Mayaline Hajje and Marc Codsi of Lumi blend rock and electronica. (Photo: Tanya Traboulsi)
The traffic is nose to tail in the parking lot that surrounds B 018, an underground nightclub in Beirut’s Quarantine district. The audacious bunker of sorts, by Lebanese architect Bernard Khoury, is dug out on a site that was long used for housing by refugees from the Lebanese Civil War. The structure is buried under a deceptively simple-looking round concrete surface, around which cars can circulate. In the middle of the circle is a grey metal cut-out that encases both the building’s mechanical roof and a bare staircase that leads down to the entrance. If George Lucas ever needs to scout a location for a spaceship launch pad, this would be the place.
When its roof is closed, underground club B 018 looks like a landing pad. (Photo: Bernard Khoury)
I descend, order a vodka tonic and clink glasses with a motley crew of bankers, producers, students, filmmakers and young Lebanese expats on holiday from London, Paris and Rome. We wait. Suddenly, the enormous roof opens, revealing the city’s starry night sky and transforming the place into a futuristic crater. Then the lights dim. A tall, thin, curly-haired man appears onstage, his gaze obscured by sunglasses. He launches into an extended electric guitar solo and people start dancing everywhere, even on the velvet benches. Scrambled Eggs is a post-punk group whose songs are dark and raw yet catchy. “I was locked in a cellar but it became my shelter,” sings vocalist Charbel Haber in “See You in Beirut Whatever Happens.” As I finish my drink, I can see how liberating it must be for the band’s fans, who grew up stifled by years of crisis and taboos, to shout out the lyrics with so much passion.
Lebanese hip-hopper Malikah raps in both English and Arabic (Photo: Tanya Traboulsi)
The scene is rife with symbolism. Lebanon’s young generation grew up hiding – and partying, despite the tension – in underground shelters not unlike B 018 and is now keeping the party going with nights like this. But this fervour is also fuelling a booming music scene. Sure, Beirut’s hottest clubs play the usual roster of international hits, but local musicians are mixing Western and Eastern influences to make a new – and sometimes revolutionary – sound all their own.
It was the fertile post-war atmosphere that in 1997 gave birth to Soapkills, a band that pioneered the mixing of trip hop with Middle Eastern classics in the Arab world. Its hybrid sound influenced the next generation and encouraged other musicians to forge their own identities, somewhere between the prototypes of East and West. Indeed, today’s revitalized Beirut has become the Middle Eastern alternative-music mecca, thanks to a group of free-jazz, hip-hop, rock and electronica bands that organize jam sessions, DJ nights, festivals and independent radio shows. For the local kids, the hottest acts aren’t coming out of London and New York but out of their own city, where bands have a particular proclivity for poetic or silly names. There’s Lumi, a duo that makes electro-rock, and the Incompetents, a psychedelic folk band. Or how about Rayess Bek, an orchestra that mixes rap with traditional sounds?
Scrambled Eggs’ unique brand of rock ’n’ roll puts politicized lyrics to wailing guitar riffs.
One night, I visit the cluttered apartment of Zeid Hamdan, founder of Soapkills and, more recently, a musical collective called Lebanese Underground. “Our effervescence is tied to frustration,” he explains. “Our geographic location and the complexity of our regional politics prevent young people from expressing themselves and developing their careers. In a time of crisis, culture always comes last.” A group of young people is sprawled out on Hamdan’s rickety sofas: RGB, a rapper in an oversize wool tuque; Hiba, a shy songstress who puts Arabic classics to current music; and Malikah, a raspy-voiced MC who raps and hosts a TV show on underground music. “Lebanon is one of the Arab countries that has the most rappers,” she tells me. “We’re trying to restore the new generation with our music. Without it, we’re powerless.”
Rapper RGB mixes Eastern influences and raunchy rhythms. (Photo: Tanya Traboulsi)
Could that restoration initiative be why nights out in Beirut are so intense and infinite? One Sunday, at about 1 in the morning, a friend and I are back in the Quarantine district on a hunt for the Société Libanaise pour les Métaux, an industrial building that’s the site of an event put on by party organizers Cotton Candy Collective. Dishevelled doormen show us to a factory elevator leading up to blasting techno music. A gaggle of heavily made-up women waits in line for the bathrooms, while gay men in tight jeans jostle at the bar. DJs Caline Chidiac, rocking a pixie cut, and Mayaline Hajje, who sings in Lumi and is wearing a little black dress and crimson lipstick, alternate shifts at the turntable. (Together with colleague Leila Sarkis, they make up the Underdolls.) The vodka flows and everyone piles onto the dance floor. As the sky begins to lighten and the outline of the mountains starts to show through the windows, a breeze sweeps in and whisks away some of the mugginess. Soon the city’s bankers and civil servants will be getting up as the artists slide into well-earned sleep. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?
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(Photos by Tanya Traboulsi are from the book Untitled Tracks: On Alternative Music in Beirut published by Amers Editions.)
