SDEROT, Israel: The underground Israeli pop-rock music scene seems to start here, in a bomb shelter set in the center of town.
No matter how loudly the teenagers hammer at their drums or pluck at their guitars, the green tin that is meant to protect residents from incoming rockets also works as a sound barrier for the funky music.
It is not unusual for Israeli towns to turn shelters into community centers of some sort.
But Sderot, just outside the Gaza Strip, is one of the few cities where such shelters are still used frequently.
And in Sderock, as the shelter-turned-music studio is called, the teenagers grapple with the dueling realities that have made the city famous: the music that comes out of it and the rockets that come into it.
"This is the safest fun place in the city," said Nir Oliel, 21, who has played guitar for several years.
"It is also where everyone great came from."
In the Israeli public consciousness, Sderot is a place of poverty and danger. It has been barraged by more than 4,000 rockets in the last six years, including nearly 200 since the shaky cease-fire that began in November.
Six people have died in the attacks and dozens of homes have been damaged.
And yet Sderot is also the hometown of a pop culture hero of the moment: Kobi Oz, the lead singer of the Teapacks, the Israeli pick for the popular Eurovision song contest. Oz made headlines in March when organizers of the contest suggested that his song "Push the Button" might be disqualified for carrying an inappropriate political message.
The song riffs on the Israeli fear of being obliterated by an atomic bomb. Oz, who is also the host of a weekday morning news program, makes no apologies for the lyrics, which he says are meant to reflect the "hot politics" of the region.
"There are not sweet love songs to play," he said in a telephone interview.
"If you are here, you have to have all kinds of conflict inside the music. Our way to deal with it is to laugh in the face or terror and make rock n roll for the craziness."
Oz, with two platinum albums in Israel, is by far the most successful musician to come out of Sderot, but he is hardly alone.
He got his start with Sfatayim, which means Lips, a band made up of young artists from Sderot who played Moroccan music. On Israeli radio it is possible to hear more than half a dozen bands from this city, quite a feat for a place with a population of about 25,000.
The musicians who grew up in the 1980s are the children of immigrants from North Africa and other parts of the Middle East.
They blended their New World guitar and drum with their Old World counterparts - an oud and a goatskin-covered drum called a darbukah - to create what critics called ethnic-pop. Those who perform it say it is "pashut Yisraeli," simply Israeli.
When the Qassam rockets - 31 kilograms, or about 70 pounds, of steel each - began landing here, much of the Israeli mainstream seemed unperturbed, favoring a less aggressive military stance.
After the rockets started landing on schools and houses, the residents grew increasingly frustrated with the government.
Encouraged by their hawkish mayor, Eli Moyal, they set up protest tents, crying out, "Conquer Gaza now," and demanded that the Israeli military take action. When Israel did take action, it did not help much: After a lull, the rockets returned.
The teenagers in Sderock seem less convinced than their elders that more force will calm their lives down. Their music captures their angst.
"Don t Break," a song one group recorded for Independence Day celebrations, focuses on their sense of defiance and fear:
"We won t break, we won t be afraid," the chorus goes.
This war, who is extending his hand?
They do nothing, when it comes to you."
The verse ends with "Shma Yisrael," which translated literally is a command: "Hear, O Israel.
" It is also a reference to the Jewish prayer that is said during daily worship and on one s deathbed.
With the success of so many musicians in the last decade, the city has poured considerable resources into cultivating more talent. The city estimates that it spends $30,000, a considerable portion of its budget, on music.
Chaim Uliel and Micha Biton, native sons who became successful performers and producers, teach classes here.
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