Americans in Lebanon march for Palestinian right of return, April 1973

This is an AP wire photo that I purchased off of ebay a couple years back. I don't know whether the photo ever showed up in any news report on the event. A group of Americans, I don't think belonging to any particular organization, put on this event, a two-day march to Sidon. The following year they organized another march, from Sidon to Tyre. (That's me in the middle, with the headband.) I was too involved in marriage preparations to go. The following spring, 1975, no march was organized, it was the early days of the civil war. Two things I notice here: (1) the woman next to me (whose name I forget) is wearing a kufiya, reminding me that expats in Beirut would do this in the early 70s, and (2) I'm carrying a plastic bag from the Rebeiz record store, one of the two best record stores in Beirut at the time. It should be noted that the march proceeded just a few days after Israeli special forces entered West Beirut and assassinated three PLO officials: Muhammad al-Najjar, Kamal Adwan, and Kamal Nasser.

RIP Otis Grand

 

RIP my old pal Otis Grand (on left), who passed away on June 7in London. Me in the middle, on vocals, on the right, Walid Boustany. We got our start playing 'unplugged,' in 1973. then got a full, electrified group going called Bliss Street Blues Band. On harmonica, George Bisharat, AKA Big Harp George. Bass: Todd/Craig Lichtenwalner. Drums, Raja Kawar.

Then we dispersed, Otis ended up in London, eventually started his own band, and was such a prodigious talent that he was voted 'Best UK Blues Guitarist' seven years running (1990–1996) by the British Blues Connection magazine. (After 7 years, his name was retired.) He issued lots of recordings, they are easy to track down. I'll have more to say about Otis in future.

Yasmine Hamdan, "Beirut" (from the forthcoming album)

Back in 2012, I posted (on one of my other blogs, mepop) about Yasmine Hamdan's self-titled album, released in Lebanon and France in 2012, and the song "Beirut" from the album.  Here is the video that came out at that time.

The lyrics were posted as well, which I've copied below.

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

Now, finally, the album (under the title Ya Nass) is being released in the US, on March 25, from the Crammed Discs label. Why the wait? Who knows? Why now? Maybe to coincide with the appearance of Yasmine in Jim Jarmusch's film Only Lovers Left Alive, which I posted about a couple weeks ago.

Here's some promo about the "new" album. In it we learn that the lyrics to "Beirut" were adapted from a poem written in the 1940s by poet Omar El Zenni. And there is new video, about which the promo tells us: "Yasmine Hamdan and her director Nadim Asfar used footage from super 8 films which were purchased in a Lebanese souk by one of Yasmine's friends, who collects them. These films were shot in various eras (from the 40s to the 70s), and are bringing these bygone times back to life." Check it out. If you've lived in Beirut, like I have, you will really like that super 8 footage.

We also learn from the promo that the song "Hal" from the album which is not on the French/Lebanese version, and this is the song that Yasmine does in the Jarmusch film. You can check it out here.

The very sharp observer Hammer commented on my earlier post. He has seen the movie, he doesn't think much of Yasmine's singing (I don't agree but I understand why he is critical). Here's what he says about the song: "The whole gig is a way to ride a now-defunct wave of using qaraqeb in pop music. [i.e. it incorporates Gnawa percussion]. Her song which she sang is not a song actually: It's a medley of words taken from old, '40s songs that most Arabs still hum and sing. The anachronistic twist is that, most Moroccans do not sing these songs or maybe know of them, as their musical tastes veer off into the malhoun and the ever-present chaabi." 

That is to say, the scene where she sings is set in Tangier, but she isn't singing Moroccan music. Unfortunately, you can't ever imagine that US directors like Jarmusch would ever care about such things. He heard Yasmine's music, he met her, she's an Arab...you know.

Here is the list of songs on the album, via iTunes. This is what the cover looks like:

 And here's the cover of the 2012 album. 

And here's more about Yasmine and the Lebanese album, from Kwaidan Records. 

I can't find a tracklist online right now for the 2012 version, so here it is: 

1. In Kan Fouadi          
2. Beirut      
3. Samar       
4. Baaden           
5. Ya Nass        
6. Irss       
7. Nediya       
8. Nag          
9. Shouei       
10. La Mouch       
11. Bala Tantanat         

 
You can check out the song "Deny" here (not on album 1). Also "Khalas" (not on album 1) here. "Samar," on album one, and two, here. "In Kan Fouadi," on one and two here.

Rue Georges-Picot, Beirut, 1958

I sooooo love this photo by Thomas Abercrombie from the April 1958 issue of National Geographic, and featured as "photo of the day" on the National Geographic website on August 23, 2013. (For a somewhat clearer view of the photo, click on the link.)

It is from story by Abercrombie about "Young-old Lebanon," and its caption read, in part: "For variety, few cities can match Lebanon's bustling capital. Part Christian, part Moslem, Beirut combines East and West, ancient and modern. Contrasts stand out vividly in street scenes such as this on the Rue Georges Picot. … A sign over the blouse shop shows the cedar, Lebanon's national symbol. The market-bound shepherd in Near Eastern headdress and Western jacket icily ignores the latest European fashions."

I don't love the photo precisely for the reasons enumerated in the caption, although that is part of it. I think to make sense of the photo, it is better to jettison the notion that it juxtaposes East and West and ancient and modern. Rather, this is just a guy from the countryside who has brought his herd to the city to sell to a butcher. His clothes, like those of the others in the photo, are machine-made, from head to toe, he is probably wearing a wristwatch, and he is just as likely to drink the Coca-Cola sold in the grocery store (baqqala) pictured on the left as the more modern others in the photo. But he is probably ignoring them, as they no doubt feel themselves more urbane and sophisticated and superior to the lowly herder.

As someone who lived in Beirut between 1964 and 1976, and who made my first visit there in 1961, the scene is very familiar to me, and it captures so much. The "baqqala" is a typical one, selling not just Coca-Cola but Chiclets and Fab detergent (there are signs for these) as well as bananas and eggs and oranges and grapefruit (all very fresh), and really, everything you need. Next door is an embroidery (broderie in French, tatriz in Arabic) shop owned by an Armenian (V. Oflazian), with its sign in French, Armenian and Arabic, and the the cedar tree. It is having a sale, indicated by the "Occasion" sign (in French and Arabic) that is partially obscured by the two chicly dressed women. The two young men are very smartly turned out as well.

Note as well the tram line. During the first couple years I lived in Beirut, we often used to ride the tram from West Beirut (Bliss Street) to downtown. Rue Georges-Picot (named after French diplomat François Georges-Picot, one of the infamous authors of the Sykes-Picot Agreement) was the west extension of Rue Weygand (named after the French commander Maxime Weygand). Just a ways further along west from here is Wadi Jamil, Beirut's Jewish quarter. When I lived there, of course, street names, except for a few, were not used all that commonly, and we just knew this area as Bab Idris. It's hard for me to tell, it may be known now as Omar Daouk Street.

Here's a bit of a map to show where it is (you can read George Picot right below the Normandy Hotel). You can see the entire map, produced by the US Army Corps of Engineers Map Service in 1961, here, courtesy of the University of Texas Perry-Castaneda Library.

Here are a couple older photos of Rue Georges-Picot, this one from 1920 (and perhaps before it was even called Georges-Picot), looking west. The tram line is in evidence (it dates from 1908, put in by the Ottomans.)

And another, looking east I think, and somewhat later than 1920.

And this one is from the late sixties or early seventies. It's labeled as Rue Weygand, and that is where it is taken from, but just up the street it becomes Georges-Picot. It's a scan of a postcard my grandmother Claudia purchased when she visited Beirut in 1972.

Note the bus: these replaced the trams in 1965. They were faster and cleaner but the trams were way more fun.

 tram, 1965, copyright Charles Cushman

Beirut Tram on Parliament Square [1965] | Copyright Charles W. Cushman - See more at: http://oldbeirut.com/post/13807808775/beirut-tram-on-parliament-square-1965#sthash.KxzsTFmN.dpuf

Beirut Tram on Parliament Square [1965] | Copyright Charles W. Cushman - See more at: http://oldbeirut.com/post/13807808775/beirut-tram-on-parliament-square-1965#sthash.KxzsTFmN.dpuf

Mahragan in Beirut (Sadat and DJ Amr 7a7a)

 (The Daily Star/Hasan Shaaban)

Sadat and Amr 7a7a made a "surprise" appearance at the Home Works 6 forum on May 15 in Beirut. "Unassailably cool," writes Jim Quilty in The Daily Star.

Read more about Home Works and mahragan here.

Beirut Blues

the ruptured sessions vol. 5 CD release party, a photo by tsweden on Flickr.

I arrived in Beirut on March 15. It's now the 24th, and I'm about to leave. 

I didn't get to see any live music but I did meet some cool people with connections to the music scene, and I learned a fair about.

1. I missed both performances that Ziad Nawfal was involved in, including the one above. But I did get hold of most editions of the Ruptured Sessions. Check out the Ruptured website -- Ruptured has produced a number of recordings, they put on radio shows and concerts. It's an important hub of music activity in Beirut.

2. I met DJ Sotosura my first night here, chatted with him a bit, and got my hands on his brand new mixtape, Al 3arabi Mo5. You can listen to it here. Very cool session, with def artists like boikutt (Palestine), Deeb (Egypt), El Rass (Lebanon), and El Far3i (Jordan). One of the very encouraging things I learned is how much collaboration is going on between rappers from these and other Arab countries. The rap scene is bringing back a kind of cultural pan-Arabism. 

3. As far as Lebanese rappers, Sotosura (who is Palestinian) particularly recommend El Rass. And I highly recommend him to you. 

 4. I met someone actively involved in AMAR, the Foundation for Arab Music Archive and Recording. This is a fantastic project. They have just started producing podcasts; the first one, on Al-qaṣīda ‘alā al-waḥda, was released on March 21. Even more impressive is their first recording, a boxset devoted to Shaykh Yusuf al-Manyalawi, one of Egypt's great early twentieth century musicians. It includes 10 remastered CDs and a booklet written by Muhsen Sawa, Frédéric Lagrange, and the Foundation's president, Mustapha Said. It costs only $60, a real bargain. A collection of the music of Abd al-Hayy Hilmi should be out very soon. 

5. I met Jackson Allers, who has been in Beirut for the last six years, and has been actively following and involved in the Beirut (and Arab more generally) music scene, and especially the rap scene. He's working on a book about Arab rap, which I look forward to eagerly. Meanwhile you can follow him on his blog Beats and Breath -- Iqaa3 wa Nafas. Essential reading.

And Jackson recently took over as managing editor of World Hip Hop Market, also a great website, dealing with global rap, but really, not from the point of the view of the capitalist market. At least not big capitalist. 

Check out, for instance, his interview with Syrian-American producer dub Snakkr, producer of another pan-Arab collection of hip-hop, called Khat Thaleth (Third Rail). It's a great collection too, and you can find it on iTunes and emusic and all over. Go get it. (I blogged about it earlier: you can get a promo with 7 of the 23 tracks here.)

----

It was great to get a bit of an introduction to the scene in just a few days, even if I didn't actually get to see any live music. But I did collect a packet of CD's. And ma'leesh, I'll be back inshallah.   

Relative calm هدوء نسبي

This song, the title track to Ziad al Rahbani's 1985 album, Houdou Nisbi (relative calm), speaks to the situation in Lebanon right now. Deadly civil war right next door in Syria. Hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees in the country. Sectarian strife threatening to spill across the border into Lebanon. Etc.

The album simply brilliant, and it at times reminds me of Serge Gainsbourg. I picked it up at the Virgin Megastore on Hamra St., Beirut, yesterday.

And isn't the cover brilliant?

Wadad: Lebanese-Jewish singer

One of my lovely FB friends (I forget who) turned me on to the Lebanese Jewish singer Wadad (Bahiya Wahbeh) and her terrific song, from 1962, "Tindam" (You'll regret). Listen here.

بتندم
وحياة عيوني بتندم
بدك تقهرني؟ طييب
غبلك شي غيبة وجرّب
ولما بترجع يا حبيّب يا حبيّب شو بدك تندم
يا كويس شو بدك تندم
بتندم

According to Angry Arab Bahiya Wahbeh was originally from Aleppo. Wadad was one of the few Lebanese Jews who remained in Lebanon through the civil war, and she passed away in Beirut in 2009. She was married to the famous Lebanese composer Abdel Jalil Wahbeh, and, again according to Angry Arab, she never converted to Islam, and yet all the obituaries about her never mentioned that she was Jewish. (When the much more famous Egyptian singer and actress Leila Mourad passed away in 1995, the Egyptian papers for the most part did not mention her Jewishness either.)

There is a documentary out about Wadad called "Un instant mon glamour," directed by Shirin Abu Shaqra. It looks gorgeous, at least from this extract. Arabic title: لحظة أيها المجد.



I also found one other Wadad song on youtube besides "Tindam": دور يا حبيبي العين ضياء (Dor Ya Habibi al-'Ayn Dia'). It's a great one too. Music by Tawfiq al-Basha, lyrics Sami Sidawi.

Wish I could find out more about this great singer.

"A Beirut Minute" -- smokin' vid of Beirut, Lebanese rappers

Courtesy DJ Nickodemus, Justin Carty, Jackson Allen, Shortfuse Films: a terrific video with gorgeous scenes of Beirut and raps from Lebanese MCs Ed Abbas, Yaseen I-Voice, Malikah and Ramcess Funk L'Hamorabi. 


A BEIRUT MINUTE from Justin Carty on Vimeo.

Advances for gay rights: Lebanon, Arkansas, Hollywood

It's not just Milk, folks.

1. Yesterday the Lebanese LGBTIQ support organization Helem organized a sit-in to protest violence against victimized minorities, including homosexuals, women, children, domestic workers and immigrant workers. The organization reported that 200 people participated. As far as I'm aware, this is the first demonstration of its kind in Lebanon. Media reception in the country, it seems, was largely positive (see the accounts here, in English, French and Arabic).

The sign in the photo can be translated as, "Violence is Deviance in a Civilized Society." (Deviance/shudhudh is the standard homophobic epithet used in Arab to describe homosexuality.) The photo is from Helem's facebook site, and posted by Anarchist Queer from "Syria." (Shukran to her and Angry Arab for alerting me to yesterday's action.)

2. Meanwhile in Arkansas, this happened on Saturday:

Arkansas Presbyterians voted overwhelmingly Saturday for a constitutional amendment to allow noncelibate gays and lesbians to serve as deacons, elders and ministers in the Presbyterian Church (USA).

The lopsided 116-64 vote surprised leaders of the Presbytery of Arkansas, a collection of nearly 100 congregations spread across central and northern Arkansas. "It tells me that there's no predicting the Holy Spirit," said Interim General Presbyter Sallie Watson, shortly after the vote.

Read more here.

Even though Arkansas voters passed Act One last November, which bans any unmarried cohabiting couple (gay, straight, whatever) from being able to adopt or be foster parents--not all is homophobic in the Natural State.

3. And then there is Milk, Sean Penn and the Oscar. Hopefully, a blow against Prop 8. But y'all know about that one.

So let's give a cheer for Lebanon and Arkansas, where, unlike in Hollywood, we might not expect such advances.

Red Flags, Red Kufiyas: Leftists in Lebanon demonstrate in support of Gaza

Angry Arab has been reporting that many demonstrations in Lebanon in solidarity with Gaza have been led by leftists and in particular, the Communist Party. If you read Arabic, here's a report from As-Safir on yesterday's demonstration in Beirut, where thousands marched despite the rain.

The article says that representatives from the Lebanese CP, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) and the Popular Democratic Party (about which I know nothing), as well as leading trade unionists. In addition to the red kufiyas and the red flags with hammer and sickle, posters of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Che Guevara, as well as Venezuelan flags, were much in evidence.

Kufiya note: Hamas in Gaza has seized on the red-and-white kufiya as its symbol, in contrast to the Fateh/Arafat black-and-white one. In Lebanon, the leftists go for the red-and-white. Not in solidarity with Hamas, but because red is the socialist color.

(Photo credit: 'Ali Lama')

Otis Grand on CNN: Beirut Blues

Otis Grand is one of the world's great blues guitarists. We were together at the American University of Beirut in the late sixties and early seventies, and I used to play music with him from 1972-1975, part of that time in the Bliss Street Blues Band. I was never a very good singer, but Otis was an awesome guitarist. He moved to London in 1976, and in the early 1980s started playing music professionally there.

He appeared yesterday on the CNN show, "Inside the Middle East," talking about his life and the blues, from Beirut. There is great footage of him playing. And, there are some photos of the Bliss Street Blues Band, as well as some footage. I'm the guy with the dishwater blonde "Afro." Check it out.