Beit System Ali Bat Yam: On Music, Urban Regeneration, and the (re-) Making of Place

Abstract

“So what happens when you put three Ukrainians, two Georgians, and one Arab together in a rehearsal room? Here is the result....” Amir thus introduced the debut performance of Contrasto, an ensemble of fourteen to twenty-year olds that developed out of music workshops offered at Beit System Ali (Home of System Ali). Amir is a young Palestinian rapper from Jaffa and the “one Arab” among the former Soviet Union (FSU) immigrants who call Bat Yam home. Contrasto was performing at “Party in the Yard,” an event where all Bat Yam and Jaffa youth working with members of the hip hop collective System Ali came together for the first time (March 25, 2015), in a shared evening of performances. The performance was staged outdoors at Mitham Geulim (Geulim Compound, aka Hamitham), which for the past four years has served as a home for the System Ali collective and for their educational projects. Currently supported by Mif‘al Hapayis – Israel’s national lottery – and by the Bat Yam municipality, the “Lottery’s Laboratory for the Culture of Beit System Ali Bat Yam”1 included at this time a well-equipped rehearsal room, an office, and a crumbling hangar slated to become a performance venue, in the mitham. Beit System Ali shares the mitham with the sports-focused youthbased Geulim community center, the Center for Ukrainian Culture, and Fest’ Factory, the administrative center of Bat Yam’s annual Street Theater Festival. Since the fall of 2014 and with the support of Mif‘al Hapayis and the municipality, Beit System Ali has been serving as a creative hub for youth who attend the different workshops and jam sessions run by members of System Ali or their expanding community. The workshops focus on music, rap, spoken word, poetry, sound production, and the development of music ensembles. What does it mean for three Ukrainians, two Georgians and an Arab to come together in a rehearsal room? This statement sounds like the beginning of a joke, one that destabilizes norms and practices based on structural divisions in Israeli society long maintained by hegemonic views, attendant policies, and inherent social tensions: