Proving that the comeback is always greater than the setback, Israeli rap sensation Noga Erez will touch down in Minneapolis on Thursday, Oct. 16, and the sold-out show at the Varsity Theater was long in coming to the Midwest. This premiere joins a set of earlier sold-out shows in New York, Boston, Atlanta and Nashville. Now it is our turn, and it is going to be great.
The road to the Varsity Theater was not as direct or easy as it should have been. In the days and weeks that followed the attacks on October 7, Erez, like many Israeli musicians, faced a backlash of cancelled shows and a spate of other bookings that simply vanished. The upcoming show will feature songs from her third album, “The Vandalist,” which was released last year. For that reason, we should have been dancing to these songs months ago, but Erez faced headwinds from the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions crowd as she and her band looked to tour in Europe and North America.
While every bit of BDS-targeting of musical acts is unjust, in Erez’s case the boycotts seem particularly unfair. For one, she would probably be placed near the very bottom of any list of Israelis who would ever support the Netanyahu government. Not that Erez doesn’t have a lot to say about the Prime Minister and his coalition partners, both online and in her music. It is just that all of the things she says are profane. And really funny.
Likewise, while Erez was born in Tel Aviv, her songs frequently touch upon her status as a real outsider who is looking in on to the rest of the world. In the hit single Godmother she sings:
Mommy from the desert
Daddy from the snow
And I am everywhere
Because I got nowhere to go
Does this describe the life of a troubadour? Definitely. The sensibilities of a Tel Avivian who protests the government in the streets? Absolutely. The ennui of an Israeli who is bone tired of war? Very much so.
That sense of never really fitting in anywhere undergirds a lot of Erez’s music – and she leverages this power to be hilariously transgressive, wildly subversive and pointedly incisive. And no one is beyond her reach: The government; the bigots who hate Israel; the privileged; the excesses of social media; they all find their way into one of her choruses. Among my favorite riffs from the new album takes aim at the selfie generation:
This is not addiction, don’t you worry ‘bout it, click, click
Noises stepping in my territory and I click, click
….
Sad, sad generation,
Happy pictures
Boys, girls, smile for me
Cheese …..
And while we will all be taking plenty of photos for Instagram on Oct. 16, that evening’s set of concert-goers won’t be sad at all. Instead, it is an occasion for real gratitude that Noga kept on pressing hard to get this tour up and going, and threading the needle to reach us. So, if you are one of the lucky ones who has tickets to see Erez at the Varsity Theater, be sure to do as the song says: “Boys, girls, smile for her. Cheese …..”
Eric Lipman lives in the eastern suburbs of St. Paul and loves live music.
