Song helps keep a lid on Lebanon’s factional differences
Historians are yet to find a retrospective name for the current decade. Those with an eye on the Middle East will probably choose a label that references massive popular movements. After the turn of events in countries such as Syria and Yemen, even in Egypt and to some extent in Tunisia, where the spark of protest emerged, hopeful terms that are normally associated with positive outcomes have slowly faded out of common use. This shift of language began when the Syrian tragedy ensued and bled across regional and transnational borders. Yet words such as “spring” and “revolution” are slowly finding their way back into the Middle Eastern lexicon of popular movements thanks to Lebanon’s decision to take to the streets.
Those of us old enough to remember the dark years of internal conflict in the small Levantine state will recall its people’s knack for transforming intense precarity into entertainment. The ongoing massive street protests are a strong reminder of that creative spirit. By taking to the streets in their masses, the Lebanese people are showing resilience alongside fragility: An uneasy contradiction that, to this observer at least, is aptly expressed in music.
It is little surprise that protesters throughout the country are using song. Indeed, chants of all kinds have accompanied protest demonstrations for as long as we can remember. In that sense, Lebanon is no different from other nation states or, for that matter, from fellow Arab countries whose populations have flocked to the public square in largely spontaneous waves, instigating irreversible changes, since 2010.
Within the wide brush stroke of similarity, each Arab (and other Middle Eastern) country maintains its proper set of regional and local circumstances. Thinking about other countries’ protest songs deserves more space than this column allows. So here I will take a look at what makes Lebanon different, at least in terms of how its demonstrators have used song over the past week or two.
For starters, Lebanon has a recent and, to a great extent, ongoing relationship with national tensions. Anxieties over social purpose, political allegiance, national integrity, as well as individual and collective dignity, stack on top of ethnic, social and religious diversity. These layers of difference are all too clear in a country that has been keen to preserve a minimal state of peaceful existence against internal and external odds. Since the civil war officially ended in the early 1990s, otherwise peripheral skirmishes have repeatedly evoked ghosts of deadly strife. The balance has been precarious, and emotions continue to run high.
Music, or song — to be specific to the Lebanese case — has been a crucial means for maintaining that balance. The power of song remains a unique way in which Lebanon, in all its tides and factions, keeps a safe lid on flammable rubbings.
In this sphere, the Lebanese singer Fairuz, along with her voice and songs, represents a cherished constant. In the ongoing wave of protests, the living legend seems to still unite a fractioned Lebanon. Decades-old songs that gained special meaning during the long years of war are now sung in unison by protesters. Fairuz herself, an icon of the country and its designated “Ambassadress to the Stars,” maintains a meta-national aura, despite her silence over ongoing events, which no one appears to contest.
As Lebanon is forming a new sense of purpose, it has a readily available store of musical material for the occasion.
Tala Jarjour
Satisfaction over the silence of prominent artists is hardly the case for other singers, especially those whose voices have been coined with nationalistic sentiment. Songs by Julia Boutros, Majida Al-Roumi, Ziad Rahbani and Marcel Khalife — all of whose careers spanned years of war and survived it with performances attracting followers of opposing ideologies — continue to stir a collective sense of unity. Paradoxically, agreement over song happens in conjunction with popular calls for these artists to show up on the street and to live up to the ideals they once called for.
Khalife eventually made an appearance in one protest, to mixed reactions. Boutros’ silence has been condemned by some and justified by others. The singer of “Revolutionaries of the land, rise against oppression, rise against depravation,” is the spouse of the defense minister. Hers is an unenviable position, given that today’s revolutionaries decry her husband as one of the symbols of oppression and depravation, whose resignation is their main demand. Rahbani and Al-Roumi continue to be silent, while their songs and memorable quotes resound across a country that seems to have found a unified voice despite deep divisions.
Today, as Lebanon is forming a new sense of purpose that stretches across its regionalized territories, it has a readily available store of musical material for the occasion. Whether the singers whose voices have, for decades, called for radical action and glorified revolutionary spirits might decide to declare allegiances this time remains anyone’s guess. But at a point where more uncertainty seemed hardly possible, a surprisingly unified popular voice is turning the tables, managing to upend decades of a careful political balancing act that was brokered by old players. In this new sphere, song seems to once again be the national constant, helping anxiety and reassurance to coexist, at least in the hearts of the Lebanese protesters.
- Tala Jarjour is author of “Sense and Sadness: Syriac Chant in Aleppo” (OUP, 2018). She is currently Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College London and Associate Fellow of Pierson College at Yale.
