Culture

An unusually high ratio of singers, instrumentalists, composers and poets have come from Sderot.

Israeli poet Shimon Adaf was born in Sderot, as well as the actor and entertainer Maor Cohen. 

Adaf dedicated a poem to the city in his 1997 bookIcarus' Monologue.Several popular bands have been formed by musicians who practiced in Sderot's bomb shelters as teenagers. 

Because Sderot is a poor, immigrant town with high unemployment experiencing a dramatic musical success as bands blend international sounds with the music of their Moroccan immigrant parents, it has been compared to Liverpool in the sixties.



Among the notable bands are Teapacks Knesiyat Hasekhel andSfatayim. 

Well-known musicians from Sderot include Shlomo Bar, Kobi Oz, Haïm Ulliel and Smadar Levi. 

The winner of the Israeli version of "American Idol" 2011 was Hagit Yaso, a local Sderot singer of Ethiopian origin.

In 2007, Jewish-American documentary filmmaker Laura Bialis immigrated to Israel, and decided to settle in Sderot "to find out what it means to live in a never-ending war, and to document the lives and music of musicians under fire." 

Her film Sderot: Rock in the Red Zone focuses on young musicians living under the daily threat of Qassams.