Kutiman

Kutiman was born in 1982 in Jerusalem

Ophir Kutiel was born in Jerusalem in 1982 and grew up in Zichron Yaacov. His father, Haim Kutiel, is a geography professor at the University of Haifa, and his mother, Pua Bar, is an ecology professor at Ben-Gurion University. He began piano at 6 and drums and guitar at 14.

He left high school for music and studied jazz at Rimon. Ronen Sabo introduced him to funk and Afrobeat, and in 2003 they went to Jamaica, where he worked with Stephen and Damien Marley.

In 2006 he signed with the German label Melting Pot Music, which released his debut album in 2007. In 2009 he put out an online project that mixed samples of amateur YouTube videos into new songs, and Time magazine listed it among the 50 inventions of the year.

He later filmed local musicians for video portraits of cities such as Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Krakow and Tokyo. In 2014 he released a second online album made of YouTube clips. In 2016 he released his second studio album on his own label, Siyal Music.