For the past 15 years I have been delving and researching Turkish Ottoman music. I found my home there,  the instrument that would accompany me in my life and a deep connection to culture and language. My dad says we don’t know what’s hidden in us, but when it reveals to us our world comes to a halt, that is .Turkish music for me

There is no logical explanation as to why a child from Ramat Gan who learned classical flute and played rock most of his life would not be completely immersed in the music associated with Israeli daily life, but I always had an attraction for the night, the depth, the essence, the gentleness. I practiced meditation, explored changing states of mind, disguised by mainstream, searched for something… and found no ease.

As a singer and rocker in my twenties, life was an endless jolt, a perfect recipe for catastrophe. It didn’t take long and the break point came and with it a real need to find peace and balance. At the end of that time in 2005, I came to an underground performance, in an eastern instruments shop / warehouse where the masters Amir Shehasar and Zohar Fresco were playing Ney and frame drums, and even though I had already heard Ney before, I decided I need  to study. Like that, from scratch.

but it didn’t happen.

Not immediately anyway.

And even when it did, it went so slowly, without a steady teacher, leaping from country to country trying to find more of the knowledge and technique with very little progress. I felt it would never work out.

In my efforts to learn and grasp this instrument and music, I lived in Istanbul and London, I did workshops in Greece and Israel. It wasn’t easy and loneliness hit me many times.

But it was clear to me that as I researched western music in depth upon its many styles, I have an unwavering call to go east, abandon everything, fearlessly commit to my roots, find my authentic voice even if it means starting from zero  and making music I know little about and had little appreciation around me.

I knew I was fighting, fighting for my ability to connect, to pray, to feel belonging, to feel valuable.

So as I wrote at the beginning, today, after so many years, I live and earn a living from the thing I love most – rooted, Oriental music that shakes my soul.

Ten years ago, I found a tremendous friend, Maestro Harel Shachal, who stabilized the complicated theory and made it flourish in the sunlight. As I teach today, I lean on a number of pilars: the knowledge I found on my own, in endless attempts, the knowledge I got from my Turkish teachers, especially Omar Erdogduler’s playing, and the perfect theoretical arrangement that Harel applied to me.