Ben Fisher Explores Perspectives of Israel and Palestine on New LP

It may not be coincidence that Seattle-based singer-songwriter Ben Fisher’s new album trying to humanize the Israeli-Palestinian conflict came out the Friday before Rosh Hashana — the Jewish New Year.

Fisher, a Jewish-American multi-instrumentalist, majored in Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Washington and moved to the holy land after graduation. There, he wrote for The Jerusalem Post and eventually earned dual citizenship in Israel before returning to the US in the summer of 2017. The songs borne out of those experiences abroad eventually became his third independent release, Does the Land Remember Me?, produced in part thanks to a small grant from the Israeli Ministry of Culture and Sport.

But with Does the Land Remember Me?, Fisher tries to present the similar struggles Israelis and Palestinians experience through a series of narrative-heavy, contemplative ballads. Clocking in a just more than an hour, the album is as hefty in length as it is in emotional weight. While a number of musical and peace-building groups try to address these issues, an entire record dedicated to it is nearly unheard of, for Americans, Israelis, or Palestinians.

Fisher excels with presenting all of those perspectives throughout Does the Land Remember Me?. “Brave New World” serves as one of his own ruminations on being emotionally and spiritually pulled between Israel and America. “1948” offers multiple stories of the Arab-Israeli war of that year. Israelis refer to it as the War of Independence, in which Israel became a state; Palestinians call it “Al-Nakba, or “the catastrophe” due to the mass displacement that took place in its aftermath. The title track could also be sung from different points of view, since both Israeli-Jewish families and Christian or Muslim Palestinian families have been forcibly removed from this same chunk of land over the past 80 years or so. In fact, Fisher’s version of Anaïs Mitchell’s “Why We Build the Wall” (off her 2010 folk opera Hadestown), is one of the brightest spots on the whole record, with the song’s original influence drawing back to the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.

Musically, Fisher channels old storytellers like Cat Stevens and piano balladeers like Harry Nilsson or Randy Newman. But with Damien Jurado producing, guest musicians like Shelby Earl and Noah Gundersen, and additional instrumentation including Mellotron, harmonica, pedal steels, flugelhorn, and more, the primarily piano-based album takes on as many additional textures evocative of the American West and frontiers (if not those of the Middle East).

Overall, Does the Land Remember Me? is not necessarily an optimistic record. It’s an easy listen musically, but one not created to wash over listeners. Rather, Fisher uses this album to challenge both the role of pop music and the narratives told of this crisis brings, and that is what gives listeners hope for a better future.