Capital of the Arab underground

If you take a taxi in Beirut, there’s a good chance the driver will be listening to local radio – at maximum volume. That may be your first encounter with what seems to be the holy trinity of Lebanese music: traditional songs, bubblegum pop and deafening techno. But there’s more to the sound of Beirut. Over the last 15 years, the Lebanese capital has become the epicentre of an underground music scene with some of the best electro, rap and punk in the Arab world.

You can’t hear Beirut’s alternative groups on the radio, except on ‘Ruptures’ - the Radio Liban programme presented by Ziad Nawfal. DJ, music critic and producer of key bands such as Scrambled Eggs (punk rock) and Munma (electro), Nawfal has been an active player in the birth of this underground music movement. “In the mid 1990s good audio equipment became available in Lebanon. Bands had usually played in restaurants, but then music venues began opening up and people started putting on live shows,” he remembers. Untitled Tracks is the book Nawfal has produced with co-editor Ghalya Saadawi and photographer Tanya Traboulsi which documents the alternative scene in Beirut. We take a listen to the sound of a city in permanent flux.

Electro fusions

Trip-hop group Soapkills was formed by singer Yasmine Hamdan and songwriter/DJ Zeid Hamdan (no relation) in 1995. The Soapkills adventure ended in 2005, but Yasmine and Zeid remain symbols of the alternative music scene, primarily for their eclecticism. Yasmine released an electro pop album in 2009 as Y.A.S. produced by Mirwais, while the chameleon-like Zeid pursued his sonic explorations with various groups, including The New Government (rock) and a duo with the Guinean musician Kandja Kora. Yasmine and Zeid’s story is one with close ties to the West - like most of the musicians active on the underground today they are trilingual (Arabic, French, English) and they lived abroad during the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990). Alongside a deep knowledge of classical Arab music – such as the work of Oum Khaltum, Ismahan and Abdel Wahab - the pair also cite Portishead, Massive Attack and Chet Baker as influences. This eclectic musical background led Soapkills to fuse Eastern rhythms with electronic beats in the mid 90s, pioneering a Middle Eastern new wave which still resonates today.

Sounds of chaos

Following the war in the summer of 2006, Jawad Nawfal released a trilogy of works as part of his musical project Munma. He recalibrated Eastern harmonies and rhythms by mixing them with clips sampled from the radio, street noises and political speeches, remixed until they became abstract sounds. Essentially contextual – these distorted sounds reflect the political chaos which submerged the country after the summer of 2006 – Munma’s minimalist compositions are aimed at a select group of initiates. As with most alternative Lebanese groups, commercial success is not a priority, and it doesn’t matter if the albums are self-produced and only sell a hundred copies. For Nawfal, what counts is creativity and experimentation and with Munma he aims to produce a Middle Eastern music stripped of all exoticism.

Sugar-free pop

Mayaline Hage and Marc Codsi met at a free improv music workshop, formed the electro-rock group Lumi in 2006, and were signed to EMI Music Arabia. When asked about their musical influences they cite “all underground music”, that’s to say Mylène Farmer, Nirvana, Léo Ferré and French and German electronic music. In fact it was in Dusseldorf – the German town revered by all electro fans – that the duo recorded their debut album Two Tears In Water, before embarking on a tour of Europe and then playing in Dubai. “We sing in English and Lumi is clearly aimed at Westerners or Anglophone Lebanese people. Our music would not work in any other language” they assert. “In contrast to the slow rhythm and vocal melodies of Soapkills, who we adore, we wanted to produce an accessible glam pop sound,” they add. Their work is infused with originality and a certain taste for irony – just take a look at the video for ‘Don’t Fuck With My Cat’ which parodies David Lynch. Lumi’s spin on Lebanese pop is sophisticated, and acid rather than sugar-coated. “In our country’s culture singers are perceived as objects, and the artistic aspect has almost zero significance. When I get on stage and start singing like a punk, I’m also trying to change that image of the Lebanese singer who sells her body. The media have done their fair share of damage as far as that goes” explains Mayaline.

Lumi – Don’t Fuck With My Cat

Rap, hip-hop and ‘Lebaneseness’

For a militant sound committed to ‘Lebaneseness’, just take a listen to Beirut’s hip-hop and rap scene. With the economy in tatters, political assassinations, and rising social inequality, Beirut’s rappers have many reasons to protest. Wael Kodeih, alias Rayess Bek, is one of the best known figures on the alternative scene. His French and Arabic lyrics denounce corruption and superficiality in Lebanese society. His hip-hop universe, tinged with Middle Eastern beats, is a million miles from the ‘dream factory’ of Arabic pop, with its kitsch video clips looped on national TV. Wael cuts through those illusions: “I don’t sell dreams, I deal in reality, that’s the difference between me and a pop singer” he says in the documentary Yallah Underground, directed by Farid Eslam.

Rayess Bek - live

Lebanon rocks

And what about Lebanese rock? How is it different from US/UK rock? We asked the members of punk rock group Scrambled Eggs who are, like Soapkills, pioneers of the underground Lebanese music scene. “The discovery of alternative rock, especially Sonic Youth, was a definitive moment for us. Our first album, which came out in 2000, was heavily influenced by Radiohead. Later we took a more experimental direction”, say Charbel Haber, singer and guitarist with the band. “We sing in English because we think Arabic is not a language that goes with rock. But our rock is Lebanese, because it talks about a particular atmosphere - the chaos and the madness of our city, Beirut.” Scrambled Eggs is a reminder that above all Lebanese alternative music is the expression of this inspiring city, and is, in its image, multi-cultural, unstable and constantly under (re)construction.

UNTITLED TRACKS: On Alternative Music in Beirut