Living authors: On the authenticity of Israeli rockers

‘Authenticity’ is a term often used loosely to evaluate musicians and products vis-à-vis social orders and genre conventions. Alternately, I claim that authenticity is better understood as a quality that arises from the experience of engagement between audiences, performers and musical products. My discussion focuses on one case study: a joint concert of the Israeli rock veterans Shalom Hanoch and Shlomo Artzi; authors whose repertoire is imagined to signify both their personality and a true sense of Israeliness. I therefore associate authenticity with the idea of subjectivity, the ability of a singer-songwriter to work within social order and to redefine it.