Teder FM is an online radio station and cultural hub that, for the past eight years, has served as a locus for some of Tel Aviv’s most exciting, groundbreaking music. DJ and Teder co-founder Itai Drai takes us inside the station’s early years and its current status as a Tel Aviv institution.

Begin transmission

Teder.fm started 8 years ago as a summer pop-up radio station. Since then, Teder has found a permanent location and hosts wild parties year round centered around Israel’s best local DJs and producers. “Teder has finally found a home,” says Teder co-founder and DJ Itai Drai.

As Teder has grown and become, as Drai says, more professional, its core staff have transformed from folks with “day jobs and part time DJs [into people] who are now running the alternative music game here in Israel.” Teder’s founding team also includes Fortuna Records head Zach Bar, DJ Shlomi Zidan and journalist Dror Sher.

Eight years ago, says Drai, “there wasn’t a real online radio station focusing on alternative music. And there were no bars with the kind of concept we had — a bar driven by content.”

The Tel Aviv scene

Since then, a few other radio stations have popped up, and according to Drai, a few of them are actually pretty good. But that doesn’t mean Teder doesn’t still hold down a special niche on the Tel Aviv music scene. “We’re trying to be a house for art and music and everything we can,” Drai says.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BVC2T44H9SW/?taken-at=111215

Teder’s focus on groundbreaking original sounds as helped foster a hyper-creative musical atmosphere that revolves around artists like Red Axes and Moscoman, both of whom continue to bring the “Tel Aviv sound” around the world. “We grew up together,” says Drai. “[It’s] a generation that started when Teder was starting.”

The sound of Tel Aviv, of course, doesn’t stop at club music. “But a lot of the stuff we’re interested in has some local thing,” Drai says. “Either it’s in Hebrew, or… Middle Eastern music from Fortuna, stuff that happened in the ‘70s that didn’t get any exposure”

Listen on for a conversation about why local artists have been singing in Hebrew more often, the roots of Tel Aviv’s unique hip hop scene, and Teder’s place in it all.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BaJKj1JngJ8/?taken-at=111215\

Playlist:

Buttering Trio – Unexperienced
Atar – 24
Swissa – Husham Love
Cohen@Mushon – Drop Song
Red Axes – Hamem Oti (ft. Hamasah Halavan)

 

MIX: