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Power Of Music

Michael HarPaz, Shi 360 offer
hope with their YouTube video.

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I

Keri Guten Cohen
Story Development Editor

M

usic can be so inspirational.
There is power in the lyrics,
in the rhythm and in the
delivery. Such music can lift the soul of
a nation.
That's what Israeli musicians
Michael HarPaz and Shi 360 had in
mind when they collaborated on a
video of HarPaz's song, "Everything's
Gonna Be Alright:' and posted it to
YouTube on July 20.
Composer HarPaz is a former
Detroiter and Hillel Day School gradu-
ate who hit it big in Israel as part of
the boy band, Hi 5, in the 1990s. He
has gone on to score movies, write
chart-topping songs (and even Jewish
cantorial compositions) and become
a prominent commercial jingle writer,
actor, husband and father. He lives in
Tel Aviv, and still has family in Metro
Detroit.
Shi 360 is from Montreal, Canada.
He came to Israel on a Taglit Birthright
mission and decided to stay. He has
become one of the most successful
hip-hop artists in Israel, performing,
writing and producing some of the
biggest rap hits there, both for himself
and for the band, Subliminal.
"I met Shi 360 while performing at a
Taglit Mega Event in Israel about eight
years ago:' HarPaz said. "He heard
me singing 'Everything's Gonna Be
Alright' one day and fell in love with
it. He is known as a 'socially conscious
rapper: that is, his style and his themes
are always about bettering humanity,
society, etc.
"Anyway, we got in the studio a
while back and started working on the
song and filming the process as we
went:' HarPaz said. "The clip is basi-
cally a montage of us producing the
song as well as performing at Mega
Events, our own concerts as well as
some footage of him on tour both in
the U.S. and Canada.
"When the war started and missiles
started falling here in Tel Aviv, I called
him up and said, 'Brother, now is the

time: We put the video up on the Net
to give a little hope, a little ray of sun-
shine and morale to everyone involved
in this terrible, terrible conflict.
"When things like this happen
in Israel, artists, including Shi and
I, often volunteer to perform in
the bomb shelters in the South or
for victims of terror; HarPaz said.
"Putting this out there is another way
of expressing our love and gratitude
to the IDF and the brave men and
women who defend us day after day,
night after night"
Shi 360 was totally on board with
posting the video for the same reasons.
"When I heard Michael singing that
hook originally, I was immediately
inspired to write something:' Shi 360
said. "It was one of those moments
where everything just naturally flows. I
have been doing hasbara (Israeli advo-
cacy efforts) through music for the
past 10 years, all over the world. And
this song for me sums up the Israeli
mentality in hard times — yihye besed-
er (everything is gonna be alright). It's
a common answer you hear from most
Israelis — very cliche and yet so true
and powerful:'
HarPaz adds that this message in
this context and in these "insane/crazy"
times is reminiscent of the famous
Yoram Gaon song, "Ani Mavtiach Laces'
("I Promise You"), written during the
Sinai campaign in 1956.
"In this song, Gaon sings to his
daughter and promises her that this
will be the last time he has to leave to
go to war, the last time all the fathers
will go to their tanks and planes, that
this will be the last time:' HarPaz said.
"Much in the same light, 'Everything's
Gonna Be Alright' is the message we sing
to our children as we hold them in the
bomb shelters or the stairwells or, as I
did the week before, crouching over my
4-year-old on the side of the freeway by
an embankment waiting for the sirens to
stop as the explosions overhead shook us
to our core:' ❑

To see the video "Everything's Gonna Be

Alright," go to http://bit.ly/lr63WeA.