Three Latin American music stars — La Tigresa del Oriente and La Pequeña Wendy, both from Peru, and DelfÃn Hasta El FÃn, from Ecuador — sing on “En Tus Tierras Bailaré (In Your Lands I’ll Dance).” The homage to “beuatiful Israel” has “effortlessly racked up nearly 4 million views and spawned countless tributes and parodies,” according to a Tablet Magazine online story.
Irin Carmon investigates the video’s origins and discovers that it’s the work of “several creative-class Argentine Jews (and one quarter-Jew) living in Madrid, Buenos Aires, and New York, only one of whom has actually been to Israel, and none of whom even met the singers during the video’s production. Their intention, these impresarios say somewhat vaguely, was to fight preconceived notions that Israel is a sad and scary place.”
Carmon writes:
“It’s not a song in favor of Israel,” said Gastón Cleiman, an advertising man in Buenos Aires who wrote the song’s lyrics and who, along with Sebastian Muller, dreamed up the idea. “It’s a song against prejudice.” Cleiman is freelancer; Muller works for an interactive firm in Madrid whose clients include Nike and Coca-Cola. Both men swear the project was their own initiative, with neither official money nor messaging. The music was written by Gaby Kerpel, another Argentine Jew, who also scored De La Guarda and Fuerza Bruta and is part of a Latin electronic collective known as Zizek and performs reinterpreted Colombian cumbia under the alter ego King Coyo, and the video was directed by Picky Talarico, better known for directing Latin mega-stars’ videos and high-profile commercials.
Here’s the video:
Thank you so much, this was very interesting. I was actually born in Madrid ( not telling you what year though!) but moved around europe and lastly settled in Britain when I was a teenager. I dont remember much of the few years I was in spain, but the smell of spanish food always seems to get me going or something. Funny, how I dont remember anything except the smells,isn’t it! I even found a whole internet site dedicated to spanish recipe, which gave me great delight and thought I really should to share. Anyway, thank you again. I’ll get my husband to add your cast to my rss thing…