Global Beat: Y & I

Yula Beeri came to New York City as a teenager to disappear. It’s a familiar story, sure, but also one with a twist: When she landed in the U.S. at 19, she was leaving behind an already-successful career as a model and actress in her home country of Israel.

“I’d just done this commercial campaign, and my face was on every corner of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa. There was no escape,” she says now, calling from her apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. “Musically, I was very shy, and I didn’t want to be immediately pegged as ‘the model-turned-musician.’ So I had to do it in a place where nobody knew who I was. My uncle booked me a ticket to come visit, and I’ve been here ever since.”

Beeri’s husband and musical partner, Mississippi[1]born percussionist Isaac Gardner, also sought a form of disappearance in New York City—tall, thin and talented, he was a natural fit to join the famous Blue Man Group. The gig brought Gardner and Beeri together. (She was working in the theater; he was drumming onstage.) Fast forward more than 10 years, and the musical and life partners have finally released Holy Vol. 1, their first EP as the duo Y&I.

The music on Holy Vol. 1 is boiled down to the basics: Beeri’s mesmerizing, chanting melodies and buzzing bass flourishes, Gardner’s deep rhythms, a mix of barking horns and some looping guitars. It comes off as form of musical essential oil—10 years of their creative partnership in a whole array of different bands distilled into a crystal[1]clear representation of where they are now. And it’s potent as hell.

Things weren’t always so simplified. When Gardner noticed Beeri in 2009 after a Blue Man Group show, he hesitated to introduce himself—instead, he checked out her band, the cabaret-punk act NaNuchKA, and waited for her to put the pieces together. She eventually realized there was a Blue Man sans makeup showing up at her shows, and he soon approached her in the theater.

“It was classic Shakespeare,” she laughs. “Take the mask off and reveal yourself!”

Gardner and Beeri quickly launched a musical partnership that steered them through a lifetime’s worth of bands, collaborations and collectives. They co-created a whole musical family in New York and played relentlessly. Throughout the 2010s, there wasn’t much that the couple didn’t try: Beeri toured and wrote with The World/Inferno Friendship Society, composed and staged a rock opera and become close with a variety of musicians in the Daptone orbit. Along with Gardner, she also organized fashion shows, opened a Brooklyn performance space with their Extended Family artist community and played with friends in Seasonal Beast, Star Fucking Hipsters and a handful of other acts.

The constant musical movement with an evolving community was part of the plan—a need, really.

“My desire to play different characters is essential,” Beeri says. “I can’t just eat steak and ice cream. I need salads, fruits. I need all of it. And I’ve always worked with people that I loved. It’s never just music; it’s always personal. I need to feel like we’re playing together—actually playing, like kids. I want to be able to play music with you because you’re my friend and my family, not vice versa.”

In 2019, Beeri and Gardner reached a crossroads. Collaborating with other musicians was still a blast, but all the scheduling, coordination and logistics of working with a shapeshifting group of friends had become exhausting.

“After years of playing with at least four people, and at times up to 35, we wanted to move faster and be lighter,” Beeri says. “Plus, the constant of all these projects had always been Isaac and me.”

Just like that, Y&I was born. But the key was finding what they sounded like when left to their own devices. The couple lifted what they loved from prior projects (dizzying percussion, a stray hip-hop verse, playful ska arrangements), and crafted songs with one thing in mind: “We know the rhythm always has to be the spine,” Beeri says.

However, they still invited friends to add some extra flavor to Y&I—Holy Vol. 1’s first cut, “Cub,” is built upon an unsteadying 5/4 rhythm recorded on a phone by friend and collaborator John Bollinger—but the sound of Y&I is, without a doubt, Beeri and Garnder.

The boundaries between partners and bandmates can get blurry, and sometimes disappear altogether. Without anyone else to rely on, Y&I are free to create as much as they want, which has led to regular livestreamed performances. And a new EP, Holy Vol. 2, is already in the works.

“It’s been so nice. Even though I do push her to just hang out sometimes,” Gardner says with a laugh. “We balance each other out pretty well.”

If Y&I has boiled down the couple’s musical style to its essential elements, then other avenues have allowed them to open up and experiment in entirely new ways—jamming and Judaism. Since 2019, Beeri has played in the house band and served as a cantorial soloist for the annual Jewish High Holidays services held at New York’s Brooklyn Bowl, placing her onstage alongside members of Balkan Beat Box, Antibalas and a mix of others. She also started rooting deeper into her own Jewish background and formed Indiga, a trio of Jewish singers who musically interpret the ancient, sacred text of The Song of Songs.

“I learned to appreciate the jam through these events,” Beeri says. “It’s opened my mind to leaving things open in our own shows. And it’s helped me understand that if we enjoy it, the audience probably will, too.”

More than 20 years after fleeing Israel, Yula Beeri has found a side door back into her own spiritual and cultural identity.

“I’d been walking around with a Star of David on my neck for most of my life,” she says. “But I’d never experienced Jewishness like this before.”

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