David Broza

Broza was born in Haifa and grew up in Tel Aviv before moving with his family to Spain, where he spent much of his adolescence; he also spent time in England.[10] In Madrid, he learned Spanish-style guitar.[7] His grandfather, Wellesley Aron, was a co-founder of the Habonim youth movement and Neve Shalom-Wahat Al-Salam.[11]

Broza initially wanted to become a visual artist rather than a professional musician.[11] At 17, he sold paintings at Madrid’s Sunday flea market.[11] He also began teaching himself guitar, continuing independently after one lesson with a teacher.[12] He later described his musical identity as Israeli while crediting his exposure to Spanish and American cultures with helping shape his work.[11]

Life in Spain introduced him to friends and families affected by political repression and the Spanish Civil War, as well as to the songs of Joan Manuel Serrat.[13] Serrat’s music subsequently became an important source for the Hebrew adaptations that Broza developed with Yehonatan Geffen.[13] Broza described Ha’isha She’iti as a tribute to his years in Spain.[13]

He returned to Israel in the mid-1970s for military service.[10] Hoping to serve in a combat role, he was instead assigned guard duties after being diagnosed with asthma.[13] He recalled spending about a year and a half at the General Staff headquarters, often playing guitar in the guard booth.[13] Outside his duties, he performed in local teahouses, sometimes receiving tea and biscuits as payment.[10]

These informal appearances led to performances for reservists at remote bases and, in 1975, reassignment as a guest artist with an air force entertainment troupe.[10] Broza recalled that the reputation of the “singing gate guard” had reached the troupe, and that he insisted on performing material he chose, including songs by Paul Simon and Bob Dylan.[13] His café performances also attracted an audience and helped lead to a recording contract.[11]

In October 1977, after substituting for Boaz Sharabi at a performance, Broza was invited to replace Yitzhak Klepter in Yehonatan Geffen’s stage production Shihot Salon (“Living Room Conversations”).[13] He recalled that Geffen gave him 48 hours to compose music for “Yihye Tov” (“It Will Be Good”), which he described as the first song he had composed.[13] Broza wrote the music and performed the song, while Geffen supplied the lyrics.[6]

“Yihye Tov” became Broza’s first major hit in 1977.[10][7] Associated with Anwar Sadat’s November 1977 visit to Jerusalem and the peace negotiations with Egypt, it expressed hopes for reconciliation.[6] Peace Now activists recruited Broza to perform it at demonstrations, and he traveled around Israel helping build support for the peace process.[10] He later said he performed the song nearly every day, sometimes several times a day.[10]

The partnership with Geffen extended into children’s music through The Sixteenth Lamb.[13] Having recently completed his service with the air force troupe, Broza joined the young performers recording Geffen’s children’s songs.[14] He composed “Thunder and Lightning,” which became one of his early signature songs from the 1978 project.[14]

His 1982 album Kalef represented a rock-oriented phase, with songs including “Haifa,” “Daniela,” “Shoelaces,” and “Life Is Good Material.”[12] Yehuda Eder produced the album and played guitar, alongside bassist Mickey Shaviv, drummer Jean-Paul Zimbris, and keyboardist Moshe Levy.[12] The tour was interrupted by the First Lebanon War, during which Broza performed for soldiers in Lebanon with Geffen and Eder.[12] He later recalled that the experience prompted him to reconsider his musical direction.[12]

The resulting turn toward Spanish repertoire produced Ha’isha She’iti, released in 1983 as his third album.[5] Broza translated the Spanish source material and explained its cultural nuances to Geffen, who fashioned the Hebrew lyrics.[3] Produced by Louis Lahav, the album included “Violets,” “Tio Alberto,” “The Rumba,” “In Your Heart,” and the title song.[5] It sold more than 200,000 copies and became one of the best-selling albums in Israeli music history.[5]

The scale of the success surprised Broza.[3] He recalled believing that filling a 400-seat venue would be difficult, only to perform the following day at a venue holding nearly 3,000; he subsequently gave 120 shows in six months.[3] In another recollection, he returned from a month-long trip to learn that the title song had caused a sensation and that the album had sold 20,000 copies in one week.[15] The title track also attracted attention for an explicit lyric that radio stations covered with a beep.[15]

His next album, Broza, appeared in 1984 and likewise consisted mainly of translated Spanish songs.[16] He then spent much of the following seven years in the United States, having moved there with his wife and children.[16] During that interval, his releases included the English-language Away from Home and a compilation.[16] Released in 1989, Away from Home was his first English-language album.[11] His American recording career eventually included four albums with English titles, and he opened for Sting in 1995.[4]

In early 1991, while working with American producer Jeffrey Lazar, Broza wrote an English-language song inspired by the Gulf War.[16] During a visit, Meir Ariel heard the melody and wrote Hebrew lyrics for it in less than five minutes, creating “Mi’tachat La’shamayim” (“Under the Sky”).[16] Its short text and register were unusual for Ariel’s writing.[16] First recorded for the 1991 album Neshika Genuva (“Stolen Kiss”), the song became a major hit that summer.[16] Along with “Bikur Mooledet” (“Homecoming”) and “Sigaliyote” (“Violets”), it became one of Broza’s best-known songs.[1]

A 1998 car crash left Broza critically injured, and he was told that he might never play guitar again.[11] He described his recovery as a “year of awakening,” recalling that feeling returned to his paralyzed arm one year to the day after the accident.[11] He subsequently returned to Spain, obtained a recording contract, and began recording in Spanish.[11]

Poetry has remained another source for his compositions: he has set works by Walt Whitman, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Federico García Lorca to music.[11] His 2010 album Night Dawn: The Unpublished Poetry of Townes Van Zandt developed from a friendship with the American songwriter, whom he met in 1994.[17] After Van Zandt’s death, a box of uncomposed writings was passed to Broza, who composed, arranged, produced, and sang the English-language material, recording it in New York.[17] The project took 12 years to complete.[11]

By 2012, Broza had recorded 23 albums in three languages.[11] His Safa Shlishit (“Third Language”), described at that time as his first Israeli album in nine years, contained 15 tracks using his own lyrics rather than poems by other writers.[11] The recording was financed through Kickstarter.[11]

East Jerusalem / West Jerusalem grew out of an Israeli-Palestinian musical collaboration.[8] The musicians recorded for eight days and nights at a Palestinian-owned studio in East Jerusalem.[8] Steve Earle and Steve Greenberg produced the album, and participants included Mira Awad, Shaanan Street, Jean-Paul Zimbris, Mohammed Mughrabi, and Wyclef Jean, who appeared in a duet.[18] Several songs directly addressed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.[18]

Broza described the recording sessions as centered on music and on shared meals prepared by Israeli and Palestinian chefs, with the collaboration opening a path toward respect and mutual understanding.[8] An accompanying documentary followed the recording in Sheikh Jarrah and Broza’s visits to Shuafat with hip-hop musician Muhammed Mugrabi.[19] The project also involved the Israeli-Arab Jerusalem YMCA youth choir and Palestinian filmmaker Issa Freij.[19] Asked about the possibility that the undertaking might be considered naive, Broza answered: “Let it be naive. It’s the way I want to live my life.”[19]

A 2014 Jerusalem Post commentary presented the film as an extension of Broza’s longstanding peace work, describing a documentary that combined videos for 13 album songs with behind-the-scenes material.[20] At that stage, Broza was raising funds to complete it.[20] In the commentary, he described the sessions as eight days and nights of “comradery and creativity” captured on tape.[20]

In 2020, he released En Casa Limón, his first entirely instrumental album, recorded at producer Javier Limón’s Madrid studio.[21] Its Spanish-guitar repertoire brought together flamenco, baroque, swing, and classical elements, and he played flamenco guitars previously used by Paco de Lucía.[21] The 12-track project required three months of technical preparation, during which Broza practiced for eight hours a day.[22] He explained that he had previously regarded the guitar mainly as an accompanying instrument; the intensive work changed his sense of himself as a guitarist.[21][22]

“Yihye Tov” has remained closely associated with Israeli memories of the peace agreement with Egypt.[6] My Jewish Learning, quoting Broza’s website, described his peace work as dating to 1977 and called the song an anthem of the peace process.[2] Its use also extended beyond its original diplomatic setting when he introduced new words for Israeli social-justice protests.[2] At an informal New Jersey Performing Arts Center event attended by about 100 people, he performed it on request, although he had previously told an audience member at another performance that he was tired of singing it.[2]

Broza’s cross-border work has included touring the Middle East with Jordanian musician Hani Naser in 1994, ahead of the Israel-Jordan peace treaty.[11] With Ramsey McLean, he wrote “Together,” the theme song for UNICEF’s 50th anniversary in 1996.[11] He also wrote and recorded “Belibi” with the Palestinian group Sabreen, featuring Sabreen’s Wissam Murad and two children’s choirs, one from each side of the conflict.[2] Search for Common Ground presented awards to the two artists in November 2006.[2]

Work with children grew out of the Jerusalem recording project: Broza held monthly rhythm and music meetings in Shuafat for 18 months.[8] He later established the One Million Guitars nonprofit with entrepreneurs Ido Segal and Eric Bland, supplying instruments and lessons to children in underserved communities.[9] Under the Israeli program, developed with the Polyphony Foundation in Nazareth, children who completed two years of lessons received their guitars as gifts.[9] Broza connected the idea to his visits to disadvantaged communities and his music courses in Shuafat refugee camp.[9]

His public service has also included sustained performances for soldiers and civilians affected by war.[23] During the 2006 Second Lebanon War, he traveled between shelters and sometimes gave as many as ten performances in a day.[23] In the first two weeks of the 2023 war, he gave more than 50 concerts, appearing in hotel lobbies, army bases, bomb shelters, and on kibbutz lawns, as well as at the bris of a baby from Kfar Aza.[24] He performed for evacuated families at Kibbutz Gal’ed and visited evacuees from communities near Gaza.[23][24] He described keeping his performances focused on music, then speaking afterward with audience members who wanted to share their experiences.[23]

Broza received a Spanish Royal Medal of Honor at a 2009 concert in Tel Aviv for his contributions to Israel-Spain relations and the promotion of tolerance.[11] In 2019, he was among the 12 recipients of the President’s Prize for Volunteerism, recognized after two decades of work fostering cooperation between Arab and Jewish youth through music.[25] At the ceremony, he performed with a youth band of Jewish and Arab musicians and singers from Nazareth and East Jerusalem, presenting Arabic melodies and songs in both Hebrew and Arabic.[25]