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Veiled threats
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If, to an outsider, what’s delicately referred to as the “situation” in Lebanon seems—again, delicately put—confusing, rest assured that even a native can be confounded by it. “It’s an amazing place, I love it,” says Montrealer Radwan Moumneh, “but I’ve never been anyplace as fucked up as that.” Lebanon’s bizarre political system—the Taif Agreement arrangement divvying up power between Christians, Druze and Sunni and Shia Muslims—takes much blame. “It just makes absolutely no sense. It’s very hierarchal, based on different confessions, which creates this power dynamic. Of course, there are so many different groups living with such a tiny, confined space—and have been for thousands of years. Also, the country being what it is, strategically and politically, there’s always so much external interest in the country, pulling strings in different directions—which makes for a country that is absolutely fucked.” It’s a conflict Moumneh feels firsthand. “My mom’s side of the family are Shia from southern Lebanon, all exclusively pro-Hezbollah, and my father’s side is very traditional orthodox Sunni Muslim, very Beiruti—the western side of the city. “We don’t discuss politics,” he says with dry understatement. In any case, Moumneh adds, “It’s impossible to have any true sense of what’s going on because so many things happen behind closed doors. It’s just that kind of place. Outwardly, things can seem a certain way, but from within, who knows what happens behind those closed doors? It’s a very dirty game, the politics of Lebanon.” Sins and sentimentsThat enigmatic opacity, never to mention the country’s clashes and contradictions, are reflected in Awlad Al-Haram, the newest and most ambitious work from Moumneh’s Jerusalem in My Heart project. The title translates to “children of sin.” “Usually, it’s an insult when someone calls someone ‘haram.’ It’s a rude thing, like calling your show Motherfuckers or something. When you call someone that, it’s quite the diss. “The show very vaguely describes in general, politically and socially, what’s happening in the Middle East. Particularly in Lebanon—I’m Lebanese, so I can only use that as a reference point.” A didactic discourse it’s not, however. “You can look at it, and it’s so hard to read between the lines because it’s such a personal project. I do a lot of other stuff,” notes Moumneh—a member of Pas Chic Chic and co-owner of Hotel2Tango, for starters—“and this is the one thing that is 100 per cent love and creation, doing it for the sake of doing it. The only thing I compromised on was making it 45 minutes, because usually the shows I do are 10 minutes long, super short, just because it’s an aesthetic that appeals to me. The shows are always very intense, emotionally. It’s a visceral, gut reaction to things—here’s a 10-minute burst of noise.” Moumneh only does a JIMH performance every six months or so, and never documents them—he takes issue with the cultural laziness that easy Internet access causes, and moreover regards human memory, with its distorting selectivity, as the most worthy repository for his efforts. “There’s no records out, I don’t tour, there’s no commercial ambitions or visions of rock stardom. It’s just what it is. If 10 people or 1,000 show up, I’ll have the same reaction—it’s truly a personal thing.” Wailing and veilingIf 10 people show up, they’ll be greatly outnumbered by the ensemble Moumneh leads for Awlad Al-Haram, 10 instrumentalists and a veiled host of 30 women who, he explains, “are going to be doing a lot of rhythm with their bodies, and singing—not a choir by any means, but waves of voices, a lot of screaming. The show sort of builds up to this intense, trance-y thing that goes on and on and on. The end of the show, we won’t rehearse. It’s not defined, we’re just going to do it. I’ll just jump in headfirst and hope it works. It could be a total disaster or a total success. “The performers hate it, but I kinda like this element of not knowing what’s up. I’m kind of a nervous person, so I like that my show has that awkward, nervous vibe to it. Not so much the unexpected, I just like the sincerity in the nervousness. I’m not posing as a pro musician, I’m just this guy who has an idea.” “Psychedelic Arabic” is Moumneh’s shorthand description of the music he’s creating, with no small help from his friend Sam Shalabi. “It’s a cheap cop-out, but I say that because I play many of the instruments but I don’t know how to play any really well, and I’m an awful technical musician. If I tried to do anything close to traditional, I would butcher it. With stuff like this, I think I can get away with me being me, spazzy and all over the place.” AT THE MAI ON FRIDAY AND |
