Shkula | A musical-linguistic performance: Neomi Hashmonai and Neta Weiner

Thursday, 16.07.26, 19:30

Hall 3, Machol Shalem Dance House, Rami Levy Plus House (former Rav-Chen Cinema), HaParsa 3, Jerusalem

Shkula is a musical-linguistic performance that was born out of an ongoing dialogue between Neomi Hashmonai and Neta Weiner. Their work deals with language and identity, the relationship between word and sound, and the space between personal experience and socio-political stance. From the very beginning, Hashmonai and Weiner challenged the boundary between a recorded song and a live stage event, as well as the usual distinction between music and poetry. At the heart of the performance is language itself, not just as content but as a medium and a gateway through which something transformative happens, fluctuating along the continuum between singing, reading, and speaking. 

Hashmonai and Weiner released their debut albums in the same year, 2016, and a decade later they both released their second albums: Hashmonai’s ‘Standing on a Star’ and Weiner’s ‘Pinui-Binui.’ The decade between the two pairs of albums forms the basis for the performance, which combines songs from all four albums with poetry readings, new arrangements, and musical dialogues created specifically for it. The movement between sacred and secular, and between Hebrew, Arabic, and Yiddish, gives the music a personal, multicultural, and political dimension. Emerging from the unbearable fracture of recent years, the show aims to offer an intense space that allows staying with the pain without getting stuck in it, and to assert the demand for recognition as a necessary step toward justice and perhaps even healing. 

Neomi Hashmonai is an exceptional musician and poet in the local indie scene, and she’s returning with a new album for the first time in nine years. Her debut album, ‘Eight Lines,’ walked the line between the sacred and secular and received praise as well as the Uri Orbach Prize for Jewish Culture. Her poetry book ‘In the Secret of Electricity,’ which she published in 2023, has positioned her among the top poets active in Israel today. Neta Wiener is a multidisciplinary artist, musician, playwright, lead singer of the Arab-Jewish hip-hop band “System Ali,” and the artistic director of the System Ali House. He won the Shechter-Rabinovitz Prize for Original Israeli Art in 2020 and the Golden Hedgehog Award in 2022. His new musical ‘End of Days’ will premiere at Gesher Theater at the end of July. He lives and creates between Berlin, Jaffa, and Boston.