Why Have You Stolen the Blue and White Colours from Our Honest Sky

I am a multi-(un)disciplinary artist and composer gratefully living and working on the unceded traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səlilwətaɬ peoples – also known as Vancouver. I tend to spend half the year working with visual art – in mediums such as papirshnit (traditional Jewish paper-cutting), sculpture, and printmaking – and the other half with music.

This year, on Nakba Day (May 15), I released my first album under the moniker Exiliahu (a portmanteau of Exile and Eliahu) entitled “Why Have You Stolen the Blue and White Colours from Our Honest Sky.” I wrote the album as a golem charged with raising funds for my friends from Gaza, and with giving you and your ancestors music to dance to upon the grave of Theodore Herzl. Each song was written and recorded on my phone in a single day during the ongoing genocide. Its lyrics are drawn primarily from the anti-Zionist and anti-imperialist Yiddish poetry and protest songs of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, along with a song in Ladino, two in Hebrew, and two with original lyrics in English. 

Every morning of July 2024 and January 2025, I would scour online archives and books of Yiddish poetry such as “Songs in Dark Times: Yiddish Poetry of Struggle from Scottsboro to Palestine” by Amelia M. Glaser, to find words to express the rage and disgust I felt and feel watching a genocide unfold before a mostly indifferent or applauding world. When I found a suitable poem, I would begin setting it to melody, trying to let the shapes of the words dictate the rhythm, trying to meet the poets where they were instead of making their words bend to the shape of my music. 

One hundred percent of the proceeds go directly to my four friends from Gaza who are fundraising to evacuate their families to safety.

You can buy the album here, and/or stream it on any platform.