Avihu Pinhasov Rhythm Club cover Sweet Child o’ Mine

It was date night and I was sitting with my cutie at Waffle Bar in Jerusalem, about to order dinner. As I was wondering what kind of Waffle Bar serves salads and pasta, this song came on the air. It was a middle eastern inflected cover of Guns and Roses seminal 1988 hit “Sweet Child o’ Mine” and I was all “Wo! The f*ck is that??” I told cutie that it had to for sure be an Israeli band, because only Israelis do that kind of thing, am I right? See Shefita for instance and every Ashkenazi singing songs with an Arab music flavor – Israel’s relationship with Arab music is complicated. Jewish Arab music was considered low class and unsophisticated, beloved by cab drivers and the uneducated masses who didn’t know Beethoven from Baba Ghanoush.

Anyhow, after date night was over, I looked up the song and found it on YouTube and sure enough, I was right – Israelis. Specifically, the track was by the Avihu Pinhasov Rhythm Club. The heartening thing was that the vast majority of their music is original and the covers they do do are not their most popular material. But since most of you reading this are English speakers, this stuff that we are featuring is most accessible – if you like it, check out their YouTube channel for more tracks.

As long as we’re here, how come there are no Klezmer tinged covers of popular music produced by artists in the Arab world?

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