Israeli rock

Israeli rock (Hebrew: רוק ישראלי‎, Rok Yisra'eli) is rock music created by Israeli bands and singers.

History

The development of Israeli rock in the 1960s

Israel's initial attitude toward rock music was extremely negative. Israeli musicians of the time believed that it was a trend that would soon pass. The first Israeli rock bands began performing in the mid-1960s in nightclubs and discos, first in Ramla and later on HaMasger Street in Tel Aviv. These bands mainly performed cover versions of popular rock songs by bands like The Beatles and The Shadows. Rock culture, in the social and political sense, was nowhere in sight. Bands that stood out in the first wave of Israeli rock were The Lions, The Churchills, The Fat and the Thins, The Styles, The Electric Stage, The Seventh Radiance, The Goldstars, The Sing-Sing, The Blue Stars and The Spiders.

In the euphoria that followed the Six-Day War, the performing groups of the Israel Defense Forces rose in status with a steady stream of songs about victory, bereavement and loss. Rock became part of the alternative music scene that was played mostly in clubs such as "Hakarish" and "Calypso", formerly known as drug dens.