MUSICIANS OF THE FUTURE, SONGS OF PAST LOSS
By Jim Quilty
Daily Star
Friday, August 14, 2009
Lebanon
BEITEDDINE: This week in August, Marcel Khalife pointed out to his
Wednesday evening Beiteddine Festival audience, is an historic one. The
program had already informed festival-goers that this concert was
being held in honor of Jerusalem being the 2009 cultural capital
of the Arab world. It was also held in memory of Palestinian poet
Mahmoud Darwish, who died on August 9 of last year, at the age of 67.
Adding to the historical weight of the evening was another historic
end. On this day in 1977, the month-long siege of the Palestinian
refugee camp of Tal al-Zaatar ended with a massacre that some estimates
suggest left thousands dead. Khalife said he wanted to devote this
concert to the memory of those Palestinians and Lebanese slain 32
years ago.
It was a sombre start to an otherwise festive event – the Lebanon
premier of "Ahmad al-Arabi." Composed 26 years ago, Khalife’s first
full-scale orchestral work is an opera with a libretto taken from
"Ahmad al-Zaatar," the poem Khalife’s friend Darwish wrote in 1977
in direct response to the Tal al-Zaatar massacres.
The evening was not overburdened by the past, however, thanks to
the 100-piece Palestine Youth Orchestra and Choir, under the baton
of British conductor Sian Edwards, who shared top billing with the
Amshit-born musical icon. One of the musical institutions created
by the late Palestinian-American academic Edward Said, the PYO is
comprised of young musicians from Palestine and the Palestinian
diaspora community, and so embodies a glimpse into Palestine’s
musical future.
For the singer-composer’s fans, "Ahmad al-Arabi" belongs to a wider
oeuvre of Khalife tunes and lyrics that folks in this part of the
region have been committing to memory and performing, formally and
informally, for decades.
Adventure-seeking foreigners who found themselves in Lebanon in the
summer of 2006 will likely recall the opera’s "Samidoun" ("Steadfast")
chorus, made popular by resistance supporters during that summer’s
34-day war.
For anyone listening to it in the raw, however, "Ahmad al-Arabi"
may seem an unusual piece of music. The overture that opens the piece
has a distinctly baroque flavor – after the show, arguments could be
heard politely raging as to whether it was more redolent of Handel
or Pachelbel – specifically baroque as arranged for large orchestra
in the 1970s.
The apparent incongruity of the overture’s well-ordered tonalities
is heightened by the subject matter of the lyrics.
In Darwish’s poem, Ahmad (a synecdoche of the Palestinian condition)
ponders how, no matter where he settles, it seems he will be forced
to leave. The only consolation lies in the strength that can grow,
like zaatar (wild thyme), from utter abandonment.
Khalife’s operatic collaboration with Darwish was performed in
Beiteddine as a cantata for four voices – two Palestinian (Basel
Zayed and Reem Talhami) and two Lebanese (Oumeima al-Khalil and
Khalife himself).
All voices comported themselves with elegant verve. The PYO was in
fine form, particularly the young clarinettist who stepped forward
to deliver a stirring solo – largely improvised by the sound of it –
that came remarkably close to mimicking the mournful cadences of the
Armenian doudouq. Among the vocalists, the clarity of tone in Oumeima
al-Khalil’s vocals were particularly crystalline.
Khalife’s manner as he recited from Darwish’s poetry was bard-like
and reverent, an aspect accentuated by Sian Edwards’ attentiveness
as he read. For those familiar with Darwish’s poem, the PYO choir’s
interpretation of Khalife’s arrangement further contributed to the
power and beauty of the text.
The festival program suggested that "Ahmad al-Arabi" would be followed
by "Ashiqa," a suite of choral-orchestral work composed by PYO head
Suhail Khoury. "Ashiqa" was indeed performed but not before Khalife
returned to the stage for an un-programmed set with his jazz ensemble –
which includes his sons Rami on piano and Bashir on percussion, as well
as a contrabass and, later, clarinet and assorted Arabic percussion.
The personnel change brought with it a profound change in the
evening’s musical mood. Significant as it is in the region’s music
history, and magisterial as it is in performance, "Ahmad al-Arabi"
has, unavoidably perhaps, a monumental stiffness about it. The more
relaxed jazz ensemble is much closer in form to the one man-one oud
performance of political songs that made Khalife a household name.
This performance, mostly comprised of newer arrangements of much-loved
tunes from the 1980s, was a perfect complement to the solemnities
of the cantata. Part-way through the third number, the pianist and
bassist veered the piece into jazz improv territory, which saw the
younger Khalife stand for a spate of his patented poundings of the
piano’s insides.
Another highlight of the concert’s midsection was a second imaginative
solo by the PYO’s clarinettist. The clarinet isn’t necessary the first
instrument to come to mind when one thinks of Palestinian music –
redolent, as it is, of the Klezmer music of Ashkenazi culture. Then
again, as one audience member observed, certain Israelis have devoted
so much energy to appropriating Palestine’s material culture for
themselves, it’s about time Palestine stole something back.
It was coming near midnight by the time the Khalifes’ jazz incarnation
had had their fill of the stage. Reem Talhami and the PYO stepped
into the breach with Suhail Khoury’s mutable "Ashiqa," a piece more
than slightly redolent of the work of American compose Aaron Copland,
particularly during his "Billy the Kid" phase.
Alas, the Khalifes’ jazz ensemble proved a hard act to follow. Some in
the Beiteddine audience preferred to leave early and beat the traffic
than enjoy Talhami’s lilting and passionate interpretation. That’s
their loss.