Written by Suanshu Khurana | New Delhi |

 

Israeli musician Shye Ben Tzur found out about American journalist Daniel Pearl’s killing along with the rest of the world on February 21, 2002. The slain Wall Street Journal journalist was abducted by Islamist extremists in 2002 while on assignment in Pakistan. His brutal murder was videotaped.

For Tzur, who was following the news from Tel Aviv, it wasn’t hard to put together the parallels between himself and Pearl. They both were Jews with Israeli citizenship, had roots in the US and were musicians (Pearl played the fiddle with many bands). Both spoke and sang of tolerance and one God.

I’m not a politician. I’m just a lover of peace and this is my way of bringing people together
“Something struck a chord,” said Tzur, who was at a concert in Delhi’s Kamani Auditorium on Thursday. He said he tried to find common ground between Hebrew and Urdu, interlocking it, meshing it, in a commemorative concert for Pearl. The journalist would have turned 50 earlier this month. The concert organised in collaboration with Indian Council of Cultural Relations, Delhi International Arts Festival and Embassy of Israel comes in the wake of Daniel Pearl World Music Days all over the world.

“I have just come back after spending a complicated summer in a war-stricken region. My way of bringing people together is to make music, to return some faith to the humanity,” said Tzur, who was born in the US, grew up in Israel and now divides his time between Jaipur and Tel Aviv, where he sings Sufi qawwalis, Hebrew poetry and bhajans of Mirabai and Tulsidas.
So when he sang a Hebrew song that roughly translated into “Only a single breath separates us”, and followed it up with an Urdu poem by Hazrat Shah Gudri Baba, it was hard to miss the political voice in it.

“But I’m not a politician. I’m just a lover of peace and this is my way of bringing everyone together,” said Tzur, who has trained under dhrupad maestro Ustad Zia Fariduddin Dagar. Tzur recently performed in a collaborative concert with Radiohead’s ace guitarist Johny Greenwood.