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Interview with ASAF AVIDAN by David Serero (2025)
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00:00Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. Welcome to the Culture News. My name is David Sariro and I have the pleasure to have today on iHeart with you on the Culture News, the one, the only, the great, the wonderful singer, Asaf Avidan. Asaf, how are you today?
00:17I'm good, David. Thank you for having me.
00:19And Asaf, it's really, really an honor to have you. Thank you so, so, so, so much. So, you know, there's a question I love to ask even to people who are very well advanced in their career. I love to ask them, who are you?
00:33Oh, my Lord. That is a very deep question, very quick. Who am I? I mean, I can tell you what I'm not. I'm not a musician. I'm not a member of a specific citizenship. I'm not. All these things, all these external labels seem restricting to me.
00:59So I don't know that I am any one of these things. I'm not my profession and I'm not where I live and I'm not. I try to be what I see as a morally good and somehow humble person. That's what I try to be. I don't know how close I get or how eternally far I fall short, but that's what I try to be.
01:26But I am. I do make music in the last 20 years. So I would say that I participate in the act of making music. I would say that I was born in Israel, raised in Jamaica. My parents were, I mean, they were originally from Israel, but they lived for a bazillion years in New York.
01:43So my musical influences are from whatever albums they brought back from the 70s in the States.
01:53So and now I live in Europe for well over a decade. So I lived in Italy for many years and now in France.
02:00So I don't really know what I am or who I am.
02:06That's beautiful. So now you live in France. How do you like it? I'm sure you eat good food. You didn't get any weight.
02:13So you have to tell me your secret because every time I go back home to Paris, I eat, I come back to New York. I'm like a big potato.
02:20So what is the secret? The secret is that I am vegan, so I don't enjoy 90 percent of the French patisserie and I didn't enjoy the Italian cheeses and meats and stuff.
02:33So I get away with it. But but yeah, I live in France.
02:38I enjoy it very much. I moved here to get away from people. Actually, I live in the middle of the countryside.
02:44I have 16 hectares. I don't know. It's I don't know how that translates to two acres, but but it's a lot of land and it's very raw and natural.
02:56And we have me and my partner here because we're both vegan.
03:00We we rescue animals from the different industries that they suffer in.
03:07So so that's what we do when I'm not touring with my music.
03:11So we we have like a small rescue farm here and just stare at trees and rocks mainly.
03:19It's very quiet here. Very, very.
03:22And, you know, it's interesting when I ask who you are, because even your music is very hard to to define it, you know, especially the last new album, which I, again, really love.
03:35I'm a huge fan of yours. So this is your first album in five years.
03:41This is this great new album called Unfurl Unfurl, which is being released on October 10th.
03:48I've been waiting for that day. Please, October 10th, arrive soon, as soon as possible.
03:55So how would you describe your your music?
03:59Because we go from from jazz to funk to to to to to pop to electro to almost jungle music sometimes lounge.
04:09So what would you say is your is your genre?
04:14I would say that just like I told you in the beginning about the the constraints of labeling feel weird to me in my personal life.
04:22I wouldn't constrain myself musically. I feel like I'm a collage artist.
04:26I've always been. I started off for I guess most American audiences would not know who I am.
04:32But I started off more generic, I would say folk rock blues kind of thing, very influenced by 60s blues rock and then kind of went into a bit more of a Dylan Leonard Cohen kind of singer songwriter phase.
04:50And then I decided to move on and I found more influences from every single thing I could put my my hands on.
05:01So electronic music, rap music, jazz music, film music, a lot, a lot of film like the soundtrack influences.
05:11I don't know. So so I if I needed to to describe myself, I would say that I'm a collage artist.
05:19And that every theme of an album demands different colors, a different palette.
05:27And so I just use I kind of walk around pick and choosing whatever seems like the right brush and the right color in order to portray a certain emotion.
05:40Well, I love how you say collage. You know, I never heard that before.
05:44I think this is absolutely brilliant because what is also very unique with you and what I was able to hear on the new album is that you put collage even within the song.
05:56You know, it's not just one song is a different color.
05:59It's that you also start the song like this, you know, the boom of your turn.
06:03And, you know, it's like a story.
06:05So that leads to also my question that I have for you in terms of how you you create your own music, like how you you do it.
06:14Do you say, oh, here there is a turning point, like what's going on in your mind when you are created a new song?
06:21This is Asaf Avidan.
06:22There is a process in which it's going to sound a bit, I don't know, maybe I'm overthinking it, but the process is one that the artist is a shaman.
06:35He walks between the world of the living and the world of the dead, between the here and the eternal.
06:40You know, he needs to or they need to go through the passage in order to seek something that is deep down and is more real than the reality that we live in.
06:53So you can call it the subconscious, you can call it the divine, you can call it whatever you want to call it.
06:58But one must exercise some power of deconstructing the self, letting go of all the things that you think are you in order to dig deeper in this excavation, dig deeper and deeper until you find something that you feel is a nugget of truth.
07:21That's really what I feel my job is, is to find moments of honesty that I feel that if I am brave enough to describe this honesty to myself, maybe others can find themselves through that.
07:36That I think is the job.
07:38And so the process is a very painful one, because every time you walk close to truth, there is a river that sweeps you into a current of melancholy, into a, I don't know, it's just, and there's also this thing that you start off with grand desires for your music, for your song, for whatever it is that you're trying to create.
08:02And then you imagine there's a whole ocean in front of you, and you're like, okay, I want to show people this ocean, and you grab with your feeble, small hands as much of the ocean as you can, and you start running, and it drips, and it drips, and it drips.
08:18And by the end of the day, when you, after your labor, and you've been running all day, all you have to show is one little drop in your hands, and you say, oh, this is the ocean.
08:29And you're trying to describe the ocean through that one drop that you have left in your hands.
08:33That's how it feels when I write.
08:36It feels that I'm always light years away from what I set out to describe.
08:43But once you let go of that megalomanic need to describe it as precisely as you thought you needed to, there's a freedom that says, okay, I cannot show you the entire ocean.
08:56I can show you one drop here, and one little drop there, and one little drop there.
09:00And maybe that will be enough to ignite an image of an ocean in your own deep soul.
09:08So that's how it feels like.
09:10It feels like a lot of self pain and a lot of throwing myself against the wall until there is a bloodstain beautiful enough that I feel is sufficient.
09:27That's a beautiful way to say music.
09:30Do you regret sometimes that you open yourself so much into a song?
09:36Never, never.
09:38That's the mission.
09:39The mission, there's moments of grace where I feel I have been sufficiently open.
09:46Most of the time, I feel that I've been cheating.
09:48You know, water, if we're talking about water, when it flows, it finds the easiest course to follow.
09:54And then slowly, you know, once there's a little stream, then, you know, more water flows through it, and it becomes a river.
10:01And then it becomes bigger and bigger and bigger.
10:03And that's where the water will go.
10:04So that's how songwriting is.
10:06If you're not careful, you're just going to be repeating yourself over and over.
10:11Because it's the easiest.
10:12You have muscle memory and you have the brain memory that you know how to write a song by now.
10:16It's your eighth album.
10:18And so I feel that's a very dangerous place for the artist to be.
10:22So if anything, what I cry about is the moments that I haven't found enough honesty and enough vulnerability within myself.
10:32I see.
10:32Thank you so much for sharing that.
10:34So that's your, and third would be your how many albums?
10:37Your eight albums?
10:38Eight albums.
10:39You're counting also, because I've worked as a Safavidan and I worked with, as a Safavidan and the Mojo is a different band that I had.
10:46So you're counting.
10:47So what was the reaction of the very, very first album?
10:51What do you recall of it when it came out?
10:54Because I remember it came like a big sensation.
10:56Like you couldn't open.
10:58I was in Paris at that time.
10:59You couldn't open a French magazine.
11:01And people talking about you and playing.
11:04And this was, and I remember all the press that, you know, it's very hard to have them talk about music.
11:10Even the fashion press, like maybe Vogue or magazines like that, they were talking about you.
11:16What was the reaction for you at that moment?
11:19It all happened very fast.
11:21You know, I didn't start off as a musician.
11:23I studied cinema and then I studied animation and I was an animator for a long time.
11:27And that was kind of my profession until my late 20s.
11:30And then I transitioned into music.
11:32And the minute I picked up a guitar and started singing, everything kind of avalanched very quickly.
11:38And so I found myself in a reality that I found normal because I didn't know anything else.
11:47I didn't know any other musician friends.
11:48And I didn't see that they were struggling to get to those places.
11:52And I thought, okay, you release an album.
11:54People write about it.
11:55People are interested.
11:56You perform.
11:57And so only, I think only lately when I've transitioned into, you know, not just a linear
12:08graph going up and up and up in a career, you reach some places as, you know, even the
12:13greatest artists, even like people like Dylan have in years that they were, you know, like
12:19they were outside the eye of the public.
12:21Um, so I think I've reached a place in my career that I'm not sure I'm going down, but I think
12:27I'm in some kind of plateau.
12:29The audience that knows me knows me.
12:31I'm appreciated in the circles, but I'm not like the big new thing, you know, that everybody's
12:37talking about, which is okay with me.
12:39But it is making me appreciate that time of how quickly things happened and how, um, how
12:49much, um, reaction was to something that I did.
12:53And as you heard, what I do is very, very personal.
12:56The idea that people react to it so strongly is still magical to me to, to this day, you
13:03know, like 15 years later, I mean, it's still, there is a, there is something very beautiful
13:12about it.
13:13You want to think that humans possess all humans.
13:18It doesn't matter if we're in Africa, Asia, America, whatever, that we have a universal
13:26core, that, that, that, that something in our soul reverberates in the same way, it doesn't
13:33matter our age or our, uh, sexuality or religion or our ethnicity.
13:40You want to imagine that as a liberal person.
13:43And then when you write something so personal about your own personal shitty experience in
13:50your own personal shitty little world, and then you find that people of different cultures
13:55and different, um, ages and different sexes and different everything, um, they relate
14:02to it in the same way.
14:03It doesn't just flatter me as a, as a singer songwriter.
14:07It, it, it, it redeems a part of humans that, that I, I'm searching for, you know, like
14:15it means that we all rhyme, we reverberate in the same manner when our souls are touched.
14:23Um, and that's such a beautiful understanding in a world that is more and more and more divisive
14:31and more and more looking for the differences between people.
14:36Um, you know, as cliche, as cliche as it is, as it sounds, you know, an artist needs to be
14:43a bridge and not a wall.
14:45And, and, and, and, and, and that, that's the feeling when, when people react to your music,
14:51if it's, if it's personal and honest and, and still people are touched by it, you realize
14:57that something within you is the same as with others.
15:00And, and that's a beautiful thing.
15:02Beautiful.
15:02So last two questions before I let you enjoy your, the nice weather and the nice baguette,
15:10you know, what is the message that you want people to take away from this new album, Unfurl
15:18and the new singles compared to the previous albums?
15:23I'm not sure it's a message, but it's, uh, experience.
15:27The experience that I felt, it's very philosophical.
15:32I was reading Carl Jung and I was reading Joseph Campbell and, and I was thinking about the
15:38subconscious and the conscious, all these things that we, we discussed.
15:40There is a meditative moment where you finally are able to not just talk about the infinite,
15:49the divine, you really feel it.
15:50Some people need, you know, drugs to get there.
15:55Some people need meditation to get there.
15:58Some people just need to read poetry or see a beautiful flower and they suddenly have
16:03a moment.
16:04Some people need to feel love.
16:05Whatever it is that you do in order to get yourself there, that moment of rapture between
16:11the self and the everything that's not the self, the self and the other is such a grand
16:17moment.
16:18That's the, what I want people to feel the, the awe, the beauty of it, and also the fear
16:25of it because once you let go into the infinite, you are letting go of yourself.
16:33So I want people just to experience a complex set of emotions where beauty and fear and suffering
16:45and hope are all intermixed together and they are all equally justified.
16:50I love that.
16:51Thank you so much again.
16:53So last question.
16:54Can you, I want to know more about your, your voice, you know?
16:59So being, you know, an opera singer myself, I'm always interested about the vocal training,
17:06but also the vocal function of a, of a singer.
17:10So how do you think vocally?
17:14What is your vocal approach and how did you train?
17:18How do you practice?
17:20Tell us about all your vocal life, if I can say.
17:25I think, first of all, one must have fathers and mothers.
17:30One has to look at the previous people.
17:35And if I find Billie Holiday singing favorable, if I find Nina Simone intriguing, if I find
17:43even Bob Dylan, I look into what it is that I love about other artists.
17:51And then there is a part of imitation.
17:54But hopefully you get to a place where you find your own voice metaphorically and physically.
18:02I think this, my secret is never to try to be beautiful.
18:06That's not the key.
18:07The key is to be honest.
18:09And, and the human voice has such a wide spectrum, has such a wide variety.
18:14You can whisper, you can scream, you can, you can go high, you can go low, you can bring
18:20them in and you can, you can, you know, surprise them going towards them.
18:25All these things, I mean, the human voice is, is in and of itself, an entire language to
18:33be, to be, I don't know, explored.
18:38And so that's how I feel with it.
18:40And so I'm not afraid if I don't sound beautiful or if I'm not singing correctly, or if I think
18:49that's my only two cents to, to, to give anybody that tries to take, like, don't ever try to
18:59sound beautiful and don't ever try to sound too much like somebody else.
19:03Try to find what it is that you produce that makes you feel, oh, that's the feeling I was
19:13trying to portray.
19:14There it is, you know, it sounds weird.
19:17It sounds smaller than I thought it would be, you know, it doesn't sound like the, what
19:24I'm hearing on the pop radio, but, but it is something that translates my inner self into
19:32the outer world.
19:34Um, it's just a tool and it's a very, very, very varied tool.
19:40So just explore it.
19:42Um, and, and then there is technical things, sleep well, drink a lot of water.
19:48Everything else is bullshit.
19:50You know, I've been touring for, as I said, 15 years.
19:54There were years where I did, you know, like 150, 180 shows a year.
19:59And the only thing that really works, I've tried everything.
20:03Cause you know, at some point your voice gets tricky.
20:07It's a very fragile, you know, musical instrument.
20:11And, and I've tried everything from, you know, like hardcore medicine to the Eastern remedies
20:19to whatever.
20:21And the only thing that truly, truly, truly works is really eight hours of sleep a night
20:26and a lot of water during the day.
20:29And yeah, and the rest just, and then you can fuck up your voice as much as you want.
20:36Well, I hope you won't fuck up your voice.
20:38Yeah, me too.
20:39No, no, we, we need it.
20:41And, and a lot of people started to say about your voice that he, he has this androgynous
20:46sound that is, we, some people thought, is it a man?
20:50Is it a woman?
20:51That there is this question.
20:53How do you feel about that?
20:54And was it what also you wanted to create that little question mark about you?
20:59No, I didn't try to create it, but I, I have no problem with it.
21:03Um, it certainly, you know, I'm not offended by it.
21:09And I'm not complimented by it.
21:10People's reactions are their own.
21:12And I do realize that my voice, especially my, my singing voice is very peculiar and,
21:19and, and ambivalent.
21:20Um, you know, people think, uh, you know, I'm, I'm, uh, I don't know, African-American female
21:29singer from the sixties.
21:30Uh, you know, I've heard that a bazillion times.
21:34Great.
21:34You know, I don't know.
21:35I, I mean, my, I can say that my favorite vocalists are female vocalists.
21:42Uh, but, but, but, you know, there's been so many, you know, you, when you listen to Robert
21:46Plant, when you listen to even more modern stuff like Jack White, Jack White sings very
21:52high.
21:53And, um, I would say androgynous, um, you know, Freddie Mercury, you know, there, there's
22:01so many insanely good singers that sing in a high range.
22:07I really, I never thought about it.
22:10I just sing, I had a lot of, in, especially in the beginning, I needed to outlet a lot
22:16of internal struggles and pains.
22:20And it just came out louder and higher and louder and higher, almost like a screeching
22:25cat, you know, like, and, and I'm okay with that.
22:28Um, it, it depicts what I needed to depict and that's what I needed to be.
22:35Then whatever people want to call it afterwards is, is up to them.
22:39I thought you'd be listening to a lot of castrati, you know, uh, a lot of a countertenor in the
22:46baroque.
22:47Did, did you listen to these guys or it's actually not your.
22:50It's not really my forte, but I do listen.
22:53Um, but, but there's a lot of things that I listened to that, that, that have these kinds
22:58of, you know, if you listen to, I don't know, Mexican folk music, um, you know, they have
23:05these beautiful falsetto, uh, and, and high timber kind of reach and, and also Italian folk
23:13that I listened to when I was in Italy.
23:14I, I think, you know, I think it's, it's very much this idea of masculinity through the voices.
23:24I'm pretty sure it's exaggerated.
23:27I'm like, there's so many male vocalists through, as, as you say, classical music, um, until present
23:37day that, that people use their wide range of voices, um, and also, you know, and also
23:43the opposite, you know, uh, female vocalists that, that, that want to use a lower register.
23:48I think it's all this restriction and all this labeling doesn't really help the artistic endeavor
23:55of, of, you know, opening up to, to more options.
23:58Yeah, I agree with you, but you think in falsetto and then you, you bring a little bit more body,
24:04or this is like your chess voice, or you think more, yeah, and, and, and then you push it
24:10to give it more color.
24:13I think it would have been way easier for me if I were like a falsetto guy, you know, like,
24:18uh, Tom York kind of thing where you use very little power and you direct it, you know, and
24:24I can falsetto, but falsetto is not what I'm going for.
24:29I want to go high and make it hurt.
24:31Uh, you know, I love the idea that I'm not sure if I can reach that note.
24:37Um, I love the idea that I need to press more and give even more power in order to reach
24:44that high.
24:46Uh, I love that my voice breaks because it feels like I feel inside, you know?
24:52Um, so that's what I like.
24:54Um, I sometimes, you know, if you hear, I have eight albums, so, so if you hear that,
25:00I, I'm sure there's like two or three songs where, with falsettos and I'm sure there is
25:04like, I don't know, some songs that I go in a lower register.
25:09Um, and in this album, you can even hear me going through the different registers in, even
25:13in one song.
25:14It's just a ride.
25:16And, and, and that's what I'm trying to depict both with the musical writing and the way I
25:20sing it.
25:22All right.
25:22Well, listen, I told you last two questions, but I asked you since.
25:26So this is, this is the, the Moroccan way, you know what I mean?
25:31So I want to say how honored I am to have you today on the show.
25:36You are such a legend, such a wonderful artist, and you brought something new.
25:42You know, you, you made the choice of being, uh, singular and we're so glad for that.
25:48And, and, and it's true.
25:49You know, when you see today, everybody sound the same, you know, but you made that choice
25:55and I want to applaud you for that.
25:56And you continue with that choice and this new album that I need everybody to go to check.
26:05It's absolutely wonderful.
26:06It's called Unfurled.
26:08This is your first album in five years.
26:11What took you so long?
26:11Uh, for Unfurled, which is being released October 10th.
26:16So on October 10th, I want everybody to be from the computer, the phones, the, whatever
26:22you want and listen to this album to purchase it.
26:26Asaf Avidan, he is such a wonderful artist.
26:30He has this new track, Unfurling Dream.
26:33This is a beautiful album, this is a beautiful album, was recorded in the south of France and
26:38you will hear this beautiful orchestra, 40-piece live orchestra.
26:42Uh, this is, and you hear it.
26:44You hear the, the, the sound.
26:46If you purchase your album, I can assure you you're worth every penny of it because he really
26:51puts the, the effort and definitely, um, anything that he can, 40-piece live orchestra, you know,
26:58with the rhythm section of jazz.
27:01This is, this is a beautiful album.
27:03This is a movie, you listening.
27:05This is such a beautiful thing.
27:06I hope you will do a musical very soon.
27:10I hope you will do a musical film very soon because that's where also your music belongs.
27:15So, I want to say thank you.
27:17I want to say thank you to our dear friend, Brendan Bork, and all the best to you, Asaf.
27:24David, you've been too kind.
27:26Thank you so much.
27:27It's an honor.
27:28Ladies and gentlemen, my name is David Sarriwa.
27:30I had the pleasure to have today on the Culture News on iHeart Radio, the one and only Asaf Avidan.
27:35He has released his new album called Unfurl, being released on October 10th.
27:40Stay tuned with us right now.
27:41You're listening to his new single.
27:43Stay tuned with us.
27:44It's a beautiful day.
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