Publication on german "Gema Virtous" Magazine 
3/2020

E. Alony

Just like everything we say,  do or do not do is political, everything I am, do, read , think and speak about and listen to ends up flowing into my musical Universe. They are all completely intertwined. 

What are boundaries anyway?

Restrictions - from the outside  (from society/ family etc. ) But also restrictions from the inside- shackles I put on myself through my own conception and misconceptions, rights and wrongs, what I take as appropriate or inappropriate and so on. Sometimes it’s quite difficult to make out which restriction is of which origin.

Musically I always DEEPLY disliked the idea of "Boundaries": thinking in genres, in boxes. I find it lazy, limiting, uninspiring, and mostly a very poor image of the musical multilayered and dynamic world we live in, where everything IS connected to everything else.

My work lives exactly  in the spaces between the “BOXES” we are trained to think in. If it’s through mixing acoustic music with electronics, or mixing Israeli influences with jazz , or in my previous  Project “Handel-Fast Forward “ taking Handels music and putting it in a modern day context. My new focus is in mixing humour and depth in my music. Seemingly, two polarities that seem not to sit well with each other - but that’s the challenge which actually represents life- being light and heavy, funny and sad, hopeful and discouraged-

all at the same time.

On a personal level, I push boundaries every day. By not living in my homeland, by defining myself as a Jew and an Atheist at the same time, by being conscious and outspoken about my role as a Jewish / Musician / Composer / Woman / Foreigner / Israeli in Germany. By insisting on expressing my own critical opinions- which often times don't really fit into any of the groups I theoretically would belong to.

The most difficult and yet the greatest thing about belonging to several minorities at the same time, is this feeling of always looking at everything from the outside: it NEVER gets comfortable- but it always allows me perspectives that I wouldn't have been able to see from the inside.