notes from the nice side of the fence

This interview was originally posted in Hebrew on 28/5/09 by Leehee Rothschild.

Shahaf Ifhar performs singing and playing the piano in clubs across the country, and has already released a studio album independently. In his shows he combines original material with unique cover versions. I met him for a chat about his second album, “A Philosophy of Freedom”, music, and identities.

How would you define your style of music?

I like the idea of a song-teller, or the narrative element in song, because I feel that’s a very comfortable place to sit in. That borderline between poetry and music, that is what happens when I perform. Inside this huge genre generally referred to as popular music, which really started with folk music, the idea of communicating pieces of history in a way that did not require the people to be literate, that’s always really appealed to me. I feel that I and many other musicians are really working in that same stream. It’s part court jester and part lowbrow historian.

What influence would you like your music to have on people?

That has two sides to it. When I write I try to do that with no goals, so I keep the world out. But if I’m honest, then yes, when I collected the songs for this project I did hope to use these fragments from several characters to build some kind of mirror people could use. In the same way that I used music when I was growing up. Beyond that, when I walk into the studio with the songs I’d written I do have the goal of creating something that would sonically become like a body of water, something you can dive into - because that is the music I love, the kind of music that would have me reach for my wallet in a music store. So, there has to be a kind of an expanse. There are many ways of creating that, which as a producer I’m only just beginning to learn.

How do you feel your sexual identity influences the music you create?

With the current project it’s very clear to me how these currents are there, because the album is called “A Philosophy of Freedom”. I was very interested to look at and investigate that place of freedom, meaning where I am liberated from everything I was born into, as in sex, nationality, religion, skin colour, language, culture, and anything else. I think a part of that is the experience of being in some kind of closet. Soon after the project started I discovered that straight people had closets too. Like, if you can’t bring your Arab boyfriend home because you’re gonna get kicked out, so as far as I’m concerned, that’s your closet, and only you can know it for what it is, what it looks like, what shape it takes. I think that yes, in some cases that closet will have more of a presence and it may be clearer where it comes from and where it ends. It’s all the same subject. On the album I tried to explore that mainly through characters that are mostly not me.

Who are these characters then?

They are mostly people who belong in one way or another to a masculine gender. They are all people trapped in some kind of closet. There is, for example, that guy coming home very late, his wife already asleep and the room is dark, and she really doesn’t wanna know what parks he’s been to and what kind of guys he ran into. People cannot live in denial too long. I know I couldn’t. Not because of the politics of it, or the solidarity or education, but just because it hurts. I tried to approach these characters with a great deal of respect, because I didn’t want to be the judge. Cos I know that I too have challenges that I choose to face, and others that perhaps I keep aside for later.

What are your sources of inspiration?

Anyone who’s ever taught me I couldn’t do something. That is a very liberating attitude to me, because I could have called it ‘oppression’, but I think the word ‘oppression’ implies that my freedom depends on other people, and today that is not my experience. I think that in many cases in life people have simply told me what they thought should or shouldn’t be, and I believed them. And I think when you enter this space of creation, then in many ways it’s the ideal place to process the ways in which this thing is done, and it’s very hard to lie to yourself at that point.

What do you try to achieve when you go on stage?

Taking stage is not the most natural situation to be in. I have to keep checking why I do it, because as far as I’m concerned there are only two options. If on any level I believe that what I need is to win a Grammy and sell a million copies, then in that moment the music becomes my whore, cos I’m using it to get something that I think I need. And I would always rather be a whore to the music. When I perform and go on stage then the way I see it, I’m a whore to the music. And by that I don’t mean to cheapen that profession. I give myself over completely to sound, and when it works it’s better than the best sex I have ever had.

So do you have any professional ambitions?

To be able to perform when I like and to be able to record when I like, and I’m not entirely there. As far as my dreams go, I fulfilled my biggest dream the first time I played live, because it doesn’t really matter whether there are 5 people there or 5000. So as time goes by and I keep doing what I do, I rid myself of more and more illusions, about the profession and about art… Illusions as to what the money, approval and admiration of other people might bring me. The way I think of it is, after a few years of performing you realize that even if you sell out Carnegie Hall, at the end of the night you still go to sleep alone, and even when you go to bed with someone, you still go to sleep alone, in that moment of falling asleep, and you wake up alone. If through the music I’m trying to finally gain that rest and peace we all want so badly, it’ll just slap me in the face again and again, until I understand that it doesn’t come from there. I think we always have it and we only think it’s missing, that peace.