Nostalgic Soundscapes: The Future of Israel’s Sonic Past

In the course of the past 120 years of Zionist culture in Palestine/Eretz Israel and later in the State of Israel, institutional, journalistic, and academic narratives have attempted to outline the stylistic traits of the Zionist sonic capital. These attempts were sometimes based on delineating what lay beyond the boundaries of that capital. Thus, diasporic voices comprising the repository of Jewish sonic memories were left outside the confines of the Israeli soundtrack. The incorporation of those forgotten voices into recent Israeli popular music is at the core of this study. Mixing old recordings of dead family members by some major Israeli rockers in their recent productions is a growing trend reflecting a shift in the contemporary Israeli attitude towards the voices of the Diaspora. This trend is critically examined through the prism of the concepts of soundscape, technologies of the intermundane, and nostalgia.