Yehuda Poliker (Hebrew: יהודה פוליקר; born December 25, 1950) is an Israeli singer, songwriter, musician, and painter. His parents were Greek Jews and Holocaust survivors who were deported to Auschwitz from Thessaloniki.
After Poliker's band, Benzene, broke up in 1985, he released his first solo album, Einayim Sheli. All of the tracks on the album were well-known Greek songs literally translated into Hebrew.
Israeli immigrant communities from Arab countries have over the last 50 years created a blended musical style that combines Turkish, Greek, Arabic, and Israeli elements. As opposed to the New Hebrew Style, which was the conscious creation of Eastern European immigrants trying to define their new Israeli identity, the Muzika Mizrahit style is truly spontaneous and indigenous. Initially met with hostility by the mainstream cultural institutions of Israel, it has now become a major force in Israeli culture.
The Muzika Mizrahit movement started in the 1950s with homegrown performers in the ethnic neighborhoods of Israel – the predominantly Yemenite "Kerem Hatemanim" neighborhood of Tel Aviv, Moroccan neighborhoods and neighborhoods of Iranian and Iraqi immigrants – who played at weddings and other events. They performed songs in Hebrew, but in a predominantly Arabic style, on traditional instruments – the Oud, the Kanun, and the darbuka. Jo Amar and Filfel al-Masry, were two early proponents of Moroccan and Egyptian extraction. In the 1960s, they added acoustic guitar and electric guitar, and their sound became more eclectic. Vocalists typically decorated their singing with melisma and other oriental-style ornaments, and delivery was often nasal or guttural in character. Intonation was typically Western, however; singers did not use the quartertone scales typical of Arabic music.
