Leila Lak
The Blues and Beirut are not two words you often see in one sentence, but the first Lebanese Blues band Wanton Bishops are adding blues to the eclectic music scene in Beirut. Ben Holman a British documentary filmmaker living in Brazil followed their journey from Lebanon to the Deep South of the United States.
“Beirut reminds me of Rio ten years ago,” says Holman of his time in the Lebanese capital. Holman was sent to Beirut by Red Bull to film the journey of harmonica player and lead singer Nader Mansour and guitarist Eddy Ghossein from Beirut to the United States. His feature-length film captures the journey from the bustling streets of Beirut to the swamps of New Orleans. “People are just very open (in Lebanon). I got into a taxi from the airport and the taxi driver offers me a cigarette. I don’t smoke but I took it as I thought how nice,” says Holman.
What struck him most about Beirut is people’s spontaneity, and how like his adopted city of Rio, he says, people live for the moment.
“People are living in extreme circumstances, with a proper life and death backdrop,” he says. “Ten years ago in Rio, violence in the favelas was ever present, the dictatorship was in recent memory, and in Beirut it’s the constant threat of war. It’s not that life is cheap, it just gives people a much more laid back attitude.”
In a country where the music business is not a big commercial establishment, Mansour and Ghossein cannot live off what they make through record sales and concerts. “It’s a cliché but they are Lebanese and both are also businessmen, rockers by night and businessmen by day” says Holman. Mansour owns bars and Ghossein works with medical equipment.
The city of Beirut is small, in a small country and there are very few record studios and record labels. The Wanton Bishops fill up venues in their twice-yearly concert but possibly as the Wanton Bishops sing in English their audience and potential reach is small. Lebanon has had many returnees from around the globe so the younger generation does tend to speak English or French or often both but this is only true of a certain strata of society and the most successful bands, like the alternative rock band Mashrou’ Leila sing in Arabic. Youth culture in Beirut is highly creative and the streets of neighbourhoods like Hamra are bustling with bars, clubs and galleries.
Holman was struck by the visual similarities between Beirut and Rio where the cities live between mountains and sea. Mansour, like many Lebanese, spends much of his time fleeing the city to the ancestral home of his family in the mountains that rise above the city, mountains that in winter are covered in snow and in summer with fig and olive trees, lush green landscapes and fresh water streams reminiscent of the biblical descriptions of Eden that make the land in the region so sacred to many religions, a world away from the landscape that gave rise to the blues.
For Mansour and Ghossein growing up in Lebanon holding the Lebanese passport travel is not easy as visas are not easy to get. This was their first trip to the United States and Holman had to meticulously plan their journey, as shoot days were limited. They went through the depths of the South following the journey of the Blues, Mississippi, New Orleans and the swamps of Louisiana. As they take a boat trip through the swamps Mansour poetically describes the water as “dark Bourbon,” you sense the environment seeping into the consciousness of the two musicians. They meet blues men through their journey and they play with some legends like Vasti Jackson and Glenn David Andrews. For the two men in their early thirties who turned to the blues at an early age this homage to the land of their chosen style of music is palpable.
Before their journey their concert in Beirut is more rock heavy but as their journey moves on they return to the root of the blues, adding a flavour of the Orient.
“You can hear the call to prayer in their intonation,” says Holman, “Islam got soul!”
As they journey through they are invited to play at the most important Blues venues and although their musical abilities might not be as great as the big Blues men Holman says their sincerity was very well received. Mansour says he might be the best Harmonica player in Lebanon but adds that is not saying much. Through this journey both men were able to lift their own musical abilities as playing with very talented musicians challenged them.
Holman says of his film that due to the time pressures little was left to chance but they had moments of spontaneity that translated to magical scenes in the film. One of these is when the pair visit a gospel church and the pastor asks them to bring their instruments and pay for the congregation. Mansour is visibly moved and comments on the fact that for the Church Blues music is the music of the devil but they welcomed their visitors from the Middle East and enjoyed what they had to offer them by means of their music.
Throughout the journey the men are filled with the excitement of returning home to see where their experience will take their music. Through their journey you also sense the confidence of adding elements of Lebanese traditional music into the blues. Their upcoming album is apparently a new direction of blues with a twinge of the Middle East. The film is available to be seen online.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Leila Lak is a journalist, documentary filmmaker and chief journalist of Revista Diaspora.