2008 Woodie Awards
Broza Dejavu
Zev Nagel
Issue date: 12/27/04 Section: Arts & Culture
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David Broza in Concert
Thursday, December 23, 2004
Tisch Center for the Arts at the 92nd Street Y, New York
Tickets: General Admission $45
Jewish tradition has a concept of hazaka - permanence - whereupon society can make an assumption about an individual after he performs the same act three times (usually in uninterrupted form). For the past three years, I've attended David Broza's Christmas Eve extravaganza, an evening created for Jewish New York who have nowhere to go on the most un-Jewish night of the year. But though this year was the initiation for my hazaka, I'm not entirely sure I'll be coming back.
An Israeli pop star trained in the art of flamenco guitar, Broza is a master entertainer. His wide range of talents, including fluency in Hebrew, English, and Spanish, stem from his rich cultural background; the Haifa-born Broza is the child of Anglo parents who made their home in Israel and Madrid, Spain. He has released nearly twenty albums since his music career began in 1978, and since 1995, when he headlined with Sting in Switzerland, has earned an international reputation.
Broza's unique sound is an intercontinental cultural stew infused with Spanish Flamenco guitar, salsa-tinctured American Folk, and fatalistic Israeli poetry. The panoply of energy produced by his rhythmically inspired finger picking and guitar banging is signature of Brozaic music, and came as no surprise to the veterans in the crowd. But they still came to hear a traditional Broza: melodramatic lyrics, fantastically magical guitar, and a deeply soulful voice. The animated Broza makes it clear that art is his God and he will adorn her. As he characteristically wailed intensely at the conclusion of his string jamming, it became clear that Broza still believes deeply in what he does.
But the problem with this year's show was that it was too much like the past. Broza has been doing the same "Not Exactly Christmas Eve" shtick for already nine years. And while the attendees are often returning fans that wait an entire year to hear the trilingual troubadour (myself included) and certainly are looking to hear their share of "Broza classics," the singer could have at least shaken up the order and added new material to the comical snippets he uses to introduce each song. Instead, he told the same jokes verbatim and spoke lovingly of the same friends, as if his whole stage aura was a disc playing on repeat. Broza plays with so much creative passion that the extra-musical aspect of his performance, his chaffy conversations with the audience, clashed.