Yasmine Hamdan, "Beirut"

Yasmine's self-title album is scheduled to drop, in France, in a couple of days. (One can download it via iTunes France. Yasmine belonged to the great Lebanese band Soap Kills from 1997-2005 (though the band is not officially dead) and put out the album Arabology as YAS with Mirwais Ahmadzaï in 2009. This song, "Beirut," is from the new album. It's very sweet, evokes the beautiful Beirut of the good old days, ruined, or at least under threat, from economic crises and a spirit of materialism. The video posted on youtube comes with the Arabic lyrics and an English translation. Love it!

   

بيروت
شرب العرق
 شرب العرق
 لعب الورق
 خيل السبق
 صيد الحمام
 رسمال بيروت

 لبس الغوى
 شم الهوى
 اكل الهوى
 شاغل عقول
 سكان بيروت

 بيروت
 زهرة من غير أوانها
 بيروت
محلاها ومحلا زمانها
 بيروت
 يا حينها وياضيعانها
 تدبل

 ما في عمل
 ما في امل
 برك الجمل
 ركب النحس
 تجار بيروت

 الغندرة
 والفنغرة
 والبهورة
كتر البطر
 هالك بيروت

Beirut
Arak drinkin'

Card playin'
Racehorse cheerin'

Pigeon huntin'

The essence of Beirut

Seduction crowd

Cruisin' around
Foolin' about

Tis' all there is on the minds
Of the citizens of Beirut

Beirut

A flower off its terrain

Beirut
Oh her beauty, her good old days

Beirut

That dire end, all a waste

Withering

All unemployed
Hopeless
Ruined and rusted
Jinxed and accursed
Those dealers of Beirut

Oh the Strutting
That fancy livin'
Excess of splurging
Exploded vanity
Smothering Beirut

Days of Rage: Dance Music from Iraq, Syria and Lebanon

I found this via Weirdo Records, which offers lots of interesting and wacky recordings from the Middle East that it is often difficult to find via other sources. I very much like this mix of mostly debke music from the Mashriq. The CD is available from Weirdo for 5 dollars only. You can listen to a long segment here. Highly recommended. I only wish there was some information on the artists.

Golden Beirut: New Sounds from Lebanon

Read about this CD, from norient and Outhere records, here.

'a young generation of musicians from Beirut that is tired of war, fed up with politics, sick of religious madness, and angry about Euro-American exoticism.'

Bou7hayrat Tabarayya: rap from Lebanon (Ram6 a.k.a. Al Hamorabi) and Palestine (boikutt)

This is one rugged track, great collabo between Lebanese producer/rapper Al Hamorabi and the Palestinian boikutt (ex-Ramallah Underground, now a member of Tashweesh.) Check out Al Hamorabi's myspace page and/or his facebook page for more info.

Soap Kills, Qalbi (with English subtitles)

Great song, essential band. Typically described as "Lebanese trip-hop." The two members of the band, Zeid Hamdan and Yasmine Hamdan, have been working on solo projects since the mid-aughties. It's unclear whether or when they will get back together. In the meantime, check this out.

Ziad Hamdan / ShiftZ

Please check out Ziad Hamdan (ex-Soap Kills) and his band ShiftZ on ReverbNation. Music to listen to and videos to watch. Esla7hat featuring Maryam Saleh is especially terrific.

Lebanese rap group Fareeq al-Atrash

Some great beatboxing here. The group help raise money for the Free Gaza Movement, below. Love the use of the live instruments.

A review of Fareeq al-Atrash's album "Fareeq al-Atrash (pre-album) + a link to download is here. More on the group from BabelMed here.

More on the tuffar

From an essential article, "Hizballah's Domestic Growing Pains," by Marlin Dick, via Middle East Report Online.

On Hizballah and the tuffar:

Meanwhile, Hizballah has largely washed its hands of the tuffar -- outlaws in the northern Bekaa Valley involved in cannabis cultivation. The tuffarhave remained aloof from both the government and Hizballah, having retreated to the outer reaches of Lebanon, where they represent more a voice of protest than a plan of action. The popularity of their cause stems from corruption and waste in the central government, the lack of profitable alternatives to drug farming and the specter of nearly 40,000 outstanding warrants hanging over the heads of Bekaa residents. Hizballah leader Sayyid Hasan Nasrallah has demanded an amnesty or another solution to the warrants issue.

During and after the civil war, Syrian military and intelligence officials managed the unruly clans in the northern Bekaa, whose turf battles had a propensity for violence, and since Syria’s 2005 withdrawal, Hizballah has not filled the vacuum. While continuing to sponsor reconciliation between the area’s clans, it has not acted to end the disturbances once and for all. Hizballah is not pulling the strings of the tuffar movement, but rather eyeing it warily as an offshoot of the network of Bekaa tribes it has yet to fully coopt. Perhaps because of the charged sectarian climate of recent years, the party has not lobbied hard for the canceling of outstanding warrants -- a move that would benefit the Shi‘i community. Meanwhile, Hizballah has refused to condone the acts of violent Shi‘i clan members or criminals, or to protect the mini-industry of car theft centered in the village of Barital. Clashes between the Lebanese army and outlaws have become more frequent since Syria’s withdrawal and Hizballah has generally offered its tacit blessing for army intervention in towns like Baalbek, where clan members have engaged in shootouts in the streets, sometimes with rocket-propelled grenades.

Touffar, "Habr 'Awaraq"

photo: Sam Tarling

Touffar are a terrific rap group from Ba'albak, Lebanon (I had thought they were Palestinian, but it seems not). I particularly like this song. Unfortunately, I don't have the time (or adequate skills) to try to work on translating and making sense of it, or other Touffar videos (there are lots on youtube). Here's an article in Arabic on the Touffar phenomenon (again, lack of time prevents me from further work.) So this note serves as (a) an expression of my fondness for the song in question (b) a kind of placeholder and (c) hopefully an incitement to someone who knows the dialect well to translate the song into English. The lyrics of the song, helpfully, are present as subtitles in this video.

The first I heard of Touffar (or Tuffar), was from Angry Arab, who wrote this on Nov. 9, 2009:

There is a movement that needs to be covered more in the press. It is the Tuffar movement in the Ba`albak region. Some [c]overage of the movement suffers from prejudices and from stereotypes about them as criminals and drug dealers. Even an article in Al-Akhbar a few months ago did not deviate from that norm. Tafar is being very poor, or penniless. Tuffar characterizes a movement associated with the Ja`far clan in Ba`albak and champions the poor and neglected in the region. It is Shi`ite but not with Hizbullah and not with the Amal movement, the two Shi`ite political groupings in the region. Many in Lebanon blame (often unfairly) the car theft and drug dealings on Tuffar. Tuffar is a lawless movement that champions rebellion against the government, and is more political than often assumes. A supporter sent me rappings by Tuffar which speak to their sentiments and feelings and political expressions. There is this one and this one. Listen carefully to the lyrics. By the way, the Lebanese accent of that region is my favorite accent from Lebanon. It is close to Fusha and I like how they stretch words: so jurd becomes jooord.

And after a little searching, I found a link to an article by Josh Wood on Touffar from Esquire Middle East. You can download it here. I excerpt below some interesting bits.

The disintegration of the legitimate economy means cannabis cultivation, gun-running, banditry and petrol smuggling have become a way of life for many in the [Ba'albeck] region. The illegal economy is complicated by the presence of a highly complicated system of clan politics – which, when combined with a general population that has more guns than the armies of many small nations, often leads to violence.

“Touffar” means outlaws, a reference to the men and women who have resorted to arms to protect their livelihood and land at all costs, both against the Lebanese government and others who wish to impede. It is a culture in the Bekaa resulting from absolute desperation, which the band points to in their music. The other side of the coin is the pride people feel to this region. Their loyalty to the land and to resistance are also major themes in Touffar’s music. This has helped create bridges between their music and unlikely listeners, such as Hezbollah, the Lebanese Party of God...

In Beirut, I finally meet up with Touffar at a currently hip “communist” bar in Hamra that serves up economysized beers at bourgeoisie prices, yet still attracts members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine along with plenty of Che-obsessed youths wrapped in kaffiyas.

Nasserdyn has long hair and a skinny face and enthusiastically talks about the band with good English. The author of most of the band’s lyrics, Jaafar, is slightly bearded and more reserved than Nasserdyn, butting-in at random moments of inspiration. While they are hip hop artists, the guys aren’t wearing bling, baggy clothes or stiff baseball caps. They opt instead for strikingly conventional t-shirts and shorts, making it hard for me to spot them as I walk into the bar. Together, Nasserdyn and Jaafar make up Touffar. They’re hanging out with a member of Katibe 5, a well-known local Palestinian rap group that emerged from Burj al-Barajneh, Beirut’s largest Palestinian refugee camp. The Palestinian refugees, numbering up to four hundred thousand in Lebanon, have a natural kinship in poverty and disenfranchisement with many from the Bekaa Valley.

Jaafar and Nasserdyn cut to the chase and lay out the essence of the group: “Touffar is the way of life that is outside of the law,” Nasserdyn explains. “We are the people the government wants to put in jail, and we don’t want to give ourselves up — we’re like outlaws.” Jaafar and Nasserdyn deny ever running into trouble with the law or engaging in any (really) illegal activities themselves. But they say that they took on the persona of outlaws to give the region a voice. They acknowledge that their spirit of resistance does in fact make them outlaws in the eyes of many, such as the Lebanese state...

Living as outlaws in the Bekaa, according to Jaafar, is “a way of living, because we don’t have another choice.”

“If you want to live, if you want to eat, you have to do certain things,” adds Nasserdyn.

From their brevity – and the angst in their lyrics – it seems that they might actually be the real deal: their way of life is something real and inescapable, not some lifestyle choice or teenage rebellion...

For Jaafar and Nasserdyn, rap has always been about resistance – an out to vent frustrations, to subvert the government and to bring about change. While they insist that their sound is not inspired by anybody in particular, they speak of older American rap music, written by frustrated African-American youth in the ghettos. This was long before before American rap turned more towards lyrics about dollar bills and swimming pools filled with girls in bikinis.

“Rap music is fight music,” explains Jaafar.

While the band repeatedly chastises those who leave the Bekaa, forced to move to Beirut or emigrate abroad due to the poor economic situation, it is ironic to find them in Lebanon’s capital. They assure me that they are only here for their concert and to complete their education and that they still live in Baalbek.

“If there was a university in Bekaa, the government would make sure that it was s***,” says Nasserdyn bluntly.

In the batch of songs they are currently recording, emigration to Beirut by Baalbek’s youth plays a key role. For Touffar, those who abandon the land of the Bekaa and give up the fight to protect the land, are racked up as traitors to themselves and their home. While they understand these motives, the band looks down on those from the Bekaa who take up menial jobs in Beirut (“they deserve a slap in the face every morning,” says Nasserdyn) and also the rogue clan members who have taken to armed robberies in the Lebanese capital.

Beirut bothers them, visibly...

Their song title “Al-Wasakh al-Tijari” or “Commercial Filth” is an Arabic reference to downtown Beirut’s commercial centre, which is called al-Wasat al-Tijari. The lyrics relentlessly attack the development of the city centre by Hariri’s company Solidere and question who benefits from these ventures.

“Our music is not just about Baalbek,” Nasserdyn tells me. “It’s about the people who robbed Baalbek to create this place [Beirut] for kings from Saudi and the Khaleej [the Gulf ].”

“They want to turn Lebanon into a big hotel… And we say that Lebanon isn’t a hotel or a brothel.”

This anti-commercial establishment sentiment spreads further than lyrics. Far from 50 Cent’s “Get Rich or Die Trying” model, Touffar says that they’re not in the business for the money. Given that they’ve refused to record an album onto CD thus far (they spread their songs virally through YouTube and from person to person on mobile phones) this claims might be valid. In their first headline concert in Beirut, the band charged a paltry two dollar entrance fee; just enough to cover overhead costs. If they feel that they have successfully brought about change, they suggest, perhaps they’ll stop rapping. If they start feeling that their music is doing little in the way of change, another path might be in order.

“Right now we are fighting with our lyrics. Maybe later we will fight another way to get our freedom and liberty.” says Jaafar “The real resistance is by bullets.”

Ali* al-Yaghi sits, like he does everyday, in a roadside café next to a grassy park in the relatively upscale Baalbek neighbourhood of Ras al-Ain, gently pulling on a Marlboro Light. A former hash and arms dealer, twenty-year-old Ali is now training to become a Hezbollah fighter and hopes to fight and perhaps become a martyr during the next war with Israel. He differs immensely from the arak-swilling socialist intelligentsia in Beirut, yet he is just as enthusiastic supporter of Touffar and a personification of the group’s lyrics.

“Ibn Baalbek ma yamot” he says upon being asked about the band, before breaking out into an impromptu performance of one of their songs. “The son of Baalbek does not die” — a motto of Touffar that epitomises the spirit of resistance held by the residents of the Bekaa.

We’re sitting under a large portrait of the turbaned and bespectacled Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in yellow chairs...Ali sits with his mobile phone on the table, alternating between Touffar songs and videos of Hezbollah fighters ambushing Israeli patrols...

Ali embodies the Bekaa tragedy that Touffar raps about. After finishing secondary education, he quickly realised that there were few opportunities to work. Like many, he chose to go illicit – selling hashish and guns until he was arrested by Lebanese internal security forces over a year ago. Hezbollah bailed him out. Then they handed him an American-made M-16 and he began training to join the Party of God’s military wing.

In an environment where work is nearly impossible to come by, even for the educated, the modest stipends of Hezbollah’s militia become an alluring factor for those not scooped up in the Bekaa’s illicit economy.

“Only Hezbollah saves Baalbek.” he says. “The only other work is hashish. If the government took care of Baalbek, then people wouldn’t grow hashish. Right now, all we do is sit and wait.”

The café owner looks up from his counter. “Look at Beirut: Saad Hariri p***es money!” he says scathingly, attacking the opulent reconstruction of downtown Beirut.

“We [in Baalbek] love Lebanon, but the state does not love us back. There is only Hezbollah for us here.”

Hezbollah and Touffar are odd bedfellows. While the rappers’ music obviously does not resonate heavily with many in Hezbollah, the message of resistance does. Similarly, Jaafar and Nasserdyn’s self-proclaimed secular attitudes clash heavily with the Islamist oriented mission of Hezbollah, but at the same time, they are fighting the same fight and thus enjoy a heavy following by those who identify with Hezbollah. The first line of their song “Madina al-Shuhada” (“City of the Martyrs”) gives light to the attraction: “The road to Jerusalem begins in the city of the martyrs (Baalbek).”

Yet Touffar is not a group of Hezbollah rappers. Nor are they socialists or gangsters or any other adjective that could be thrown in front of them. They are young, they are angry and they are very proud of their hometown, a city that was once an axis of empires, now fallen into disrepair. They tell me not to expect to see them on MTV or to see their albums on the Billboard charts. They just want to get their message out, they want to show the realities of life on the ground in the Bekaa and make their lives and the lives of those around them just that little bit better.

Again, inshallah someone will do more on this. If you check out the Touffar vids, you will see lots of shots of hashish plants. The Beqa'a Valley, where Ba'albak is located, is renowned for its hashish. (It's where "Lebanese blonde" comes from. You know, of course, the Thievery Corporation song by that name.) Conditions of production are pretty rough.

Zaid Hamdan & The Wings, Digla, Laal

I was recently blown away by three great rock songs from the Middle East and South Asia, so I thought I would share.

1. Zeid & the Wings, "General Suleiman."

Zeid Hamdan was formerly in the fabulously terrific Lebanese band Soapkills, described by many as "Lebanese trip-hop." Zeid & the Wings is his new project. This song is so catchy and fabulous.

I can't get all the lyrics, but they include lines like "all the militias go home," "foreign intelligence go home," and so on.

Read more about the song here. And check out this episode of The Monocle for a long interview with Zeid (in English) and several of his songs.

ADDED DEC. 11, 2012:

Here's a transcription of the lyrics, found here (and which I located thanks to the comment from Anonymous, below.)

General Suleiman

Gene Gene General
General Suleiman
Gene Gene General
General Suleiman
Salam Salam Salam Aleik
General Suleiman
You're a Miracle Man
For peace in our nation
General Suleiman
You're a miracle man
General Suleiman
You're a miracle man
Put your weapons down
Put your weapons down
Now it s time
To leave your warlords behind
Everything is fine , and they ll be no more crime
Let the country shine with general Suleiman
General Suleiman
You're a miracle man
General Suleiman
You're a miracle man
Gene Gene General
General Suleiman
Gene Gene General
General Suleiman
Salam Salam Salam Aleik
General Suleiman
You're a Miracle Man
For peace in our nation
All the milicia man GO HOME
Corrupted politician GO HOME
To Weapon dealer say GO HOME
To trouble maker say GO HOME
Foreign intelligence GO HOME
Neighbourgh influence GO HOME
All the milicia man GO HOME
Corrupted politician GO HOME
To Weapon dealer say GO HOME
To trouble maker say GO HOME
Foreign intelligence GO HOME
Neighbourgh influence GO HOME
Gene Gene General
General Suleiman
Gene Gene General
General Suleiman
Salam Salam Salam Aleik
General Suleiman
You're a Miracle Man
For peace in our nation
General Suleiman
You're a miracle man
General Suleiman
You're a miracle man
Gene gene general , GO HOME !

2. Digla, "Highlights."

This is such a catchy pop-rock song. If the world were fair, it would be on the charts in the US and elsewhere. At first brush, you wouldn't imagine that it came from Cairo, Egypt. What I especially like about it is that it is not only Top 40 material (in a good way) but that it also expresses its Egyptianness in a seamless manner. About 1 minute into the song, the singer breaks into Arabic, singing "ya layl" (oh night, a stereotypical phrase of the Arab mawwal), with the added percussive backing of a tambourine (daff) and the derbouka--which also are shown in the video. The "Arabic" elements are integrated seamlessly, however, they don't break the rhythm or the feel of the song at all. You don't get any feeling of "hybridity" here, no sense of "East" and "West" being harnessed together. It just all works as a rock song.

I've not listened carefully to the lyrics, but these have their local flavor as well. One of the lines is about the juxtaposition of a donkey cart parking beside a tourist bus.

The video is terrific too, typical scenes of Cairo, but happy, upbeat ones. Just like the song. Some day, a group from Lebanon or Egypt will make it onto the Western rock charts, without the artists having to move to London or Paris or New York. The talent is certainly there.

3. Laal, "Doob Gaya Hai" (song for Pakistani flood victims)

I've written about this leftist Pakistani folk-rock group at hawgblawg. Just check out the remarkable images, which give you some ideas of the unimaginable devastation and suffering that have been wreaked upon the Pakistani people by the recent floods. If you feel so inclined, here are some ways that you can help.

Here are some recommended avenues for making donations:

Relief4Pakistan

Via the US government, if you are so inclined. It's easy, text "SWAT" to 50555 and make a $10 contribution that will help provide tents, clothing, food, clean drinking water, and medicine to people displaced by floods.

The Nation magazine offers an array of ways to help, in this article by Pete Rothberg.

Graffiti in Beirut

Lebanese rap from the Christian Science Monitor

In the days before the CSM went all-digital. Drat. On RGB, Yayess Bek (the godfather of lubnani rap), Malikah, and Katibe 5 (from Palestinian refugee camp Burj al-Barajneh). (A shorter excerpt of this article appeared earlier on hawgblawg.)

"Rapping Injustice in Arabic," by Eamon Kircher-Allen, CSM, Feb. 27, 2009, pp. 13, 16.

...unlike much of Beirut's music scene that draws heavily on foreign influences, rappers like RGB are fiercely Lebanese in everything they do. They talk about personal experiences in which they see the same kinds of injustice, violence, and lack of forums for addressing social problems that were the impetus for early African-American rap groups with a political message, such as Public Enemy...

"Most of the artists here are from the streets, they live in a very unfair system," music producer Zeid Hamdan says by phone... "[Lebanon] is a good ground for hip hop. The 'bling bling' hasn't arrived yet. The bling-bling scene is in the pop music"...

there are strong connections between hip-hop lyricism and Arabic's heritage of poetry. For centuries, writers who mastered the art of self-expression in Arabic have been folk heroes. According to Joe Namy, a Lebanese-American music producer and a fine-arts graduate student at New York University, that heritage has converged with the current social dimensions in Lebanon.

"Hip hop is becoming more popular now because there's a lot more frustration," he said. "The music lends itself to this need to express yourself. It's a very visual form of expression."

Lebanese hip hop reaches across the sectarian divide as well...RGB is Christian, Hamdan is Druze, and there are others in the hip hop collective 961 Underground – named after Lebanon's country code – who are Muslim.A group that epitomizes that diversity is Katibe 5 (pronounced ka-TEE-bé KHAM-sé), whose members hail from Burj al-Barajneh, a rundown Palestinian refugee camp on the south side of Beirut...

"For sure, that's why the Palestinians choose rap, because they feel they are like the black Americans," OS Loop [of Katibe 5] says. "They feel like the oppressed."

The group's first album, "Ahlan fikun bil Mukhayamat," ("Welcome to the Camps") was released last year. It tackles social issues head on – and aggressively...

OS Loop follows the American rap scene closely. His favorite artists are KRS-One, Wu Tang, and Paris...

OS Loop recalls a concert American superstar 50 Cent put on in Beirut in 2006, before the Israeli bombardment of Lebanon that killed more than 1,200 Lebanese. A native of Queens, New York, 50 Cent often raps about how he survived being shot nine times. But OS Loop isn't overly impressed with that – or the commercial turn that 50 Cent's music has taken.

"Now Snoop is coming, and Akon is coming [to Lebanon], but for me they are all commercial," he says. "I wish 50 Cent stayed in Lebanon for the war," he adds with a laugh. "I wanted to tell him what's the true meaning of gangsta."

Beirut rappers promote peace, funded by USAID

Article from today's Daily Star. I don't know the groups, but you have to wonder about Lebanese hip-hop with USAID funding! More cultural diplomacy?

"Beirut hip hoppers sound out the rhythm of peace"
By Raphael Thelen
Special to The Daily Star
Thursday, December 04, 2008

BEIRUT: "Hip Hoppers for Peace" was the slogan under which 11 artists of all political and religious backgrounds met Saturday night at the Student Lounge in Hamra to present and perform songs of their new album "Peace Beats." Lebanon's small but emerging hip hop scene flocked into the apartment-like rooms of Student Lounge, a space dedicated to intercultural understanding and dialogue, to see the latest project of the Permanent Peace Movement (PPM), a Lebanese peace-building NGO.

Supported by the United States Agency for International Development and executed by the members of the PPM, the project aimed to "bring together hip hoppers of different backgrounds and find ways to promote peace," Shant Kabakian, assistant project coordinator of the PPM, told The Daily Star.

"The PPM was born in the midst of the 1975-1990 Civil War, and since then has been dedicated to promoting peace in Lebanon and throughout the whole [Middle East and North Africa] region," added Kabakian, who is a singer and producer himself.

"We had two workshops, both three days long, with people from all religious backgrounds participating," 16-year-old rapper Firas Hassan, aka Oxigene, told The Daily Star, adding that they "talked a lot about peace, and this is reflected in our lyrics."

The result of the collective effort was handed out during the concert in the form of a 14-track album, featuring all artists involved in the workshop, which will be available at Beirut's Virgin Megastores next week. The project featured 11 male and female rappers, of whom most rapped in Arabic, except two who performed in English, one in French and one in Armenian.

Oxigene was the first one to take over the stage and performed his song "Artistic Revolution," calling for peaceful change through diplomatic and economic means.

A couple of songs later the largely male crowd of Lebanese, mostly students, was already smoothly jostling in front of the stage, and the atmosphere began to heat up.

The audience was spared the usual lyrics about crime and sex, and instead was treated to intelligent rhymes and topics that came straight from the heart of artists, like "I-Voice," a duo of Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon, who started rapping in 2001, or "A-Boxx," who has been in the rap game for five years, recording and performing in Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates.

A-Boxx's "No Change" kicks off the "Peace Beats" album, with lyrics like: "If I can switch position with rich politicians, I'd twist divisions of all these kids' religions so they could stop making all these sick decisions, quick collisions, leading them to split divisions."

The rappers displayed not only remarkable lyrical skills, but also creativity and a willingness to try out new ideas. One set of songs, for example, was accompanied by a human beatbox, a percussionist and a bagpipe player, while another piece saw a flute on stage.

Even if the sound equipment was not 100 percent professional, the endless rotation of artists on stage made up for it with their spirit and ability to improvise. Toward the end, the concert turned into a freestyle session, which gave everybody a chance to show her or his rap technique and lyrical talents to the steady flow of the two talented beatboxers.

The concert stood up to its name "Peace Beats," by not only raising hopes that there is a future for hip hop in Lebanon, but also for peace among its people.

Katibe 5: Palestinian rap from the refugee camp of Burj al-Barajneh, Beirut, Lebanon

Another interesting article about Palestinian rap, this time from Lebanon. I found this in today's Daily Star (Jan. 31, 2008). Go here for an interview broadcast on al-Jazeera English with the group in question, Katibe 5. It's useful because it gives you some idea about conditions in Burj al-Barajneh camp. Go here for a video of the group in concert. A more recent, short clip of the group live (and a better song) than the previous vid, is here.

The sounds of Public Enemy re-routed through Burj al-Barajneh

Five well-read, fast-talking, wisecracking young men are putting the social content and political volume back into hip hop

By Ayman Oghanna

BEIRUT: In the 1980s, hip hop exploded onto the world music scene like a heat-seeking missile. Groups like Public Enemy spat poetic political activism into the formerly apolitical "party music" of their predecessors. In doing so, they gave America's black, poverty-stricken and racially oppressed underclass much more than entertainment.

"Fight the Power," "Don't Believe the Hype," "It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back" - these were anthems of emancipation, empowerment and education, a lyrical call to arms charged with the poetry of Gil Scott-Heron and the fury of Malcolm X.

Today, however, political hip hop in the United States is as dead as disco. Flip through any of the music channels and a horde of diamond-encrusted children flog you with crass, self-indulgent materialism, vanity-label perfumes and a shopping list of expensive pretty things you will never own.

The articulate activism that once defined the genre has all but disappeared, leaving in its place a grotesque serving of the worst kind of capitalism - a vain, vacuous, self-serving materialism where you either get rich or die trying. Little wonder, then, that one of American hip hop's most successful sons, Nas, entitled his last album "Hip Hop is Dead."

But, then again, don't believe the hype. Hip hop as a political medium is far from dead. Throughout Africa and across the Arab world it is thriving. In particular, young musical renegades from Algeria to Gaza have embraced the genre as an exciting new sociopolitical platform. The subculture of Palestinian hip hop is adeptly captured in Jackie Salloum's critically acclaimed documentary, "Slingshot Hip Hop," which made its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, earlier this month. Salloum's film profiles a number of home-grown hip-hop groups, including DAM, Palestinian Rapperz (PR), Arapeyat, Abeer, Mahmoud Shalabi and more.

Another group at the forefront of this musical intifada is Beirut's latest hip-hop sensation, Katibe 5. Refugees straight outta Burj al-Barajneh, these five talented twenty-something MCs are the heirs of Public Enemy and its ilk. As artists who combine Arabic music, political activism, social commentary and, of course, hip hop, they are creating a fresh, dynamic form of political resistance.

Each member of Katibe 5 goes by his chosen nom de guerre. Nadir, or Moscow, is the group's stern-faced, serious and solemn pragmatist. The affable Amro, aka C-4, boasts a confident, extroverted charisma that is nowhere near as menacing as his plastic-explosives nickname would suggest. Katibe 5's resident graphic artist is Tarek "The Butcher" Jazzar. Bobo is quick-tongued and articulate, originally from Sierra Leone. And Yousri, known as Molotov - "Or Molo," he quips, "What name do you want? I've got plenty" - is the joker of the pack.

These eclectic characters have been recording music together since they were 15-year-old mates in a Burj al-Barajneh school run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). "No, not a school exactly. It was a small prison," Bobo promptly clarifies.

The group recently signed a deal with Lebanon's Incognito, an upstart record label and independent distributor associated with La CD-Theque, a record shop with branches near Sassine in Achrafieh and the American University of Beirut in Hamra.

"Like the name says, they're not commercial," says Bobo. "They're underground." Katibe 5's first album, "Welcome, My Brother, to the Camps," is due to be released on Incognito in two weeks' time.

The group's music encompasses a variety of subjects, including the conditions of refugee life, corrupt humanitarian aid agencies and non-governmental organizations, Iraq, capitalism, Palestine, the 2007 conflict in Nahr al-Bared and relaxing on a Saturday night. Inspired by the older, more political generation of US hip-hop acts, Katibe 5 shares their same idealism.

"We're the students of Public Enemy," says Bobo. "They succeeded in teaching people and we want to continue this. Our message is sociopolitical. You can't separate the social from the political."

Chatting on the roof of the building in Burj al-Barajneh where Jazzar lives with his family, the members of Katibe 5 converse about politics, philosophy, literature and economics with the same passion and energy they put into their music.

"Have you read Nietzsche?" asks Moscow. "You like Frantz Fanon?" chimes Bobo. "What about Yukio Mishima?" adds Molo. "You don't know Mishima? Kenzaburo Oe then? C'mon, man. You must read Mishima, Oe, all the Japanese writers, man. They're good. They're like this," Molo explains, holding his thumb and forefinger together to create an exact, precise point. "They give the wall its true image."

These well-read, fast-talking, wisecracking, chain-smoking refugees don't present themselves as musicians but rather as Marxist revolutionaries - more PFLP than Notorious B.I.G.

"We are part of a revolution," says Moscow, "a musical revolution. It's happening here and all over the world. We're the adverb. We come before the verb. We're preparing people for action," he says, a Che Guevara bracelet slipping out from under his sleeve to punctuate his revolutionary rhetoric.

Katibe 5 sees itself as being on a genuine musical mission to increase awareness, educate people and instigate global action and resistance.

"We want people to wake up and realize their rights and responsibilities. We want people to realize that companies are trying to control their behavior," says C-4.

The audience that Katibe 5 addresses doesn't only reside in the refugee camps. The group expresses a Trotskyite solidarity for all of the world's oppressed.

As Moscow explains Katibe 5's aims, "We have a responsibility not just to reflect this life. We're not just Palestinian refugees speaking about our problems, or our lives in the camps, because the problems we face are not only a Palestinian problem. All over the world there are people who are oppressed, people who are incarcerated, people who are suffering."

So what or who, in Katibe 5's view, is the cause of this global suffering? "It's the system, man," says Bobo/

"The system" is a recurring bogeyman in Katibe 5's music and ideology: a perceived, pervasive superstructure that keeps people ignorant, poor and backward.

"We're fighting the system," Bobo expounds, "the system that makes people blind, and makes people ignore their rights and responsibilities.

"Look at hip hop," he adds. "The mainstream record companies want to say that hip hop is about cars, b****** and getting money. You should have this, you should have that. You should have a mobile phone because if you don't have a mobile phone, you're not a human. [But] hip hop's not about that."

So what, exactly, is hip hop about, then?

"Hip hop is a weapon for all oppressed people," says C-4.

"Hip hop is a movement," says Bobo. "It has always existed because hip hop is life. From the beginning there were always people living, people suffering. Hip hop is the art of talking, of expressing yourself. Lyrics are its base. You find it in poetry, essays and here in Arabic culture. It has existed from the beginning. As long as people are oppressed and incarcerated they will have something to say."

Illustrating their point, they start free-styling over the camp's background beats: children playing, hammers hammering, the call to prayer coming from a nearby mosque and - this being last Sunday afternoon - the sounds of deadly riots in the Dahiyeh.

"Hip hop is based on the street and so it cannot be anything but political," says Bobo, satisfied with the clarification.

Perhaps it's a reflection of their context, youth or political and musical influences but there is an ominous paranoia undercutting Katibe 5's worldview, as well as an open acceptance of resistance by any means necessary.

"You know what, man?" C-4 warns. "They know what hip hop does to society and they want to kill it and stop its flow."

"You have to fight for your rights," adds Molo. "Peace means politics, politics means negotiations, negotiations are meant to sustain negotiations and not bring a solution. So I say, f*** negotiations, f*** politics and f*** peace."

Putting aside the philosophical musings and antagonistic worldview for a bit, what really counts is the music and, thankfully, Katibe 5's debut album is good, good enough to give some merit to Katibe 5's grand ideas and political pretensions.

The group's sound - a mix of traditional Arabic melodies, rap, beat-boxing, poetry and sampled news footage - is in many ways unique. It's a far cry from the majority of loved-up popular Arabic music and perhaps more importantly, it's enjoyable to listen to. Think Public Enemy with an Arabic twist - loud, satirical, relevant and hard to ignore.

The contrasting voices and styles of the five members complement one another well, and they give the music variety and depth. To be sure, some songs are a little rough around the edges, but that is also part of the appeal. On track after track, Katibe 5's sincerity, raw energy and youthful vigor carry their music. Furthermore, the group isn't afraid to experiment. This gives them the potential to get bigger and better, and to receive the attention they deserve.

But ultimately, they couldn't care less about what other people think. "All that matters is this," insists Molo. "Know your aim in life, do it and then die. There's nothing else. Everything else is emptiness."

Ten Best of 2007 from Beirut

This list is from Kaelen Wilson-Goldie, writing in the Daily Star (Beirut), on Dec. 29. The DJ Spooky mix is terrific, and you can download it for free here. In fact, it's mostly African music, with a bit of North African. The Jajouka-Abdel Nasser-Umm Kulthoum segment is particularly fun. I love Nass al-Ghiwane, but I've not heard their new one. I'm familiar with but not wild about Rabih Abu-Khalil, and I've seen Rami Khalife perform with his father Marcel, and heard a couple interesting cuts by him. As for Bikya, you can listen to four of their tracks on their myspace page, and if you've got a myspace account, you can download two of them. I've not listened enough to evaluate them. The other stuff, I've not heard of. Track it down and tell me about it!

DJ Spooky
"Ghost World: A Story in Sound"

Though he is best known for spinning records, DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid started out in the art world and continues to create inventive, cross-disciplinary hybrids that find him wearing the hats of artist, writer and theorist as often as that of the DJ. For the first-ever African pavilion at this summer's Venice Biennale, organized around an exhibition entitled "Luanda Pop," DJ Spooky mined music from across the continent for a seamless, 1-hour, 19-minute and 19-second mix. Masterfully meshed and interlaced selections include Tunisian hip-hop outfit Lotfi Double Kanon and a mind-blowing transition that begins with Morocco's Master Musicians of Jajouka featuring Talvin Singh and mixed with Gamal Abdel-Nasser's "Independence Forever" speech, segues through Duke Ellington's "Afro-Eurasian Eclipse" and end up with a heavy, drum 'n' bass remix of Umm Kulthoum's "Hob Eih." A prodigious adherent of world music in its most contemporary, urban incarnations, DJ Spooky is closely tracking the development of hip hop in the region and has lined up a track featuring Palestinian rappers DAM for his next album.

Nass al-Ghiwane
"Ennehla Chama"

The third album from Moroccan heroes Nass al-Ghiwane since the death of founding member Larbi Batma, "Ennehla Chama" features Rachid Batma, Hamid Batma, Chifaa Abdelkrim and Omar Sayed. Nominated for a 2008 BBC World Music Award, it features the group's characteristic blend of traditional instruments, metaphorical lyrics, rousing rhythms and malhoun, gnawa and chaabi styles.

Bikya
"Betrayal"

The independent record label 100 Copies in Cairo may be the single most exciting experimental musical outfit in the region, and it only got better in 2007 with the release of the first album from Bikya. The group consists of label founder Mahmoud Refat on drums and electronics, Mahmoud Waly on bass and electronics and Maurice Louca on guitar, keyboard and sampler. Their first, untitled album features eight tracks and the first, "Betrayal," is as masterful as Massive Attack circa "Blue Lines." The group performed in Beirut last month at Basement as part of the Meeting Points 5 contemporary arts festival.

Rabih Abou-Khalil
"Songs for Sad Women"

Lebanese oud player and composer Rabih Abou-Khalil released his 19th album this year, the mournful, seven-track sequence that is "Songs for Sad Women." Framing the haunting sound of Gevorg Dabaghyan's duduk, a 3,000-year-old Armenian instrument that sounds like an oboe and looks like a clarinet, Abou-Khalil's latest adds to his impressive eclecticism.

Rami Khalife
Piano Concertos"

Rami Khalife, 25, is nothing if not wonderfully precocious. His third album to date - after "Live in Beirut" and "Scene from Hellek" - is his first recording with an orchestra and features compositions by Prokofiev and Abdallah al-Masri."

Munma
"34 Days" and "Black Tuesday"

The first two albums in a trilogy, "34 Days" and "Black Tuesday" attest to the singular talent of Jawad Nawfal, aka Munma, a name that he refers to as his "resistance moniker." The sounds here are, by turns, beautiful, disturbing, enigmatic and abstract.

Joanna Andraos
"Khimaira"

She's an artist, actress and classically-trained pianist. Joanna Andraos is, piece-by-piece, constructing an entire creative universe around her multidisciplinary efforts. "Khimaira" takes some of the structures, movements and lines of classical music and pushes them into ghostly territory. The results are spare and lush at once.

Lena Chamamyan
"Shamat"

Syrian-Armenian singer Lena Chamamyan's "Shamat" is an album of old folk songs salvaged from obscurity and rearranged with the help of Basel Rajoub, who plays saxophone and trumpet.

Hewar
"Nine Days of Solitude: The Damascus Sessions"

This album, launched during the jazz festival in Syria over the summer, features Kinan Azmeh, Issam Rafea, Manfred Leuchter, Antoin Putz and Dima Orsho. The stunning first track, "Wedding," is grooving, nimble, playful and soulful.

Lebanese "post-punk": Scrambled Eggs

From the Daily Star, a useful account of one of Lebanon's most prominent rock bands, the post-punk Scrambled Eggs. Go here for some photos of Scrambled Eggs playing last summer at an event called, "Musicians against Monsters," during Israel's murderous bombing campaign. Go here for more info and to listen to a couple of their songs. Their myspace page is here.

The photo of Scrambled Eggs (thanks Jim) is Ousama Ayoub, and from AFP. The caption: Young Lebanese revellers gather inside a bar in the Gemmayze area at the heart of Beirut late 04 July 2007 as part of a campaign to revive night life in the fashionable area not far from where anti-government opposition parties have been camping for the past eight months. Gemmayze, once vibrant with shops and cafes, is now struggling to cope with a drastic fall in passing trade and diving sales. The area has been abandoned by revellers in favour of roof top bars to which Beirutis have flocked for fear of recent bomb at attacks at street level. AFP PHOTO/OUSAMA AYOUB

A luta continua!

Here's the Daily Star article:

"Scrambled Eggs on the back burner: Beirut's post-punk pioneers take five (months or so)
Members will use hiatus for studies in America, possible shows in Europe, new material"
By Bojan Preradovic
Special to The Daily Star
Friday, August 31, 2007

BEIRUT: When the local post-punk outfit Scrambled Eggs took to the stage at Basement last week, it was to play their last show in Beirut for some time to come. The band, made up of vocalist and guitarist Charbel Haber, guitarist Marc Codsi, bassist Tony Aliyeh and drummer Malek Rizkallah, is putting itself on self-imposed hiatus for the next few months, pending Rizkallah's return from studying in the United States.

Scrambled Eggs has been a prominent member of Beirut's alternative rock scene for a solid decade now, and, despite the band members' taking a much-needed break, there seems to be no end in sight as far as their creative antics are concerned.

"The band will pick up again around January," Haber says, "but we may do some concerts in Europe in the meantime."

Haber and his bandmates are generally delighted to offer a long list of obscure, experimental ambient-electro artists as their influences, but they are also equally careful to mention that most of their writing is done through improvisation, evocative of the technique spearheaded by jazz legends such as John Coltrane.

The members of Scrambled Eggs are, however, renowned in Beirut as partisans of now-classic acts such as Sonic Youth, who, among other New York groups in the 1980s, pioneered the so-called "no wave" movement in art and music (a special brand of indie underground music permeated by a re-evaluation of punk rock credos).

The band's love affair with experimentation, improvisation and, more notably, with atmospheric resonance and feedback, seems interminable, at least for the moment. In addition to those shows in Europe, Haber has his record label Those Kids Must Choke to think about, and it is likely Scrambled Eggs will take advantage of some down time to start assembling material for the band's next album.

"I am too busy right now to even think about the label," Haber admits, "but I can do 500 records, and they'll all be the same twisted underground stuff," he says, laughing. "I don't want it to grow beyond that or diversify - that's the spirit of the label and that's what I'm sticking to."

In terms of the band's music, he explains: "We are currently heading in the same direction, but at the same time, we never know for sure where the next album will take us.

"It should feature the familiar punk vibe, with our own brand of ambient, but again, the way we compose in rehearsal is by improvisation, which obviously implies unpredictability, so you never know.

"I draw the inspiration for the lyrics from human relationships and the spirit of the times - the songs are about people you love, those you hate, and those you don't hate," Haber says.

When asked what he is currently listening to, Haber exclaims, with a mischievous smile: "Nothing, zero!"

Scrambled Eggs' concert last Thursday began more than an hour behind schedule, but the band's repertoire for the night certainly lived up to its reputation: Aliyeh drove his fingers across his bass for the improvised opener, generating a haunting, oriental-sounding melody, which was repeatedly drowned out by the howling feedback from Codsi's and Haber's guitars. If those in the audience who had never been to a Scrambled Eggs show before were at all thrown off by the plush sonic sounds that filled the room as the band sank deeper into the proverbial maze produced by their instruments, the entrance of Haber's vocals dispelled any doubts with respect to these musicians' punk credentials.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb

Haber's meaningful yet somehow sarcastic wails signaled a break from the singing style he employed on such Scrambled Eggs releases as "Human Friendly Noises" from 2002. But at the same time they positioned him clearly as an heir to the Sex Pistols' Johnny Rotten.

Haber's lack of inhibition in expressing his sensitivity as a songwriter comes out in lyrics such as "I don't want you to see me cry," displaying a covert vulnerability parallel to a show of strength, itself synonymous with the brave face most young Lebanese performers have had to put on during these taxing times the country is enduring.

Haber reinforced that point with a defiant allusion to Lebanon's current situation: "See you in Beirut, whatever happens," he said, before launching into a song bearing the same name, showcasing an industrial-sounding mid-section and a twisted, anthemic chorus.

During the instrumental sections of songs, Codsi shredded what appeared to be a Fender Stratocaster, a guitar typically played by puritan rock and punk musicians. The simple yet overwhelmingly potent single-note guitar solos, played at a pace reminiscent of Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo, supplemented each song with an appropriately authoritative closing statement.

"Murder" opened with an organ sample that sounded like a musical excerpt from a horror flick. Then Rizkallah took over the rhythm section. The drummer's startlingly simple set-up - consisting of just the basic toms, snare drum and one or two cymbals - reverberated throughout the club in a sequence that most accurately resembled the sound of war drums.

The band rolled through the night's musical menu, with songs such as "Bleeding Nun," "Salt and Sugar" and "Lightning Bolt" finding their way onto the set list. "Russian Roulette" featured a straightforward two-note progression in the verse played by Aliyeh, with Codsi occasionally harmonizing to Haber's vocal lines.

Offstage, Haber lamented the intractability of some members of the audience: "It's difficult to move them, and I would attribute this to the 'culture' of the audience and how in touch with rock music they are, as well as how many live shows they've been to.

"It wasn't always like this, but generally, the younger people in the crowd are the ones jumping around," he adds with a smile.

Freemuse on "Underground" Music in Lebanon

Very useful report from Al-Hayat on the Freemuse conference in Istanbul earlier this year, specifically on three papers dealing with music censorship in the Middle East. Most interesting is the report on Lebanon, which discusses, among other things, crackdowns on heavy metal music, rapper Rayess Bek, and Hizbollah's liberalizing attitudes toward pop music. There's also a short report on a presentation by Ourrad Rabah of the fabulous Algerian rap group MBS.

Lebanese Hip-Hop

From the Daily Star:

"An American success story, Lebanese style"
Four-day 'Poetry in the Street' hip hop showcase mixes tropes of genre and homegrown touches
By Nichole Sobecki
Monday, March 05, 2007

BEIRUT: While music critics in the West loudly proclaim the mortality of "real" hip hop, a point driven home by Nas' December release "Hip Hop Is Dead," Lebanon struggles to give birth to a sustainable movement. "Poetry in the Street," which began on Thursday and concluded Sunday, was the latest effort, a four-night hip hop event headlined by MC RGB. The beats of MCs Joker, Mo and 6K, the expertly mixed tracks of DJ Lethal Skillz and the Blaze Crew's rhythm-packed breakdancing routines created a multidisciplinary performance rarely seen in Beirut theaters.

"It's fresh, it's young, it's authentic," declares Zeid Hamdan, former member of the Lebanese electro-acoustic band Soap Kills and co-producer of the event.

Playing to a half-full auditorium, the performance opened Thursday with Lethal Skillz laying down beats in front of a graffiti-filled replica of a building facade, designed by French artist Charles Vallaud. Moving between human-sized building structures, the artists performed in Ecko-wear sweats and Timberlands, cornrows and baseball caps. RGB slid onto the stage as a smoke machine churned out the night's atmosphere.

In short, all the symbols of the urban ghetto, common throughout global hip hop, were present and accounted for. So what made the nights performance more "real" than the currently popular and often empty references to b*****s, cars and bling that characterize the popular Western hip hop scene?

As Hamdan explains: "RGB's music tackles social issues such as freedom, national unity, exile, racism and disillusionment that stem from his own experiences."

Growing up on the streets of Beirut's suburbs, Ragab Abdel-Rahman, who goes by the name RGB, started to rhyme and beat-box at an early age. His ascent into the genre began with the formation of Kita Beirut, one of Lebanon's first hip hop groups featuring RGB, Stress, Joker and 6K. Formed a decade ago, Kita Beirut struggled with issues of nationality and citizenship, causing members of the group to be shuffled around, with RGB spending years in France before returning to Lebanon.

The Dubai-based production company LCI Entertainment, which co-produced the Masrah al-Madina performances, has recently signed RGB and 6K.

"Ultimately we would like to reunite Kita Beirut," says Wadih Safieddine, LCI's general manager in Beirut.

Throughout the performance, RGB's lyrics spoke of his experiences abroad and the bitterness he felt upon realizing the immigrant dream was nothing but an illusion.

"What it is this immigration? It is every man for himself and one swindles his brother and it is a vicious circle where each one lives on the treachery of the other," proclaims RGB in a track entitled "Treason." RGB's lyrics often reference political dissension as a backdrop to his own life.

Although RGB's words display a balanced political stance, some saw the sponsorship of the Madina performances by the "I Love Life" campaign to be a less politically neutral choice. Several Beirut merchants refused to display posters for the event in their storefronts due to the controversial nature of the campaign, the logo of which was prominently displayed on the event posters.

Although the "I Love Life" campaign desires to be seen as nonpartisan, the campaign found support among the ranks of the March 14 coalition and the opposition launched its own version with slogans such as "I Love Life, Undictated." For the producers, having invested their personal funds into supporting past hip hop events such as a three-week workshop at Beirut's French Cultural Center (which inspired "Poetry in the Street"), the decision was between giving up on the show or accepting the sponsorship.

Hamdan hopes the reaction to the "I Love Life" sponsorship will be to encourage debate.
"It is not productive to judge and condemn without understanding," he says.

In general the audience seems to understand the motivations behind the sponsorship as well. "If they can get money to make their art then I am all for it," says Firas Abi Ghanem, a Beirut resident in the audience.

Still, it remains to be seen whether Lebanon's rising hip-hop movement will gain the success that so many hope for.

"We don't know if it will turn out that way," Hamdan says. "But if it does it will be an American success story, Lebanese style."

Fairuz in Beirut, 2

Another account of Fairouz's performance of Sah al-Nom in Beirut, by the inimitable Jim Quilty, writing in the Daily Star (Beirut).

Musical comedy, both timeless and timely
Fairouz returns to Beirut stage with a revival of the Rahbani brothers' 'Sah al-Nom'

By Jim Quilty
Daily Star staff
Monday, December 04, 2006

BEIRUT: "Sah al-Nom," a musical comedy starring Fairouz, directed by Ziad Rahbani and written by Assi and Mansour Rahbani, began a three-night run at the Beirut International Exhibition and Leisure Center (BIEL) on Friday night. It opened to somewhat less than a capacity crowd, a fact that says more about the prevailing political environment than the reputation and popularity of the artists involved.

Like so much of the Rahbani brothers' work, this play could be termed an allegorical fairytale. The writer-composers favored village idylls for their settings - places where folks burst into choral song at the drop of a hat and fall naturally into dabkeh-inflected dance.

"Sah al-Nom" is set in such a place. At center stage is a grand villa, in miniature, called the "Qasr al-Nom" (the Palace of Sleep) where the aging local wali (or lord) lives, apparently spending most of his time sleeping.

From time to time, though, he does rouse himself to actually rule. With great ceremony, he and his retainers assemble a court in the village square and hold a diwan where the villagers can approach him with their petitions.

The lord isn't exactly the model of enlightened governance. He listens to the villagers' petitions but seems as likely to relieve a petitioner of some possession he has taken a fancy to as to grant his wish. If it suits him, though, the lord grants the supplicant's wishes and stamps the document with his much-prized royal seal.

While most of the villagers seem content with their lot, one umbrella-toting village girl named Rumfoul (Fairouz) is a nagging inconvenience to the wali. Forever petitioning to have the roof of her house fixed, she carries the umbrella, she explains, to protect her from the elements.

Exhausted after listening to a few supplicants, the lord orders his retainers to leave him to sleep outside in his throne. Once he's asleep, Rumfoul swipes his royal seal and stamps the petitions of all the supplicants - all but one. Mischief done, she throws the seal down a well.

In Act II the wali wakes up from another long slumber and repeats the diwan ritual, only to realize his seal is missing. This causes all manner of grief and confusion, since without the seal he has no authority to rule.

One of the villagers - whose petition Rumfoul has torn up - suspects she has the seal and squeals on her. The lord confronts her and she admits to having thrown the seal down the well. With the help of the other villagers, then, she goes into the well to retrieve it.

The wali is so delighted to have regained his authority that, rather than having Rumfoul put in irons, he makes her the keeper of his seal when he's asleep. "When you were in the well," he says, "I wasn't thinking about the seal at all. I was worried about you."

There are any number of ways to approach "Sah al-Nom." It is, first of all, populist political satire - critical, then, but entertaining as well.

As a piece of restored popular theater, the revival's production values are about as sharp as you could hope for - particularly in the acoustic nightmare that is BIEL. The stage design of faux "mountain architecture" looks more genuine than some of the restored buildings in Solidere and the performance seems utterly true to the stage conventions of the 1960s and 70s.

Like the Rahbanis' music, the costuming is folksy and contemporary at once. The dancing (there's plenty of that) is crisp and tasteful, without the excesses of the more self-conscious neo-folk dance productions. The acting is both stylised and folksy and the spoken and sung text blends about as seamlessly as possible.

There were those in the audience who were of the opinion that the songs were performed in playback - "lip-synching" for those of the Milli Vanilli generation. These opinions couldn't be confirmed or denied when The Daily Star went to press.

If these songs were indeed taped in the studio before the show, though, the stage direction ensured that they were not obviously so. Nor is it difficult to discern why there would be pressure to pre-record - one informed estimate has it that Nouhad Haddad, the woman who became Fairouz, was born in 1935.

A lot has happened since this sweet little riff on Lebanon's neo-feudal political system was first staged 36 years ago.

On one hand Fairouz, the Rahbani brothers and Ziad Rahbani became cultural icons without peer in Lebanon. The distinction comes from the fact that, though their work has been politically engaged, they continued to be loved by Lebanese regardless of their sectarian, tribal or class association.

As such, their stature harkens back to a period when the things that divided Lebanese seemed less important than what unified them - whether to one another, the Palestinians or the wider Arab world.

"Sah al-Nom" - the plays of Assi and Mansour Rahbani generally, in fact - has thus accumulated layers of significance that make it a good deal thicker than it was when originally devised.

This musical's weight increases still more when you augment these combined layers of meaning with the piece's recent production history.

The Baalbek Festival announced that "Sah al-Nom" would open its 2006 season. When Baalbek fell victim to the July-August war with Israel, the metaphorical weight, especially for Lebanese of a certain generation, was much greater than you'd ascribe to a mere play.

Baalbek announced that it would stage the play in December - before anyone knew that the opening night would correspond with an open-ended opposition sit-in involving hundreds of thousands of Lebanese in Downtown Beirut.

By the time it opened on Friday evening, then, this work of childlike playfulness had become the artistic equivalent of a black hole - a play that absorbs any meaning you care to project onto it.

All the more reason, arguably, that the star's voice should sound as strong as possible.

It is highly informative of the Lebanese condition that (based on the number of times the audience burst into applause on Friday evening) "Sah al-Nom" still resonates with audiences in late 2006.

The orange tinge of Rumfoul's dress and umbrella, on the other hand, was surely no more than a trick of the stage lights.