(JTA) — The world’s first Israeli-Palestinian boy band landed in Los Angeles to start recording songs on Oct. 6, the day before Hamas attacked Israel and kicked off a war in Gaza, a new feature from Billboard magazine reveals.
As1one—pronounced “as one”—is a group of four Jewish Israelis and two Palestinians, one Muslim and one Christian. The project was first envisioned by music executives James Diener and Ken Levitan as an Israeli version of BTS—the seven-piece Korean pop group that has reached superstardom around the world—and has been in development for a couple of years.
Diener, who worked in top positions at RCA and Columbia Records, and Levitan, who has managed groups ranging from the Kings of Leon to The B-52s, held auditions across Israel starting in late 2021. They didn’t set out to cast an equal number of Jewish and Palestinian Israelis, instead looking for the most talented singers out of hundreds who auditioned in a country they describe as ripe for a global music explosion.
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