The rock musical and the beginnings of rock music in Israel in the early 70s

Abstract

This article uncovers an untold story of how rock music came to the big stages and national broadcasting studios of a country transitioning from the European sphere and a socialist ethos to the American sphere and a market-oriented culture. In demonstrating how the rock musical preceded, anticipated, and likely enabled rock music in Israel, this article will focus on five rock musicals from the early 1970s. We argue that the rock musical introduced a friendly and commercially oriented version of rock and rock’n’roll music and its antics, and thus enabled wide crowds to adopt a foreign-born culture such as rock. By the end of that process in the mid-1970s, the broad acceptance of American rock music and particularly a socially involved rock aesthetic had emerged through the overlooked and unlikely genre of the rock musical.