GUY MENDILOW BAND

Iowa debut | Blurring boundaries and connecting sounds, syncopations, rhythms and roots is central to the mission inspiring the Guy Mendilow Band. Israeli peace songs and Sephardi canticas meet Bahian street beats and blues. Drawing from a life lived in Israel, South Africa and Brazil, where musical collaboration cuts through ancient conflict, Israeli-born musician Guy Mendilow is sowing the seeds of peace with music.

It’s no surprise, then, that the Guy Mendilow Band includes world-class musicians from Israel, Argentina, Japan and the United States. Nor to find the group partnering with international peacemaking organizations, such as Seeds of Peace, whose work with Palestinian and Israeli youth and adult educators helps forge the personal relationships so critical to communication and reconciliation.

On a personal level, Guy’s musical mission is to explore the connection between the many places he’s called home. Out in the world, he has oriented his band around the premise that music, and music making, can play a unique role in transforming “the other” into a fellow human being to whom one can at least listen, if not necessarily agree.

“It was the height of Apartheid and my family, though secular and Israeli, was invited to participate in one of the only integrated church services in Johannesburg,” Mendilow recalls about the sparks of his passion. “We were sitting in my elementary school gym after-hours, a large gathering. The service was almost entirely singing: blacks and whites together, in beautiful harmonies. It lit something strong in me.” Throughout his childhood, Mendilow and his family played continental hop-scotch, with community singing in the living room as an important way of connecting with others.

Guy’s new album, Skyland, challenges your concept of borders as you listen to “Sala’am,” an Israeli anthem used during the peace marches, that subtly introduces Brazilian elements in its arrangement and whose warm harmonies nod to Crosby, Stills & Nash. Or take the tastefully modern setting of the ancient Sephardi song “Durme Durme,” sung in that melting pot language of Spanish, Arabic, Greek and Hebrew, created from the wanderings of the ancient Jews from Spain to the Mediterranean and Middle East. Mendilow pushes the sonic envelope by taking ancient instruments in new directions, though the band does this whimsically, with an almost adamant refusal to take itself too seriously. For instance, “Whistler’s Brother,” is a track in which Mendilow’s award-winning overtone singing playfully duels with a flute. Or “Blues for Dino,” a tongue-in-cheek slide berimbau (musical bow and arrow) blues number.

To Guy Mendilow the music cannot be separated from the message, whether you are part of the audience at Bethlehem Musikfest, New York’s Tribeca Performing Arts Center, in a master workshop with government education ministers from Palestine, Israel, Jordan or Lebanon, or swapping songs between Ladysmith Black Mambazo and the 26 diverse young people in the American Boychoir — Mendilow’s first touring experience. The Guy Mendilow Band continues to blur musical boundaries and offers its modest contributions to today’s larger peace puzzle: by creating person to person connections, one song at a time.