Heavy Metal Islam (18 page)

Arrayed against the Cedar revolutionaries, however, was the majority of Lebanon’s Shi’i population, long marginalized despite being Lebanon’s most populous group. Along with a sizable segment of the Maronites and the Palestinian refugee population, they were either scared of a Sunni and Druze power grab, or they supported Syria’s presence in Lebanon because of its support for Hezbollah’s resistance against the eighteen-year-long Israeli occupation.

This split made it extremely difficult for the activists behind the Cedar Revolution to create an environment that would support national reconciliation, democracy, and an end to corruption and foreign interference. And when, despite these obstacles, the movement seemed to be poised to challenge the various entrenched interests behind the status quo, the Israel-Hezbollah war of the summer of 2006 ensured that arms and money, rather than a common, post-conflict vision of Lebanon’s future, would continue to rule the country’s politics.

While the Cedar Revolution ultimately fizzled, for the first time a peaceful grassroots democratic movement in the MENA managed to upset an existing system and throw the power elite on its heels, forcing it to adapt and compromise to stay in power. The memory of that accomplishment continues to inspire Lebanese, and activists around the Arab world, today.

A Long History of War and Music

Despite political stagnation, intermittent violence, and occasional war, Beirut remains one of the world’s cutting-edge locations for dance music, hip-hop, and alternative rock. Before the 2006 conflict, well over 5,000 partyers would hit the clubs on a good night. The number is not that much lower today.

An evening for young Beirutis might begin with dinner or drinks at one of the innumerable trendy bars in the bohemian quarters of al-Hamreh, Gemayzeh, or Achrefiya (my favorite, purely for the irony, is the Che Bar, whose prices would make Che Guevara turn over in his grave), followed by a visit to one of the city’s famed dance clubs. These include Acid, where for twenty dollars you can indulge in an open bar until dawn and dance the night away with Christian and Shi’i lesbians and/or Sunni and Druze gay men. Or you can go to what for me is one of the most interesting nightclubs in the world, the legendary BO-18, whose retractable roof, sleek and modern styling, and coffins for tables—it was built next to the site of a wartime massacre—allow you to dance under the moon and stars.

Add to these the underground parties that occur on a regular basis, and it’s not surprising that only months before the 2006 Israeli invasion, at least one travel writer predicted that Beirut would soon be “the new Ibiza”—once the hottest party scene in Europe, if not the world. This would have been a good development not just for clubgoers, but for the country at large, since the emergence of freewheeling Ibiza coincided with the demise of Franco’s decades-long dictatorial rule in Spain. Today Beirut still has an Ibizan air, but the political atmosphere remains as polluted as it’s been at any time since the end of the civil war a generation ago.

It didn’t have to be this way. About six months after the assassination of former prime minister Hariri, I was standing on the stage of Club Nova, located in the upper-middle-class neighborhood of Sin el Fil. Some of the hottest clubs in the Eastern Mediterranean are located nearby, and the mix of modern architecture sprinkled with much older buildings gives the quarter, and Beirut, its unique feel.

Surrounding me on the stage were the members of The Kordz, one of the biggest rock bands in Lebanon and the Middle East, and to my mind, one of the best hard-rock bands anywhere. Also present were Reda Zine and Amine Hamma, who’d come with me from Paris for a conference I’d organized with Layla al-Zubaidi and the Danish organization Free Muse on the censorship of music in the MENA.

Earlier that evening the four of us had started work on the song “Marhaba,” and we were itching to translate the energy of our studio collaboration onto the stage. As big a thrill was that joining us was Salman Ahmed, founder and lead guitarist of Junoon. Labeled by fans and music critics around the world as “the U2 of Asia”—Bono is in fact a fan of the band—Junoon is unquestionably the biggest rock band in history east of Berlin (millions of albums sold, but, sadly for band members, most of them pirated). Organizing an impromptu all-star jam session is always a risky proposition. Luckily, our potentially discordant group of musicians—Lebanese, Moroccan, Pakistani, and American; Muslim, Christian, and Jewish—clicked from the moment we took out our instruments and began to play. “Isn’t that what music is supposed to be about?” Salman asked rhetorically after the show, as audience members lingered around to meet the band.

Salman’s happiness at playing a good set was overshadowed by the news that several members of his family were missing and presumed dead in a massive earthquake that had struck Pakistan earlier that day. Instead of flying home to New York with me as planned, Salman was now arranging to go to Pakistan to help dig through the rubble to search for his family members, who lived about 100 kilometers north of the capital of Islamabad. “My uncle is digging right now for them, but it’s probably too late,” Salman explained, with a calmness that caught me by surprise. “What am I supposed to do? I’m a Sufi, so I have to believe that whatever happens does so for a reason, and all we can do is remember our loved ones and honor them by bringing joy to others. Let’s play some music.”

We hit the stage for the next set, and Ahmed ripped through a few guitar solos before taking over the microphone to sing with Kordz lead singer Moe Hamzeh. After an impromptu version of one of Junoon’s biggest hits, “Sayonee,” he explained to the crowd what had happened to his family earlier in the day. With that, he called out U2’s “With or Without You” and started strumming the chords. I’m not sure any of the rest of us had performed this song live before, but by the second verse it had taken on a life of its own.

By the time the second chorus was over, much of the audience, and the musicians as well, were in tears. It remains one of the most intense and meaningful performances I’ve ever been part of. Yet it was only a prelude to what was for me the most important moment of the night, The Kordz’s Arab-metal version of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall.”

As I tried to play an Arabic-sounding yet funky rhythm under guitarist Nadim Sioufi’s Arabesque version of David Gilmour’s famous solo, it suddenly hit me: one of the most hopeful visions of the future of the Middle East I would ever come across was standing—well, headbanging, really—before my eyes. As I watched the reaction of an audience full of Lebanese, and foreigners of various persuasions to the song, the idea of rock ’n’ roll helping to move a country away from violence and authoritarianism and toward greater tolerance, peace, and democracy seemed not just plausible but natural.

It also became clear that the anger exploding from the lyrics to “Another Brick in the Wall” was never intended to indict merely the stifling conformity of post–World War II Britain. It was equally relevant to the post-civil-war Lebanese political system. In post–Cedar Revolution Beirut—a city that Pink Floyd founder Roger Waters holds close to his heart, and has named a song after (“Leaving Beirut”)—the wall evoked by the song is the one that has long closed various Lebanese communities off from each other, denied Lebanon an independent future, and sealed the Arab/Muslim world off from the rest of the world. As Moe pointed out a few hours later as we stood outside an all-night hummus-and-chicken shack ordering food, when the crowd pumped their fists in unison with “All in all, you’re just another brick in the wall,” they were declaring their refusal to continue being cogs in the machine of the occupations, violence, corruption, and repression that for so long have defined Lebanon.

Building a Temple of Rock

Moe Hamzeh has always loved two things, rock music and rocks. Before he became a professional musician, he received his BA and then his master’s degree in hydrogeology. As he jokes, “Geology is rocks, I do rock ’n’ roll. So it was a natural move. In fact, Beirut for me was the original ‘school of rock.’ I studied rocks in the morning and played rock ’n’ roll at night.”

Listening to classic heavy metal—Zeppelin, Hendrix, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, and Iron Maiden—was his way of dealing with the strains of the country’s long civil war. “I was always into rock, because it was my only way to forget where I was, with bombs going off all the time. The music was my only companion. I’d put on the headphones and listen to one of the great albums and try to sleep at night while the bombs exploded near my parents’ house,” he continued. “And when I’d wake up the next morning I’d put on Bob Marley in order to give me hope as I started a new day.”

But what about Oum Kalthoum, I wondered, or even the timeless diva Fairuz, acclaimed as the “soul of Lebanon” because of her popularity among Lebanese regardless of creed or communal affiliation? “Honestly,” Moe responded, “far more than Arab music, rock spoke to me because of how it reflected the reality of war. And when
The Wall
came out 1979, it became a symbol of tearing down the walls that kept us apart, and forced us to live with the worst kind of ‘thought control.’”

Aside from music, what rescued Moe was attending the American University of Beirut (AUB), where he could enroll thanks to a scholarship from Rafiq Hariri, one of thousands the billionaire turned prime minister provided for young Lebanese to attend college. “It might seem ironic, since it was established by American missionaries to reflect Western superiority, but AUB opened me to different perspectives, a crucial experience because we were so closed off from other people outside our immediate community during and right after the war. It also gave me the ability to pursue a dream, music, that my parents thought was irrational. If I had gone to another university, where there wasn’t the sort of interaction with other groups from Lebanese society, not to mention Americans and other foreigners, I would have become a much more narrow-minded person.

“I remember at AUB I had friends from Hezbollah—they would laugh at me as a rocker, but I wasn’t a threat to them, nor they to me. We respected each other, studied, debated, hung out, and challenged each other, even during the war. Our discussions helped us all to learn to say to each other, ‘Respect my space and I’ll respect yours.’ And it is precisely this that is no longer happening in the larger society today, outside of the music scene.”

Indeed, today the trend in education has moved toward sectarian universities that cater primarily to one group or subculture within Lebanon’s communal tapestry. For Moe, this development is a bad omen for the country’s future. The chances of a twenty-year-old rock singer and his Hezbollah counterpart meeting and learning to understand and even respect each other are drastically reduced today, and are growing more narrow still. But as most every artist, activist, and scholar I know agrees, if these two poles of youth culture can’t find some common ground, pulling everyone between them just a little bit closer in the process, Lebanon is doomed. And so is the Middle East.

The TRUTH of Music—and War

Moe may not have the air of authority of the talking heads who regularly appear on LBC (the main Lebanese television network) or al-Jazeera to comment on “the situation” in Lebanon, but his experience has taught him how complicated globalization has become in a small, multiethnic, and multi-religious country like Lebanon that, paradoxically, has long been a primary center of cultural production for the larger Arab world. On the one hand, the “civilized chaos” that defines the urban fabric of Beirut meshes with the periodic violence wrought by forces inside and outside the country to produce a spirited, edgily innovative music scene. On the other hand, the country’s diva-driven pop scene has been more or less taken over by the Saudi-owned media conglomerate Rotana, whose roster of cookie-cutter singers fits right in with the homogenization and vacuity of Lebanon’s famous fashion- and style-obsessed culture.

And yet, at the same time, the forces that have produced this culture create a hit television show like
Superstar
(an Arab take on
American Idol
). As author Allegra Stratton wrote in her fascinating portrayal of millennial Arab hipsters,
Muhajababes,
such programs are among the most honest expressions of contemporary Arab pop musical tastes, since winners are chosen by the votes of 15 million viewers across the Arab world—more people, the program’s producers never tire of pointing out, than have ever voted in a free election in the Arab world.

These contradictions fueled the uplifting yet ambivalent dynamics of the Cedar Spring. A photograph of the back of Moe’s head, with the word
TRUTH
shaved into his hair as he stands on a balcony overlooking a million protesters, is one of the iconic images of the protests. A decade of full exposure to the globalized economy had forced Moe and his musical comrades to adapt to producing their art in the cracks of Lebanon’s liberalized and corporatized cultural economy. But with Hariri’s assassination, the cracks became chasms. The
TRUTH
shaved into Moe’s hair was the truth staring up at Lebanese from the chasms dividing the country.