The packaging on Israeli producer-keyboardist Idan Raichel's eponymous CD informs record store employees that it should be filed under world music.
As a genre, 'world' strikes a sour note with many music fans. Within Israel's diverse music scene alone, klezmer, mizrahi and Sephardic musical traditions are perhaps better described as worlds apart than 'world music'.
But with some 70 musicians hailing from a variety of ethnic backgrounds, The Idan Raichel Project, which will perform at Hitec in Kowloon Bay tomorrow night, would seem to fit the label. The outfit is something less than a band but, in Raichel's words, something greater than its namesake.
'There is no frontman,' says 30-year-old Raichel over the phone from his home in Kfar Saba. 'Each musician brings something to the project and each of them is equally important.'
Raichel's project began with him inviting dozens of Israeli musicians to add to recordings he had been making in a makeshift studio set up in the basement of his parents' house. Many of the musicians who contributed were those he met during mandatory conscription, while serving in the official army band instead of heading to the frontlines of the restive country.
'The army is one of Israel's most important melting pots,' Raichel says. 'You meet Israelis from all over. It helped me to understand the structure of Israeli society.'