Star Scene

By Tarek Tutunji

Sunday’s performance at Al Bustan festival featured The Italian Saxophone Quartet (Italian here referring to the performers and not the saxophones) a highly acclaimed group of four soloists who teamed up in 1982 to serenade the world with their music.

I had been to the Bustan once before and its swankiness can be a bit intimidating, so I was apprehensive as I walked into the hotel expecting to see Victorian era fashion, mustaches and an audience as frigid and unforgiving as a pregnant x-girlfriend. But what I got was far from it; a warm and friendly atmosphere filled the theater and a surprisingly solid turnout of young people contrary to what you would expect due to the prohibitive ticket costs.

I had checked out the quartet on Youtube before the show and I knew they were pretty good, but what I didn’t expect was the mind blowing performance they gave.  Overall, the performance was excellent with the first part dedicated to a more classic sound and the second to something more contemporary. Not only did they perform extraordinarily, but they also brought up themes of modernism and played out their own interpretation of the modernist movement. The first four pieces were all reinterpreted for the saxophone by Salvatore Sciarrino and the rest were meant for the sax.

The four saxophonists were great performers bending their knees, leaning in and out, dancing together each in his turn completely harmonious and playing as if animated by a single spirit throughout the night. While all their compositions were satisfying, my favorite portion of the night was their adaptation of a piece by Philip Glass in 1937 just before the intermission.

The piece was divided into four tempos and was a critique of modernity along with short video clips. The opening tempo was slow-paced showing the peaceful progression of humanity up to modernity. The second tempo, however, was fast in pace, quick and ephemeral, jarring and disorienting, confusing and exciting, with the images on the screen portraying shiny, high buildings, microchips, individual faces, and immense roads. The third tempo was even slower than the first when the images became faster; it highlighted the ephemera and quickness of modern change and its long-term effects. The screen projected crowds as opposed to individual faces; modernism, it seems, has taken away some valuable communal experience. The final tempo brought back the quick pace showing the decay that modernism left behind; it is ugly, dirty, lifeless and soulless. Although the project of modernity has failed, there was a hopeful twist on a well treated topic that of the death of modernity.

After the intermission, the quartet became more playful and a particular treat was their adaptation of a few scores from West Side story such as the “I feel pretty” tune. They truly deserved the applause they received.

The Italian Jazz Quartet did the Bustan Festival great credit and gave us an exhilarating night. Their sounds were tantalizing to the ear and they played music with exuberance and animation. Despite the fact that theirs has been a mastery accrued with many years of practice and great talent, they played with freshness and ease that was a delight to behold.

Photos by Zeina Koreitem

By Tarek Tutunji

Recently Lebanon has gone through an especially warm January, leading many to point towards global warming as the culprit. While global warming is a really important topic I don’t want to bring it up right now. What needs to be brought up, however, is the fact that the most important Lebanese sector is experiencing what can only be described as a disaster because the snows have failed to come until today apparently (read more here). The fact that Lebanon relies on tourism all year round means that a lot of the country’s success relies on the fickle forces of the weather. While important structural adjustments to Lebanon’s economy need to be made, there is at least one short term step that the Lebanese government can take to prevent similar catastrophes in the immediate future, and that is cloud seeding.

Cloud seeding has been most prominently featured in the news-pieces of angsty liberal tree-huggers complaining against the Chinese government’s practice of playing god with the weather. Whiny voices aside, this thing can prove to be a great boost to the Lebanese skiing season. Not only can it prevent the effects of a warmer climate, it can also be used to prolong our winter tourist season, which at the moment stands at a measly two, maybe three months, and add up to an entire month of skiing and snowy fun and profit.

For those of you  thinking about the money involved in the process, a single artificial rain/snow fall can cost up to half a million dollars! But taking into account that Lebanon had close to two hundred thousand (200,000) tourists for the first two months of 2009, throwing away a few million dollars into the clouds may be worth it.  At best, the investment will return in the form of a longer winter season, at worst, it will serve as a good use for our newly acquired Mig jets, hell if I know how else we’re going to use them.

P.S. Thank you, Beirut NTSC, for the image idea

By Tarek Tutunji

I have recently heard about a new law which makes it an offense to wear baggy pants in Lebanon. While I have not found anything official yet, rumors have started circulating about young boys and old men alike getting threatened with fines for having their underwear show. The most recent of these was an incident at the CMC in Hamra where a security guard told my friend that he would get a fine if he didn’t pull up his pants!

What the hell! Is this for real? and how come girls don’t get anything when their thongs show?! if anything, that is the same as having a snot-nosed punk kid or senile old man flash you with his undies. The really ridiculous part of this is that I heard it was linked to some efforts to stop drugs. While I may be risking ridicule by going off on this before I even know if it’s true or not, I want to say some things about these kind of laws in general.

Public sentiment or (Adeb 3amme) is a very risky thing. It’s like getting into a relationship with someone who shows the early signs of mild disturbance. Odds are that these mild disturbances bely the truth of a psychotic maniacal stalker. At one point you’re enjoying a nice meal with a guy whose only fault is the comment he made about your hair, then, next thing you know your dating Hitler.

Where does it stop, government? Where does it stop? It starts with fining kids for bad fashion taste, then it moves on to a ban on mini-skirts and bikinis, then the kid showing an elbow in a public space becomes a menace to society. This move, if it ever existed, is as ridiculous as banning pencils because people can poke their eyes out with them. Any tool in the right hands can become a weapon, I thought we had learnt that lesson when we watched Batman.

What is Public sentiment, anyways? To what extent can the public go about telling me how to live? It’s such an abstract thing. I’m not saying that it should be abolished, sometimes public sentiment is all that is stopping us from a world where people in monkey suits push medical cocaine into car exhaust pipes, but seriously baggy pants?

You can also find Tarek at his Blog

By Tarek Tutunji and Layal Hasrouni

Breaking News!

The long standing tree  in the middle of the main Gemayzeh parking lot has been cut down!

This was most probably done in order to make  way for some new building. Now let us be clear, we’re not one of those smelly architects who bewail the end of civilization with every old building being replaced by a shiny new one. We are also not one to lament the loss of building standards  and to say that they used to make them better in the old days, when they still ate goats whole, and when food was real. That said, it was really saddening to see that tree go. It probably saw quite a few sights in the past decades; deaths, murders, love stories, the love of its shadow, pigeons crapping on cars…

Here is another building to house miserable people and disgruntled workers that wished they had a place to go in the evenings or during their lunch break where they can take their shoes off and walk on the grass and for just a minute forget about how ugly city life can be.

Beirut, especially, is suffering from a lack of green space.  It is as if the sapling that fights the odds and grows above the surface is a demarcation of space to build on. You can just notice off the construction sites around Beirut. Is all of this construction worth turning our city into a concrete place where children can barely find a place to play? Where people in love cannot walk in the park and talk for hours underneath the trees?  The actions that we choose today will have consequences for generations to follow.  We will live in a world where every last tree that existed was cut down and replaced by an ugly, outdated building.

We shall shed a silent tear for you tree. May you have a happy existence as someone’s furniture.

Remember this? Michael Jackson understood it all

By Tarek Tutunji

The American University of Beirut, AUB, elections just ended with what looks to be a resounding victory for 14th of March, and a good turnout for the independents.

But enough about the formalities. During the preceding days, students have been getting phone-calls from random strangers who are not me! Creepy, I know but wait it gets better. Turns out the parties have lists of AUB students and they somehow obtained their home phone numbers and called them up.

My friend Paul, for example, got a call from one of the parties; his obvious Christian name apparently made him a great candidate to call up. An attractive female voice asked him endearingly: “We are representatives of party (name of party removed) and we would like to invite you to vote for our candidates on your year in exchange for some (name of the job removed) satisfactory jobs”.

Ok, so maybe I added a little something to that conversation but you get the basic gist. Hundreds of phone calls have been made in the days preceding the elections and not all of them were friendly. Some candidates received threats to withdraw or else. Others were offered enticements and even some parents were contacted to sway their kids.

The world of student elections is a dark and sometimes dangerous one. For some reason, the political parties of Lebanon think that by winning a majority of seats in a student representative body, which has the powers of a lame monkey in a jello pond, can claim that they are the true representatives of Lebanon’s ridiculously spoiled rich youth.

To this end, they employ extreme means and spend close to $20,000 on student elections to get the chance to make a headline in a newspaper and destroy any vestige of legitimacy that the student representative bodies have.

If student elections are ever to become about student demands, the university administration needs to find a way to enforce rules that force candidates to run based on platforms, help students hold their representatives accountable, and to limit funding to all candidates. The lead taken by University of Saint Joseph this year is an impressive reform and though it may not be the exact formula to follow, it is a good sign to see that university administrations have realized that some reform is needed.

Till that happens, the independents will have to scrape by with their poorly funded largely disproportionate struggle and the student representative councils will remain an illusion used by universities for meeting accreditation standards.

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By Tarek Tutunji

The good people at Star Scene have told me that I’m supposed to inform you that “the opinions of individual bloggers in no way or form reflect those of star Scene”

Now that we’ve got that out of the way

Let’s talk about Piracy.

No, Not the yo ho ho, involving multiple violations of international law, screaming frenchmen, and awkward hostage situations kind of piracy, although that does sound awesome.

Instead, I’m talking about the bread and butter of the average Lebanese teenager; video games, DVD movies, and probably every single software found on every single Lebanese computer!

Most of us use pirated softwares without knowing it. Do you think this is a legal copy of Microsoft Word I’m typing in? Do you think that’s air you’re breathing right now? Hmm…

Reality checks aside, piracy is the only way that most Lebanese citizens and youths can get access to a broad experience of cultural and entertainment products of the civilized world. As a younger version of myself, cracking and updating games were how I spent 30% of my free time. 5% was spent on actually playing the game and the rest was spent looking at pixelated pictures of what I assumed to be naked women.

The world is at times livid with issues of copyright infringement and illegal downloading, but the fact is without it much of the transfer of head blowing zombie killing rampages from the developed to the developing world would never happen, and I think that is a world we all don’t want to live in.

I’m not saying that the people who produce music and gaming works of genocidal proportions do not deserve to get paid for their troubles. It’s just that there are ways to do so which allow CD’s to come at lower prices.

The recent emancipation of music through online stores selling tracks for a dollar is a great start, but more than that the Arab world has something to teach the musicians in the West. If you want money, you have to make it through concerts and marketing. Arab musicians are hopelessly aware of the fact that as soon as they publish a song, it’ll be peddled the next day under the Barbir bridge in a push cart by a man wearing sandals . They know that they have to get their money by holding concerts, meeting their fans, and selling all the remaining shards of dignity they have. Hey, no one said the entertainment business was easy.

As for the gaming world, things are a little bit tougher. One promising venue is that companies are increasingly starting to use product placement in their games, and I think if that can bring the cost of the game down to just below the price of unicorn powder, it should be pursued. By doing so, they will sell more games and reach a wider audience thereby reinforcing the product placement value of their game.

I know I’m going to regret my words in the future, most likely when the zombie I’m bashing is dressed in tacky Nike clothes and squirts Pepsi instead of blood.

You could also find Tarek at his blog

Photo by Fadi Abou Ghalioum

By Tarek Tutunji

When I asked my Friends what they thought about the Assassination of Omar Rajeh, they all stopped tossing kittens into the shark pit and awkwardly looked at their feet.

I asked them what was wrong and they said: that show … it’s just … confusing.

As I entered the Al Madina Theater on Saturday I was determined not to befall the same fate. I sharpened my wits and prepared to extract the essence of wisdom and kernels of meaning from the performance.

When I arrived at the theater, I was given a really cool booklet at the door. It had all the usual credits and references to the production, but more importantly it contained 10 pages of names and stories of journalists who were assassinated in the last 100 years of “Lebanese” history.

This made a powerful statement before the play/dance had even started. It highlighted the threat that journalists pose to those who abuse power and showed that words are more than ink on paper, or pixels on screens; they are agents of change and bearers of power… except in this blog, they are white trash bastard children.

The play starts with an impressive fusion of artistic mediums whereby acting, dancing, and even the written word came together to convey a message. What that message is exactly was a bit harder to discern.

As the performers “move” in what can only be described as epileptic spasms, words are projected on an ingenious screen which up to that point had seemed non-existent. It appeared as if the words were floating mid-air. Meanwhile, in the background the painful yelling of a castrated man was heard. I was later informed that this was the “music”.

On another level the intermittent interjections of the choreographer/screenwriter were overtly personal. The degree of involvement of the main character overshot empathy into callousness on the part of the audience.

Actually I really should have seen it coming since the performance was titled Omar Rajeh, contained the character Omar Rajeh, and was created by Omar Rajeh! The egoism overflowed its banks and flooded the theater, we were literally drowning in Omar Rajeh. Well maybe not “literally”, but it got pretty close.

Drawbacks aside, let me say that I did get an overall appreciation of what the play was saying, and being an impressionist play these were my impressions. Journalists give us voice and access, they take the risk when we are unwilling to, and they articulate what we are unable to say.

Their pregnancy is labored and their output is done at great risk, but a world without them would be a very bleak one indeed. The men and women who tell our stories are unable to help it. There is a morality which they themselves are unable to stop and their role seems almost a result of destiny.

I guess it wasn’t too bad. The dancers played their part well and its message was a worthy one, but I was expecting something more cohesive and more powerful for the ticket price charged.

You could also find Tarek at his own blog

Picture provided by Zeina Koreitem

By Tarek Tutunji

For someone whose idea of jazz is Tony Mhanna in the days when he had a cat for a moustache, I couldn’t imagine how I would even begin to like a Jazz Festival but I gave it a shot. On October 7th, I decided to check out the Beirut Jazz Festival.

The first act, according to the brochure being distributed at the door, was Toufic Farroukh and Absolute Orkestra. I think they like to write orchestra like that because they believe it makes them sound artistic. Well, it doesn’t, it just looks unnatural and forced and a quick Google search will show that the idea is as old as the yogurt in my fridge which I got once under a misguided notion of healthy living. Or maybe it’s because they are French…

Either way as I took my seat, their failure in basic spelling was all but dispelled from my thoughts as I was washed over by waves of the musical equivalent of melted pop-tarts.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that I was held in trance for the duration of the entire concert. Despite this being the first time they play together, the music flowed out as if they had been practicing for years, none of the instruments dominated in a distasteful way and the accompanying light choreography was so natural that it looked like the projectors were responding to the musicians.

The outdoor theatre of the newly opened Beirut Souks also added to the whole experience. There is always a surreal quality to open space concerts, the smell of fresh dirt, the cars passing by in the background, and the hundreds of small lights in the distant mountains juxtaposed against the intensity of the stage lights. The venue was perfect and that part of the newly opened souk is truly marvelous.

The second act of the night was Walid Itayim and friends. I would really like to give the Lebanese band a favorable verdict but it wasn’t really up to par. Their music genre of American Bar Rock was just unsuitable for the theme of the night, the sound didn’t settle well with the general atmosphere. Then there was the fact that Itayim’s voice felt like salt sprayed on a tongue cut with sharp pieces of glass. I’m not a jazz expert nor am I technician but there was something unsettling to the ears.

I think I’d do it again especially if it was Toufic Farroukh and Absolute Orkestra but I am sticking to my “Orchestra” theory.

You could also find Tarek at his personal blog