So, it was with some surprise and no little trepidation that a request to review Ben Fisher’s Folk/Americana album ‘Does the Land Remember Me?’ dropped into the in-box. Why the trepidation? Well, it’s not every day that you get asked to review what is described by Fisher’s PR company as “an entire concept album” focused on the subject of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict! Don’t let that put you off though. Seattle based Fisher, who has a degree in Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies, has crafted a simply brilliant and hugely moving piece of work.
Fisher should certainly know what he’s talking about. After graduating from the University of Washington, he upped sticks and moved to Jerusalem where he found work as a bartender as well as reporting and travelling for the Jerusalem Post. However, this isn’t an album focused on his personal experiences borne of three years living in the no man’s land between the Arab East and the predominantly Jewish West of that conflicted city.
This is instead a bleak but honest portrait of the Israeli and Palestinian people, who have been locked in a cycle of violence for the better part of the last century. “One of the biggest issues is that people are no longer interested in what happens there,” Fisher says. “It’s gone on for so long, the peace process is so gridlocked and there have been so many people killed. The world has become numb to it.”
His PR company states that ‘Does the Land Remember Me?’ is a “career-making record, timely and crucial”. They are not wrong. This is a politically charged album that may well alienate those with a differing worldview to Fisher’s, but it’s an immensely inspired piece of work that examines the Israeli/Palestinian conflict through multiple lenses. This is an album that truly matters….READ MORE