"You can't throw everything at the public while Knesset members get inflated salaries," says the singer, who today issued a protest song.
Even if the name Mickey Gabrielov is not the first to come to your mind at the word "protest singer", his professional catalog will prove otherwise. The musician whose songs include songs like "The Eagles Raised at Dawn" and signed with Eric Einstein on classics like "Little Journalist" and "Sitting Facing the Paper," he certainly wrote and composed works that he criticized, and now he does it again - at times that justify such.
Mickey Gabrielov - The poverty line in the twenty-first century
In "The Twenty-first Century Poverty Line," his new song released Tuesday from an album released later this year, Gavrielov does not spare his thoughts on where Israel is in 2020. "In the streets of famine, let him hear it again and again," he sang , And mentions the prices of vegetables, the period of austerity and one person who lives in his home dry and apprehensive. And to think that the song itself was still written before the Corona crisis."This song was written in 2018, of course following all sorts of thoughts on poverty, whether in the world or here," the singer says. "Then in 2019, I recorded and released other songs, including 'Pay Me the Check,' which is also a kind of protest song. Now, because of the Corona, everything was stopped and rejected and I felt it was the right moment to take it out. I hear a lot of people talking "They don't have the money, the job, the livelihood, and they don't know what's going to happen to them. That includes a lot of artists. I thought it was a good time to spend it."
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Gabrieleov tells of a period of four months since his last performance - by far the longest he has experienced without being able to perform in years. "I usually play seven, eight, sometimes ten shows a month. On the way, I was canceled 25 shows, that's a lot," he says. "I'm lucky to have my own recording studio, non-commercial, that nobody is in. So every morning I go to the studio, work, sketch, write, write new songs for children's songs, church songs. I have something to do. But that's the case, these are not performances in front of an audience. It's just me alone in the courtroom. "
"Very much. The truth is that it's depressing. Performers want a crowd, that's their whole thing. It's even beyond the livelihood. But tapo tapo, four months I absorbed it, maybe I'll still be able to absorb it until we start again."
The discourse around the second wave and the exacerbations are certainly not soothing.
"There's helplessness here, because you don't see a future and don't know when it will actually be released and regular shows can be made. But I'm glad there are some options already. Tapo Tapo, I'm financially okay, but I know there are a lot of friends who have nothing to eat And they had no savings, not just musicians. "
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What do you think about how the country handled the crisis?
"I think this country has a lot of money and it could have helped a lot more. It's not just winning this epidemic and saying what to do and what not to do. A lot of people here have no money, businesses have collapsed, some people don't know what to do with themselves and see no future in the matter And this is a serious problem. NIS 7,500 here or there doesn't help a person who has a business to own it. All I see and hear on TV - I can't tell you it's reliable, don't know how to relate to it. The re-shows and today are announcing not, or there are limitations. Everything is so confused, there is such a big deal. If you say 'stay home, we give you money and we will solve the economic problems' as they did in other countries. In this way, people are begging their apartment owners to give up their rent. It doesn't work that way. You can't throw everything at the public while Knesset members sit and get inflated salaries. The public sees it. "
You talk in song about the days of austerity. Do you have a real fear that we are on our way there?
"I hope we don't get to the point of austerity and get out of it well, but it can certainly come to pass. I don't know if this song is alert or not, but at least it is here to set us up."
Mickey Gabrielov will be performing on July 24 in Zappa Tel Aviv and on July 25 in Zappa Beer Sheva.
