nothing Jewish per se in the music I was playing. I would play Arabic music, which was cool, but I wanted something with Jewish content.”
It was only natural that he would explore Yemenite Jewish music in his search.
And it was equally natural that The Jewish Museum would approach him to have Diwon perform as part of its “Off the Wall: Artists at Work” project, an open-studio event featuring 11 artists working in many different media, from fashion to video to performance art.
“They told me they were picking artists to dip into their archives and create new works either inspired by or using the archives,” Safar says. “I wanted to find as much Yemenite or Sephardi material as I could. They pulled samples for me and kept sending them. There wasn’t that much in the direction I wanted to go, but I have also a big collection of field recordings and such, rare stuff, and I pull samples from that and add singers and [build it up] from little pieces.”
He is also contributing a visual element to his performance, wearing traditional Yemenite Jewish regalia of the sort normally seen at weddings and other simchas.
“I’ve been working with several singers and Miriam Safri, who has an amazing voice, is bringing garments for me,” he says. “I’ll probably debut them at the museum.”
So it’s a good time for Safar, not only for his label and his stable.
“I’m doing my solo thing finally,” he says. “This Yemenite music is something nobody’s doing yet.”
As for those many responsibilities, he’s getting a handle on the rest of those hats.
“I’m still figuring out a balance to do it all. A lot of it is about spending more money, hiring people to do things,” Safar says, noting that the music business is an ongoing process of struggle. “You grind and hustle until you get your name out there. Then you get the next thing out there.”
And if you are lucky, it’s your own thing. n
“Off the Wall: Artists at Work” opens Sunday, March 16 at the Jewish Museum (1109 Fifth Ave.); Diwon, That Yemenite Kid, will be featured March 23-27. He will also be performing live Sunday March 23, 5 p.m. in the Museum’s Offit Lounge, and March 27, 9 p.m. as part of Levi Okunov’s Fashion Show with video projections by Melissa Shiff in the Scheuer Auditorium. Artists featured in the first week of the event include Socalled and Alicia Jo Rabins. For more information, call (212) 423-3200 or go to www.thejewishmuseum.org. For more information on Diwon, go to www.diwonmusic.com.

Westchester Jewish Conference

Westchester’s Jewish Community Relations Organization