Music
Why Beirut is going through a revolution in electronic sound
With Beirut artists Thoom and Jessika Khazrik leading the way, the electronic music and experimental techno emerging from Lebanon right now is reaching new, creative peaks.
Beirut has long been the backbone of club culture in the Arab world. In tandem with huge socio-economic turbulence, Lebanon and the wider Middle East region has rocketed through a period of intense musical progression, with new audiences being drawn to fresh, experimental sounds – music that was once a niche preserve.
Although it’s become something of a clubbing destination, Beirut typically imports a Euro-centric house and tech-house sound to fill its dancefloors and many residents at the city’s packed commercial clubs are European DJs or already-established Beirut DJs who’ve been on the scene since its birth in the ’90s. There are signs, however, that this is all beginning to change.
Beirut-born artists Thoom (real name: Zeynab Ghandour) and Jessika Khazrik are part of a growing community of emerging underground musicians spearheading change in a city where opportunities to explore experimental sounds have, until recently, been limited.
Thoom (left) and Jessika Khazrik (right)
© Thoom & Jessika Khazrik
“In the beginning I was obsessed with trying to learn everything in the process, to try to prove to myself I can do it all alone; but I've found that my favourite way of making music is with other people,” Thoom says.
Originally from a visual arts background, Thoom refined her sound after years of living in Chicago and now resides in Berlin, returning periodically to Beirut. She’s one of a handful of artists from the region who're finding success overseas while still playing an active role in the changes taking place at home and are working hard to alter perceptions of how music from the region should sound.
“As an Arab woman, there are certain sounds that I felt I was expected to produce – a rhythm, a drum,” says Thoom. “But I love the freedom of trying out new sounds and inspirations, and the idea of being a chameleon.” Five years ago, things were very different in Beirut. Thoom recalls one DJ set that cleared the dancefloor. “No one wanted any of it,” she says. “A person came up to me afterwards asking, ‘Where is the Berlin techno?’ But about a month ago, I played a back-to-back set with MAWADa, floating between different genres, and playing some music that was hard to dance to – and people were really loving it, it was such an amazing moment.”
Also hailing from Beirut is Jessika Khazrik, a multi-disciplinary artist and DJ who explains that the sonic backdrop of Beirut, as well as its recent history, is inspiring a lot of people to make music – they just lack access to the tools required to do so. Khazrik was lucky. She started a one-month artist residency in Berlin just two weeks after protests against economic stagnation began in Beirut in 2019. The energy on the streets sparked a series of creative projects that Khazrik is set to showcase through 2020.
Khazrik, whose father owned a piano bar during her childhood, cites heavy metal, Arabic baladi, tarab, IDM and more as inspirations. Now her own experimental productions are primarily techno in focus, but twisted by voice distortions, sampling, and other technology-based adaptations. In her performances – at art galleries, nightclubs and international festivals – Khazrik, who samples sounds found around Beirut, including electricity generators, uses music to tackle big themes like the future, technology, and the role of people in society.
“It’s not only about the music, it’s about the mind-space that electronic music puts you in when you’re spending a lot of time on the streets and moving as a collective body,” says Khazrik. “There are amazing moments in protests where [for example] trash cans are turned into bass drums.”
Thoom soaking up the sounds of Beirut
© Mohamad Abdouni
“The raves in the first three weeks [of the protests] were my favourite times playing ever, a really special energy with the crowd,” Khazrik remembers, before recounting our first meeting in 2018, when things were very different. “When we first met, I felt I couldn’t play here because of the gender dynamics and the politics of partying. I learnt that when you feel ‘I don’t want to be part of this’ there are also great moments of healing.”
Lebanon has long been a pioneering city for Arabic music. Disco has strong roots in the Levant and electronic music and clubbing has been a part of Beiruti culture since the ’90s. And now fresh, new attitudes in Lebanon (and the wider region) are coming to the fore. Thoom says the changing political landscape in Beirut is sparking interest in new electronic sounds, spurred on amid the backdrop of the protests which have been ongoing in the city since October, 2019, in frustration with the country’s stalling economy.
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“People are more open. It's really interesting to see the capacity for change [in musical interest]. People are banging different instruments on the metal barriers, making noise,” Thoom says. “In any other situation, maybe a lot of the people listening and creating these sounds would not withstand it; but, all of a sudden, now you have people from all ages listening to the most hardcore noise.”
Despite their positive outlook for electronic music and clubbing in Beirut, Thoom and Khazrik say there’s still a need for new initiatives to encourage these budding artists. Protests have kick-started changes to nightlife spaces and how local DJs are valued. Ballroom Blitz, one of the biggest clubs in Beirut, has started opening rehearsal spaces for artists during the week. Khazrik has discussed plans to create an artist residency studio in Beirut, too, so that regional artists can travel there, develop their sound and bolster the Beirut scene.
“I think this is also how a scene grows up,” Khazrik explains. “For example, you could have artists coming from Amman [in Jordan] here to do some work. These are new ideas being discussed for the first time because the changes show the importance of supporting each other.”
Jessika Khazrik doing her thing at the Museum Of Modern Art Warsaw
© Kem Collective
There are also moves to employ more local DJs in clubs. Since the local currency was de-pegged from the US dollar, the cost of booking DJs from abroad has skyrocketed. The protests have also created an environment perfect for collaboration, says Khazrik, and this in turn has started a debate on how clubs can support local artists better.
Instruments like synthesisers often cost around 40 percent more in the Middle East than elsewhere, but accessible technology and the internet are removing some of these barriers, as well as connecting the region’s fragmented underground scenes. “Identity is much more complex than the place you come from and what you reject,” says Thoom, who explores this idea by using her voice as a primary instrument.
“There are elements in classical Arabic rhythmic progressions that sound like a breakbeat,” Khazrik told me in 2018. “There’s huge potential for Arabic music in electronic music because of that deep and long-standing tie between Arabic composition, mathematics, and nomadic life.”
Many other Middle Eastern producers, such as Tunisia’s Deena Abdelwahed, are using these opportunities to craft their own conceptual electronic works too, fusing Arabic culture with modern-day electronic compositions to create a new musical voice.
Abdulwahed’s Dhakar EP, released in November, 2019, combined Arabic folk and Megrebian sounds with electronic synths. One of the tracks on the EP, Ah'na Hakkeka, is heavily influenced by stambeli – a musical style featuring iron castanets and three-stringed guitars that was brought to Tunisia by slaves from Sub-Saharan African and is now layered with modern electronics. Dakar-born Kuwaiti Fatima al-Qadari, a huge inspiration to budding electronic artists and producers in the Middle East, tackles a range of topics while experimenting with conceptual, grime-inspired electronic scores. And Cairo’s do-it-yourself HIZZ collective is on a mission to promote avant-garde music and art in the Middle East, releasing music that ranges from industrial and harsh noise to ambient and electronic-folk fusion.
Khazrik is set to open a radio station in Beirut that will target taxi drivers and techno laymen, not just the already-converted. There’s still a lot of work to do, but she believes that electronic music has a role in helping societies to heal and make new creative realities. As Khazrik puts it: “Techno is not a genre, it’s like a way of life that we, collectively, as a society, enforce.”
