Jaffa Road brings Arabic-Jewish fusion music to Arroyo Grande

What do a Canadian world music band and an ancient Middle Eastern thoroughfare have in common?

They share a name, and a history of peaceful multicultural coexistence.

“Jaffa Road is the highway that connects the ancient port city of Jaffa to Jerusalem” in Israel, forging bonds between Jews and Arabs, explained Aaron Lightstone, who plays guitar, ud and synthesizers in the Juno Award-nominated group Jaffa Road. As such, he said, it seemed like the perfect namesake for his Toronto-based band.

Jaffa Road performs Saturday at the Clark Center for the Performing Arts in Arroyo Grande.

The concert is the first event in the new SLO World Arts & Cultures Series organized by Jordan Elgrably, founding director of The Markaz Arts Center for the Greater Middle East in Los Angeles.

“I want to bring world cultural arts to the area because it seems like something that would be appreciated (here),” said Elgrably, who moved to Templeton six months ago.

In addition to the Jaffa Road concert, he is planning MultiCulti Sunday, a free, family-friendly event on May 1 at Templeton Community Park that will feature live music, storytelling and a potluck picnic.

Also in the works is a June 18 concert by Bay Area flamenco group Garnada at an as-yet-undetermined location in Paso Robles.

According to Lightstone, the inspiration for Jaffa Road came when he caught Israeli musician Schlomo Bar in concert in Tel Aviv.

“I thought, ‘Wow, we could do something like that in Toronto,’” he said, adding that the city seemed like a natural springboard for multicultural mashups.

“There’s an amazing music scene here,” he said, describing it as “incredibly diverse both in terms of the ethnicity and cultural background of musicians, but also where people are coming from musically with their background and training.”

While Lightstone and lead singer Aviva Chernick have an interest in Jewish music, their bandmates — bassist Justin Gray, percussionist Rakesh Tewari and saxophone and flute player Sundar Viswanathan and — cite other influences, including jazz, rock, pop and classical Indian music.

“You take someone’s cultural heritage and try to express it through music — at the same time surrounding yourself with others who bring something else to the table,” Lightstone explained.

In 2009, Jaffa Road released its debut album, “Sunplace,” earning a Juno nomination for world music album of the year. The band’s sophomore release, “Where the Light Gets In,” garnered the group its second Juno nomination and won world music group of the year at the Canadian Folk Music Awards.

Although Jaffa Road performs “songs that strive to inspire peace, we don’t have a political agenda,” Lightstone said. “Our primary concern is the aesthetics, to make music as great as we possibly can.”

The band also seeks to infuse time-honored texts with fresh meaning.

The song “L.Y.G. (Lo Yisa Goy),” which won grand prize in the John Lennon Songwriting Contest, takes its text from a traditional Hebrew poem for peace often translated as “nation shall not lift up arms against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”

While the lyrics of “Ana El Na (Please Heal Her)” refer to Moses praying for the health of his sister, “We envision it as a prayer for the healing of Mother Earth,” Lightstone said. And “Sim Shalom (Place Peace)” infuses new life into the blessing that is recited after prayer in multiple Jewish traditions.

Lightstone said he’s always searching for “old, obscure songs for Jaffa Road to reinterpret.”

One of his most fascinating finds is “Avre Los Ojos,” a centuries-old Turkish tune recorded in 1907 on wax cylinder.

Sung in Spanish, the song channels “the pain parents feel when they watch their children get conscripted into the Ottoman empire,” Lightstone said. The title means “Open your eyes.”

“That’s the song that resonated with me and with the band and something we could do something interesting with,” Lightstone said.

As Jaffa Road’s repertoire indicates, the band is motivated by a powerful mission, the musician said.

“These songs have a strong message of hoping to inspire more peaceful relations in the Middle East,” Lightstone said. “Music has the power to do that.”

This story was originally published March 30, 2016 at 10:37 AM with the headline "Jaffa Road brings Arabic-Jewish fusion music to Arroyo Grande."