The movement to create a repertoire of Hebrew songs, and specifically a distinctive musical style for those songs, was seen not merely as a creative outlet, but as a national imperative. This imperative – which influenced the literature, theater and graphic arts of the period as well as music – was to seek cultural roots of the new Israeli nation in the culture of the ancient Hebrews of the Bible. The characteristics of the new Hebrew style, contended composer Yitzhak Edel, are "remnants of ancient Hebrew music that have struggled to survive the years of diaspora... the primitive life of our settlers, who broke away from the European civilization, sought a musical expression that would suit their world view."