Popular music in Israel has recently seen a surge in the use of Arabic in music made by Israeli-Jewish musicians. Most of these, although descendants of immigrants from Arab countries, never acquired Arabic at home or in school, owing to national ideology which sought to label Arabic as the language of the non-Jewish other. This article reveals and contextualises this recent trend, offering a typology of the ways in which musicians engage with Arabic, their motivations for doing so and the challenges that they face. Discussing musicians who approach Arabic as Jewish heritage, as an aesthetic repository, or even as mere sound, we identify these mobilisations of Arabic as postvernacular uses of language, which often privilege its non-semantic qualities. Observed in the context of Israeli–Arab enmity, this trend appears to have emerged surprisingly not in spite of, but partly because of, the decline in peace prospects.
This article explores the relationship between the meaning of style in Idol-format TV shows, and the political style which many scholars consider central for understanding populism today. Inspired by Jacques Rancière's notion of aesthetic regimes, I theorise what I call ‘the regime of style’ as a set of aesthetic principles shared across these fields. I explore the case study of Miri Regev's term as Israel's Minister of Culture and Sports, showing how she implemented a long-term strategy combining deliberate scandals that pitted her against ‘the cultural elite’, and the endorsement of pop music styles associated with publics that traditionally support her party (Likud). What ties these complementary strategies together is that they perform a ‘flaunting of the low’ (Ostiguy 2017). In refocusing the conversation on contested hierarchies of taste, Regev's own appeal partakes in the aesthetic economy of Idol-format shows, where style is fetishised as a transparent performance of identity.
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