He’s a singer, a cantante and a
zamar. Whether in his native Israel, Madrid or New York,
David Broza speaks the language – and more importantly, sings it.
“My fixation, since I was 22 years old, was to be able to identify my Israeli music and produce it in Hebrew, Spanish or English, to communicate with local audiences everywhere,” Broza says during a phone interview from New York, where he recently married his longtime girlfriend, fashion designer
Nili Lotan.
It was at age 22 that Broza surprised himself, and everyone else, by becoming an overnight sensation in Israel with his first song, "Yihye Tov" (“It Will be Good”), written with Israeli poet Yonatan Geffen on the eve of the 1977 peace negotiations with Egypt.
Since then, he’s recorded 23 albums in three languages, mostly using others’ poems set to his original music.
“I’m not an ethnic musician,” the Haifa-born balladeer stresses. “I’m an average Israeli, not an immigrant of any uprooted background. But I have perfected my means of communication by having immersed myself in American and Spanish culture, and I can say whatever I want to say.”
His versatility may best be exemplified by his 2010 album, “Night Dawn: The Unpublished Poetry of Townes Van Zandt.” The Texas crooner had shared the stage with Broza in 1994, died in 1997 and bequeathed all his unpublished poetry to the Israeli. The birth of this album took 12 long years. “It’s one of my finest productions,” says Broza. “It’s an homage to Townes Van Zandt, who is considered by many as the greatest American songwriter.”
American audiences are probably most familiar with “David Broza at Masada,” a 2007 DVD featuring Jackson Browne and Shawn Colvin. It was recorded at one of Israel’s top tourist sites, a dramatic setting where a band of Jewish zealots held out against Roman conquerors until committing group suicide rather then being turned into slaves.
This is only one of many stages across the world that Broza, a multi-platinum artist, has graced. Now 56, Broza hasn’t slowed down a bit. “Last week I performed in Brazil, tomorrow in Miami and next week in Petah Tikva,” he relates. “I have concerts all over.”
Manhattan remains his home away from home
“As an accomplished artist, I have finished my search and moved back to Israel, but now I am married to a top fashion designer who lives in New York, so we do what needs to be done to be together.” How is married life? “I’m in bliss,” he answers.
From painter to musician
Broza was raised and educated in Israel, England and Spain. Intending to be a visual artist, at age 17 he sold his paintings at Madrid’s Sunday flea market. But back in Israel, his guitar-strumming in cafés attracted a following and a record deal.
By his late 20s, he’d decided to decamp for the United States in a quest to understand the roots of the jazz, blues, folk and rock music that moved him. He and his first wife raised their three children for 17 years in the New York suburb of Cresskill, New Jersey.
“I didn’t emigrate out of Israel,” he stresses. “I traveled to Israel every month for 10 days, playing and recording. I went to expand my horizons and research the core of the music I was playing. I didn’t just want be a ‘hit man’ taking my success for granted. It has to come from below.”
Wanting to continue composing music to poetry as he had done in Israel, only this time in English, Broza hung out at the legendary Gotham Bookstore in Manhattan’s Diamond District. “I was searching for my treasures in the Diamond District, raiding everything on the shelves,” he says. Not only did he acquaint himself with the works of poets such as Matthew Graham and Heather McHugh, he actually crisscrossed the country to meet his muses in person.
His first English-language album, “Away from Home,” was released in 1989 and was named one of the year’s best pop albums by the New York Times. For 10 years, Broza was artist-in-residence at Bennington College in Vermont, gaining respect in American literary circles and guest lecturing in college writing classes.
David Broza (Photo: Ilan Besor)
‘Israel is a very cool place’
As passionate as he is about poetry, he’s just as passionate about peace. There may be a genetic factor involved; Broza's grandfather, Wellesley Aron, co-founded the Arab-Israeli village Neve Shalom-Wahat Al-Salam (The Oasis of Peace) and the Habonim youth movement.
Broza wrote “Together” with Ramsey McLean as the theme song for the 50th anniversary of UNICEF (the United Nations Children's Fund) in 1996.
Two years before that, ahead of Israel’s peace treaty with Jordan, Broza toured the Middle East with Jordanian musician Hani Naser, and the duo got invited by both the Israeli and Jordanian governments to perform in concert. In Search for Common Ground presented Broza and Arab instrumentalist Said Murad with an award in 2006 for their cooperative effort on the song “Belibi” (“In My Heart”).
“We wrote it together as a love song to the country that is so dear to both of us,” says Broza. They recorded it in Hebrew and Arabic at Masada with Arab and Jewish children’s choirs backing them. (“In my heart, in my body, in my spirit, in my bosom, our land is our blood, is our soul, is our life.”)
At a 2009 Tel Aviv concert, King Juan Carlos I bestowed a Spanish Royal Medal of Honor on Broza in recognition of the singer’s contributions to Israel-Spain relations and his promotion of tolerance.
“Israel is a very cool place,” says Broza, who has always considered his primary residence to be Tel Aviv, a city he claims not to have adequate words to describe. “After everything I’ve seen, I’m a loud voice in support of what Israel has to offer. I’m also a critic, and that means I want to improve something I love and care about.”
He’s also involved in Israeli charitable organizations such as
Nalaga’at Center, Israel’s unique deaf-blind theater troupe, where he’s working to create and fundraise for a circus for the deaf and blind. And since the age of seven, he says, Broza has been active in the
Israel Sports Center for the Disabled in Ramat Gan, which his father helped found.
“This is my other passion. I really believe I can help, and it gives me a great thrill to find good people dedicated to improving facilities offered to the handicapped,” Broza says. “We are very innovative with that in Israel.”