There is this soft touch in Gideon Unna, the song What Is Love, and the voice of Kaley Halperin is floating over all, as a balm over war-torn skies. It makes you feel warm inside and out, particularly when you tell that it comes in the heart of the uproar in Israel. Gideon is an Israeli singer-songwriter who incorporates Jewish faith into contemporary soul, and his acoustic folk music makes the entire song base on something close and sympathetic not furious, but very human. The performance is modest, as though he is offering spontaneity to everyone involved: drummer Yotam Botner, keyboardist Yoav Asif all of them with something real. I was listening to it on a quiet evening, and it simply enclosed me, causing me to feel that common human vulnerability that we all experience during such hectic moments.
This radiance of sympathy is in the voice of Kaley. It is gentle yet depthy in the sense that it penetrates to the skin and intermingles with the guitars and bass of Gideon to produce such textured layers of strength. Violin that Oren Tzur plays is the inclusion of this delicate grace that could break any moment but does not. The music is international, but at the same time very personal, as though a bridge was being constructed in the face of all the violence. In there you can hear the peace-seeking spirit of George Harrison, that same yearning, created by heartbreak all over the world, hate in one place, murder in the other. I could feel tears on the point of my ear. Her coziness broke all the way through my personal detachment, reminding me of the silent force of love to literally mend the barriers between us.
This is this home-grown sincerity of the instrumentation. The beats of the drums are steady, the keyboards are glittering slightly enough, everything of it worked out by Yoram Vazan in these little Israeli studios which vibrate with the richness of tradition. The entire attitude of Gideon is one of letting the musicians bring their stuff into it, and you can sense it, something organic, a combination of melodies of the past with the promising future. It is a cry of universality of solidarity, not war. This inspiration I was not anticipating gives me a pull. It makes it seem all the more authentic to know that he plays kibbutz gigs and fires up his engine to bring light to the world just like the classics did on his other records.
This is one of the singles of his new album that emits nothing but genuineness and strength. It is an emotional protest against violence that made me thoughtful and somehow rejuvenated. It is the love of life Gideon beats with. It is not only music with a grace of Kaley in it but this inspirational whisper telling you that you need to value the ties that you have. During these dark times, it renews your faith in the arc of empathy, and it causes us all to play our own little acts of kindness. Stream it. Let its warmth spread.
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