Anonymous asked: What do you think of the music scene in Lebanon?

Sometimes it’s easy to forget just how much talent we have here; just last week I was blown away by Ghazi Abdel Baki at Snatch, and despite what some of my friends think, I enjoy Mashrou’ Leila immensely & see loads of potential in them. I think me have a very good metal scene too, which is often overlooked, but it’s not getting the same exposure as it used to - and that’s probably because the bands haven’t innovated anything new since forever (probably more a statement about the genre than of the bands themselves).

But anyway, to refocus on what I guess is the gist of your question (i.e. to get something a little less vox pop out of me) - my main gripe with most of our musicians is their weak, weak politics. @syrianews already commented once on the unfortunate tendencies in many Lebanese bands (in our humble opinion, of course), but even those that lean towards what I lean towards (I’d say the people of FWD/Prod are like that) stick to vague concepts and what I’d call the ‘politics of authenticity’ (oriental melodies, ouds & tablas, good poetry, etc.), which is great as resistance to the manufactured pop encircling the indie scene but why is it that all the good protest songs are ~40 years old? Ironically, and while some friends of mine in the rap scene wouldn’t agree to this either, I still find the most meaningful lyrics in recent times were written by Rayyess Bek [does he have a website?], and I’m not primarily a hip-hop’er.

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