Ehud Banai

Jerusalem, Givatayim, and six months underground

Banai was born on 31 March 1953 in Jerusalem, into an Iranian-Jewish family and into the extended Banai clan that has supplied Israeli stage and screen with performers for three generations. His father, Yaakov Banai, was an actor. The family moved to Givatayim when Banai was four, and at ten he started on the cello.

He was drafted in 1971 and served with the Nahal infantry brigade. After his discharge he went to London and spent roughly six months busking in the Underground — an apprenticeship that shows up later in the plainness of his guitar playing and in a habit of writing on the move. Back in Israel he auditioned for Shlomo Bar's Habreira Hativ'it and was turned down, then in 1982 put together a first band with the singer Avi Matos.

What followed was slow rather than sudden. Banai was into his thirties before anything he recorded reached a national audience.

The Refugees, and the record that set the terms

The breakthrough came in 1986 with the single "Ir Miklat" (City of Refuge), and in 1987 with the self-titled debut made with his band Haplitim — The Refugees. It put angular new wave guitar against oriental rhythmic patterns and a lyric voice that treated biblical material as available raw stock rather than as decoration: cities of refuge, the golden calf, protest and grievance sitting in the same verse. Israeli critics have held it up ever since as a founding document of the country's rock canon.

Two records arrived in 1989. "Karov" (Close) pulled Dylan and his family's Persian-Jewish inheritance into the same frame, and "Mitachat Siach HaYasmin" (Under the Jasmine Bush) was made with his father. Then came "Hashlishi" in 1992, "Od Me'at" in 1996 and "Tip Tipa" in 1998.

"Ane Li" (Answer Me) in 2004 was the commercial and critical peak of his middle period. A triple live album, "Mamshich Linso'a" (Keeps On Moving), followed in 2006, and in 2008 "Shir Chadash" turned to traditional Jewish song, including Shlomo Carlebach melodies — a record that tracked his own move towards Orthodox observance in the early 2000s. A documentary, "On the Move", premiered at the Jerusalem Film Festival that same year.

The later run is "Resisei Laila" (2011), "Beofek Acher" (2012), "Esh Ktana" (2015), a 2017 collaboration with Berry Sakharof, the same year's "EB=MC2" made with the English guitarist Michael Chapman, and "Holech Umitkarev" in 2020. Banai writes both words and music for almost everything he records. Two of the best-known songs have specific addressees: "Blues Kna'ani" was written in memory of Meir Ariel, and "HaYom" for his wife.

Prizes, three books and a weekly hour on army radio

The institutional recognition arrived in clusters. He took the Ministry of Education and Culture prize in 2005, and across the 2004–05 ACUM awards won singer of the year, lyricist of the year and album of the year for "Ane Li". In 2018 ACUM gave him its Ehud Manor lifetime achievement award for a creator, citing his ability to tell stories in song and fill them with colours drawn from across the Israeli musical spectrum. In 2024 he received the Kol HaEmek prize.

He has also published prose: "Remembering Almost Everything" (Keter, 2001), "Ze HaMakom", and a third book, "Sefer HaBatzal HaYarok" (Book of Green Onions), in September 2024.

Since September 2012 he has presented a weekly programme on Galei Tzahal, IDF Radio, also called "Ze HaMakom" — This Is The Place. It has become the channel through which he speaks publicly about anything other than his own records, and in July 2026 it produced his loudest intervention in years.

Two summers, two returns

In August 2025 the 1987 debut came back in an unexpected form. The producer and bassist Beno Hendler rebuilt the album as dub — eight tracks from the original plus the 2024 single "Matchil LeHit'orer" (Beginning to Awaken) — with Spikey Zizelun on trumpet, Ayal Talmudi on saxophone, Yaron Ozna on trombone and Michael Avigail on drums, and guest turns from Odelia, Miriam-Hava, Ayla and Zohar Banai. Banai's own account is that this was the version he had imagined for the songs back in the early 1980s and never got to make. The project also became a touring act in its own right, billed as Ehud Banai, Beno Hendler and the Dub Refugees.

Then on 28 July 2026 he released his own recording of "Atuf BeRachamim" — a lyric he wrote roughly four decades ago while he and his wife were expecting their first daughter, prompted by an ultrasound scan, and gave to Rita, who released it with Rami Kleinstein's music on her 1988 album "Yemei HaTom". This was the first time Banai had sung it himself on record. The trigger was a visit to the Bell Caves at Beit Guvrin National Park, whose interior struck him as womb-like; the accompanying video was filmed inside them with the Nature and Parks Authority.

The single sits on a mini-album, "HaTzlil HaShmini" (The Eighth Sound), which functions as the soundtrack to a video-art exhibition of the same name installed in the caves, made with the video artist Ronen Tanchum. Alongside "Atuf BeRachamim" it carries newly arranged recordings of "Avi Lach", "Al Tefached", "Mamshich Linso'a" and "Demama Daka", threaded with spoken passages in Banai's voice. He has said the record is meant to be heard in one sitting rather than shuffled, as something closer to being spoken to than listened to. Nothing about it was planned; it came out of the exhibition commission.

Three days before the release, on 25 July 2026, Banai used his radio hour to attack a wave of AI-generated political attack videos then circulating online — one issued on behalf of Benjamin Netanyahu aimed at the former IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot, another from Religious Zionism targeting the Democrats MK Gilad Kariv. He described the Eisenkot clip, in which the former chief of staff runs towards a boy who might be his dead son and then embraces Mansour Abbas instead, and noted that its makers went on to talk about unity. "I have no problem embracing Mansour Abbas," he said. For a musician who has generally kept out of party politics in public, it was treated as a departure, and Israeli culture desks framed the mini-album that followed against it.

Three bands, one catalogue

Banai currently tours in at least three configurations, and the choice of format changes the show substantially. The main one is the band show, with Noshi Paz on guitars and musical production, Avta Brihon on saxophone and vocals, Adi Gigi on bass, Idit Mintzer on trumpet, Shachar Haziza on drums and Shaul Eshet on keyboards, with Banai on guitars, harmonica and vocals.

"Kav Achori" (Back Line) is the opposite proposition: a group built from musicians who normally work in support roles — Kory Ben Yehuda on vocals and drums, Erez Shmidya on vocals and guitar, Zion Mizrahi on guitar, David Binyamini on bass and vocals, under Kwami's musical direction — playing folk, acoustic punk and dub, drawing on B-sides from Banai's catalogue, the other members' own songs and Hebrew translations of punk standards. The Dub Refugees line-up is the third.

The autumn 2026 diary runs across all of it. A Sukkot sunset show with the ensemble billed as Geesh at Ampi Ein Hod on 29 September sold out. On 1 October the band plays Skyline at Ariel Sharon Park in Tel Aviv-Jaffa, doors at 18:30 for a 19:30 start, with Zohar Banai opening — an outdoor site with a long walk in from the car parks. Then on 15–17 October he appears at InDnegev at Mitzpe Gvulot, the festival's twentieth edition and its first at full size after the reduced format it ran following October 7, with around 120 acts across five stages, tickets between ₪490 and ₪570, and a tribute set for Aviv Mark, who died earlier in 2026. Rita, Monica Sex, Nono, Lola Marsh, Alma Gov and Daniela Spektor are also on the bill. Earlier form for the larger-scale work includes a 2022 run with Tom Cohen and the Jerusalem East and West Orchestra.