“Welcome
Number one, body movement (funky)
No sitting still (dance, bro)
Number two, only speak in glory (yeah)
Leave your baggage at home (none of that deep shit)
Number three (nigga), don’t tap the glass
Roked, roked, roked l’Elohim
Roked, roked, roked m’Elohim”
– Tyler the Creator’s “Big Poe,” released July 21, 2025
For those following hip hop, or Israeli music for that matter, rapper Tyler the Creator’s sampling of Shye Ben Tzur’s song “Roked” was a notable creative intersection in a genre known for its eclectic blending of content and sound. Taken from Ben Tzur’s 2015 album Junun, a collaboration with Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood and Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich, “Roked” exalts in man’s relationship with god, while “Big Poe” exalts in the ego of man as greater than all else.
It is a dichotomy that is hard to ignore. If “Big Poe” is a celebration of self in the most debauched sense, then “Roked,” as in the album Junun, is the exact opposite – an attempt to reach spiritual oneness. As Ben Tzur puts it when describing his music, “It is something transformative, a feeling of wanting to rise, to unite to some kind of self-sustenance with the greater thing.”
It’s early evening, and the 50-year-old Ben Tzur is seated on the sidewalk in front of a popular Jaffa café bookstore, dressed in a white button-down shirt, pouring himself a black coffee from a copper finjan. With an excellent new EP out called Yom and his highest profile ever, thanks to the Tyler the Creator sample, he is at ease talking about his music, his career, and the path he’s taken to get here.
The idea of a transformative experience has long been a part of Ben Tzur’s orientation. Born in New York to Israeli student parents, Ben Tzur found himself back in Israel at age four, when the family returned and his parents divorced. Ben Tzur’s creative journey began as a nine-year-old, when he first read Nisim and Niflaot. A popular Israeli children’s book by Leah Goldberg, it tells the story of a boy named Nisim and a monkey named Niflaot. “I remember that Nisim played harmonica. I think he was quite lonely, and when he was playing the harmonica, he created his own world for himself, and that image imprinted on me – the notion that someone can basically create a world around himself which depends on nothing from the external world,” Ben Tzur said.
As there was nowhere to take harmonica lessons, Ben Tzur settled on guitar. By high school, he was listening to bands like Genesis and psychedelic music, and, like many budding musicians, he was forming his own band. However, it was at the age of 19, when he attended a Jerusalem concert of Indian classical flutist Hariprasad Chaurasia and tabla player Zakir Hussain, that his path was set. “I was in awe, and decided I wanted to travel to India and see the source of this sublime art and music.”
Ben Tzur made India his base
From the age of 19 until 2012, Ben Tzur made India his primary base, marrying the daughter of a Sufi sheikh and spending time in Ajmer, a city in Rajasthan known for its association with the tomb of Sufi saint Mu’in al-Din Chishti. “On the premises of his tomb, there is an entire tradition where music is used by Sufi singers and musicians as an instrument of worship. This is the Qawwali music, and it resonated with me. I stayed there, and for many years, it became a center of life for me.” It was during those years that he also created his band, the Rajasthan Express, made up of Qawwali musicians. “That has been a journey,” Ben Tzur explains, saying he has known most of the members for over 25 years. “Each member is a story of a search, a meeting of hearts.”
Ben Tzur’s freshman album was 2003’s Heeyam, which featured Sufi melodies sung in Hebrew. His sophomore album, 2010’s Shoshan, was a mix of influences Qawwali and western, sung in Hebrew and Urdu, and received critical acclaim in the world music category, as well as in India. Junun, the 2015 collaboration between Greenwood and Godrich, was also turned into a documentary of the same name by renowned director Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights, Magnolia).
Says Ben Tzur, “Anderson was filming with another artist, so they set up a photography studio. We were doing the recording.” This all took place at Mehrangarh Fort in Jodhpur, where the artists and crew spent three weeks living and creating. “Nigel Godrich made his own studio at the fort, which he had with Sam Petts-Davies (musical producer who has worked with Greenwood and Radiohead’s Thom Yorke). Sam was working as Nigel’s right hand on that project. So it was a whole kind of residency, a creative journey.”
Ben Tzur says the Junun project was one of the best experiences of his career. “The idea of using a creative project as an excuse to create a world that is a bubble, which allows a creative process – that for me is one of the most fortunate and happiest moments in life.” The release of Junun was followed by a tour, with Ben Tzur, Greenwood, and the Rajasthan Express opening for Radiohead shows on its 2017 European leg and 2018 North American tour.
Junun was followed by 2023’s Halel, which Ben Tzur describes as “songs and poetic segments, which kind of tie it into some sort of journey that you can see from beginning to end.” The album was filmed within the rich acoustics of the Augusta Victoria Church in Jerusalem. It includes a solo version of “Roked,” as well as a song titled “To Pray.” Yet when asked if his songs are prayers, Ben Tzur answers that while for him most of his songs are “expressions of my prayers,” he is “not sure how they echo outside. I do know that some people might connect to them, they might sing them on auspicious days.”
And sometimes, salvation is less about transformation through a greater power, and more about being present in ordinary, daily ritual. With the release of Yom, co-produced by Ben Eilon, Ben Tzur talks about his return to life in Israel, especially once COVID hit and changed his work.
“I found myself without my musicians, without the culture that I’d been drawn to and nurtured by. Everything was different,” he says, sipping a soda water as he talks.
Ben Tzur says he found himself walking through the city, and that it helped him focus. The new album includes the songs “Yeshua,” which talks about the mundanities of a Saturday morning, and “Yom,” on which daughter Uriya did the string arrangements, and which examines faith in daily life. “These songs walked with me for a long time, as I walked the streets. And I would listen to them and I would imagine them, and they would evoke something in me.”
Both songs seemingly exist in a world where the spiritual is hidden from view, a contrast to his previous work. “This kind of brings you to practice the spiritual values that you try to embrace,” Ben Tzur says, “To experience the present, the moment, and be as useful as you can and as grateful as you can for the fact that you are working on something new.”
Shye Ben Tzur will be performing at Traklin in Pardes Hanna-Karkur on October 18, and at Hameretz2 in Tel Aviv on November 19.