SIVAN ARBEL

ONENESS

Sivan Arbel, voice; Nick Hetko, piano/keyboards; Sam Weber, bass; Evan Hyde, drums; Tripp Dudley, percussion; Jay Gandhi, Bansuri; Aubrey Johnson & Daniel Fresco, vocals.

This album by vocalist, songwriter and arranger, Sivan Arbel, stands as her musical response to the divisions she sees in society.  These original songs open a door to her soul.

“I’ve remained curious about different cultures, and that resonates in my music.  Normalizing equity between people doesn’t just make us better human beings. It brings so many beautiful flavors to anything we create,” Arbel expresses in her press package.

While making this album, Arbel delved into the study of classical Indian singing which led to collaborating with her Brooklyn neighbor, Jay Gandhi, a master of the bansuri flute and member of the Brooklyn Raga Massive. Their collaboration helped Arbel develop a distinctive sound, blending Indian classical music with contemporary music, most evident in the track “Dreamland.”

I find Sivan Arbel’s sound and the arrangements of these songs to be more pop music than jazz. She establishes her vocal style by incorporating the use of sliding to the tones in her songs.  One person who made the slide technique unforgettable was Aretha Franklin.  Ms. Arbel is no Aretha.

She is, however, a pop voice who incorporates her original songs into semi-classical music tracks. During her vocals, while interpreting a song called “BlackFeet,” she continues along a pop path, singing prose lyrics rather than rhymes.

I am disappointed to see Sivan Arbel’s music classified as jazz.  Although her desire to bring people together under a banner of peace and humanity is admirable, this music waters down the established American indigenous artform of jazz. One can simply listen to the great jazz vocalists of all time like Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee, Carmen McCrae, Billie Holiday, Anita O’Day, and Diane Reeves, to see that Ms. Arbel is not pursuing jazz as a vocal artist.

Reviewed by Dee Dee McNeil

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