EstaMusic.com

The Jerusalem Post Newspaper: Online News From Israel

Esta's home-made world

By Barry Davis

March, 27 2002

(March 27) - Mixing rock, world music, Hebrew and English, local band Esta has just released its third cross-cultural album.

Esta If the entertainment business had a Quintessential World-Music Group award, Israeli band Esta would surely make the final cut. The band's new album, Home Made World, released earlier this month, covers expansive musical territory, and the number and range of instruments used by the five band members would almost fill a music store.

"We were on a TV show recently and the presenter asked us to lay out all the instruments we used on the record. It looked like a photograph of that arms ship they found a while back with all the guns laid out on the deck," laughs band percussionist Shlomo Deshet.

Deshet is, in fact, the principal "perpetrator" with more than 20 percussion instruments listed next to his name plus various other instruments of the non-percussion variety, including accordion, melodica, whistle and even a shofar.

The title of the new album is an apt choice, alluding to both the way the band members view their lives and the odyssey they undertook to get the CD made.

"We do practically everything ourselves," Deshet says. "That gives us complete control over the content and how it is presented."

Part of that presentation is the cover design, which was put together by band member Ori Beenstock, who also plays around a dozen stringed instruments on the album, including guitars, mandola, bouzouki and jumbush.

You couldn't quite call Esta a market-oriented outfit. Its album output has been sparse in the extreme, with Home Made World only its third recording since its debut CD in 1990, and its first in six years.

"When we do something, we do it properly," says Beenstock. "It's all a process of, first of all, producing something that is new for us. All the members of the band compose. Some of the material goes through a process of individual maturation, and some is thrown around between all of us before it is ready. We're not in a hurry to get things out onto the market."

Going it alone in today's fiercely competitive and densely populated music industry might be considered by some to be foolhardy in the extreme. Deshet admits there are some drawbacks to Esta's artistic independence, although he says the band is not about to sell its soul to achieve a more comfortable career path.

"Since the first album we've never had anyone to finance us. There are advantages and disadvantages, but it's something we decided on out of choice. On the down side it takes us a lot longer to get our albums done but it also means that we don't become a musical conveyor belt just because we are obliged to come up with the goods. Every few years we bring out an album which is the result of a period of working and creating together."

"The number of discs we put out doesn't reflect the frequency of our synergies or the amount of material we create," Beenstock adds. "We work on a daily basis. It's really an integral part of our life philosophy."

ESTA BEGAN life as a duo in 1980, when high-school friends Deshet and Beenstock began jamming together, feeding off their shared love of British rock and, eventually, numerous cultural influences. "We were into bands like Genesis and Yes," Beenstock recalls. "You can always tell a British band from an American band. British groups play more like a team. The Americans are more individualist."

After a couple of years of musical exploration with various similarly inexperienced musicians, Esta really began to take shape after Deshet and Beenstock joined the army and ran into a couple of other like-minded young men. "We met Bentzi [Gafni] and Amir [Gwirtzman] while we were on basic training in the army, and Bentzi, Amir and I played in the air-force orchestra," says Deshet. "We've all been working together for 18 years."

Gwirtzman is responsible for the wind-instrument sector, which includes various saxophones, clarinet, bagpipes and Irish penny whistle along with Eastern items such as zorna (Middle Eastern double-reed wind instrument), ney (Persian flute) and caval (Balkan flute). Gafni plays electric bass, guitars, oud and keyboards.

Their compulsory military-musical stint over, the foursome began to get down to the serious stuff of putting a repertoire together and, ultimately, recording their first album. The long practice sessions in a bomb shelter in Tel Aviv paid off and a distinctive Esta sound emerged along with the band's eponymous initial CD. Meanwhile, they also put in a lot of roadwork and built up a faithful following, doing gigs of all manner and size of venue around the country.

A YEAR into their commercial careers the band members felt it was time for a change. "We'd become very popular in the local market and had played with all the who's who of the local music scene, both as individual musicians and as Esta," Deshet explains. "We wanted to make Esta the main focus of our work."

In 1991 they decided to go for broke and moved to New York. They spent six and a half years of intensive work in the States, and eventually achieved success. "We started from nothing," Deshet continues. "No one had heard of us there but we made it all the way to the White House."

That gig for Messrs. Clinton and Gore, and other Washington VIPs, took place in 1998, after the band had returned here. It was part of an event held in honor of Israel's 50th Independence Day and, in many ways, was the culmination of the hard work they'd put in during their New York sojourn.

While in the Big Apple, in 1996, they also put out their second album, Mediterranean Crossing, which was well received and helped to expose the band to a wider market. After close to five years Stateside, Deshet & Co. had the confidence to do the business in style. "We did the recording at the Power Station studios [in New York] and we worked with producer Steve Boyer [Grammy Award winner for Eric Clapton's MTV Unplugged Album]."

The album release brought the band to the attention of the media, and articles on Esta appeared in the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post. They also secured gigs at Los Angeles's House of Blues and various other prestigious venues around the country.

But the place they most wanted to play at was New York's famed Blue Note club. That dream was realized in July 1996 and the club was sold out at both dates. "We tried to get a gig there five years earlier but, without a recording contract or locally produced disc, we didn't have a chance," says Beenstock. "We brought the album we made in Israel with us but, at the time, they weren't interested. After Mediterranean Crossing we were given a booking on a Monday, which is a night no one really goes out on, but we filled the place."

The club owners immediately booked Esta for another double-gig date six in months. That turned out to be the band's swan song as a US-based outfit.

"Considering we didn't have a major label behind us we got massive media exposure. We also had lots of gigs lined up. But we felt a need to come back to Israel," Deshet explains. "We felt a bit out of touch. We wanted to be back in the place where our music comes from. We knew the New York episode would end some time."

However, Esta is now well enough established in the States to be able to make frequent concert trips there, in addition to its European and local appearances. "There was a time we played in America every month. We go there a lot," says Beenstock. "It is also important to have a reference to the outside world. If you stay here - after all, this is a small country - you might start thinking you're the greatest. You need to be able to compare and follow what's going on in other places where the market is bigger and more varied."

THAT QUEST for constant renewal was given a boost a year ago when vocalist Yarona Harel joined the band. "We auditioned 50 female singers, out of whom at least 45 were great," says Deshet, "but we knew Yarona was right for us as soon as we heard her."

"I knew it too," laughs Harel, who writes the band's lyrics. She is party to the band's multidisciplinary ethos, and fully endorses Esta's organic approach.

"Why use synthesizers and technologically-aided instruments when we have the original ones to use?" she says. "There are so many out there we can use to produce the sound and feel we want."

Esta seems to have taken its multicultural approach to the nth degree on Home Made World. The 11-track album incorporates Persian, Yemenite and Iraqi motifs along with rock, jazz and blues. Their Eastern rendition of the Moody Blues' "Nights In White Satin" is, possibly, the ultimate cross-cultural fusion.

"We love British rock, but we didn't just want to do a straight cover," says Deshet. "There are all our influences in there too."

Rock fans will, no doubt, also dig the band's version of U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," which features local rock megastar Rami Kleinstein.

For now, Esta appears content to flit between Israel, Europe and the States, although it seems the band's faithful followers won't have to wait another six years for the next release. "The next album will come out much sooner," says Deshet. "We've got loads of material ready."

This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com/Editions/2002/03/27/Culture/Music.45983.html

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