Author Archives: Arab America

Could Mona Eltahawy have chosen a more provocative title for her manifesto? “Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution” combines sex, religion and politics in a way guaranteed to bait, captivate or possibly infuriate. And that’s just the front cover.

Eltahawy is the Egyptian-American journalist who came to prominence during Egypt’s 2011 Arab Spring. She was beaten and sexually assaulted in Tahrir Square by security forces who broke her arm and hand. Refusing to stay silent, she then wrote an incendiary essay for “Foreign Policy” magazine about the misogyny of Arab men titled “Why Do They Hate Us?” that provoked massive, impassioned debate. She has expanded that essay to create this book.

Blunt and angry, “Headscarves and Hymens” tackles every issue of women’s oppression you could think of, and some you couldn’t, across the Middle East and North Africa. Eltahawy tells us of young Egyptian women arrested and subjected to “virginity tests.” She reports on eight-year-old girls in Yemen forced to marry older men in what amounts to legalized pedophilia. She talks of divorced mothers in the United Arab Emirates who automatically forfeit custody of their children once they remarry (although polygamy is legal for men).

She tells us that Iraqi men who kill their wives never serve more than three years in prison. She writes about rapists in Jordan who legally escape punishment by forcing their victims to marry them. She reminds us of the 15 Saudi girls who perished in a 2002 school fire because morality police wouldn’t let them outside without their headscarves. “Yes, misogyny can kill you,” she fumes.

It’s clear Eltahawy paid attention to the critics of her original essay, for she expands her argument beyond simplistic rants. She incorporates examples of Arab women who have fought for women’s rights, from the early Cairo feminist who publicly removed her face veil in 1923 to the two Saudi female athletes who competed in the 2012 London Olympics. She cites reforms that don’t get enough media attention, such as Kenya’s criminalization of female genital mutilation and Saudi Arabia’s 2013 ruling allowing women to practice law (though they still can’t drive to work).

She acknowledges that women can be oppressors too, carrying out female genital mutilation, disowning “immodest” daughters and berating other women for being unveiled. She also addresses the artificial Islam-vs.-the-West divide, mindful that many people, like herself, represent both.

Born in Egypt to parents who were both doctors, she lived in London from ages seven to 15, then moved to Saudi Arabia, where she was “traumatized into feminism.” She now lives in New York City.

Eltahawy is aware people who already abhor Islam may be all too glad to hear how badly Muslim men treat their women, which risks intensifying Islamophobia. Even though she doesn’t expect the West to “save” all Arab women, she nevertheless chastises Westerners who remain silent out of a misplaced respect for foreign cultural practices. She says it’s an Arab women’s fight but our silence isn’t helping.

Linking the personal and the political, she describes being molested as a young teen on a family pilgrimage to Mecca, and only losing her virginity at 29. Now 47, divorced and childless, she tries hard to show she’s not anti-male. She writes of her overwhelming desire “to inhale Egyptian men” (a remark which, if the genders were reversed, Eltahawy would likely be the first to decry as offensive) and of her disappointment that so many male political revolutionaries still want their women safely unliberated.

“Headscarves and Hymens” is a call to arms by a woman who’s plainly proud of her justified rage. She brings to mind those angry, outspoken women in the 1970s who were branded strident feminists — the ones who yelled, who offended, but who generated change.

“It is the job of a revolution to shock, to provoke, and to upset,” Eltahawy writes, “not to behave or be polite.” Mission accomplished.

Source: www.thespec.com

Get ready, New York, a Portland performance is going off-Broadway.

The show is “Threesome,” first produced by Portland Center Stage. Written by Yussef El Guindi, the play was first workshopped at the JAW playwright festival in 2013 before getting its world premier this past January.

Off-Broadway company 59E59 Theaters caught wind of it, selecting “Threesome” as one of five shows it will produce in the company’s upcoming season.

“With all the attention Portland is getting from New York media these days, it’s fitting that a Portland theater production managed to catch the attention of a major Off-Broadway company,” PCS wrote in a press release. “Everyone in the city should be proud that its largest professional theater company is producing work that is in demand in New York.”

It’s a well-deserved honor. In a review for The Oregonian/OregonLive, Richard Wattenberg called the play “intelligent, smart [and] self-perceptive.” He hailed El Guindi’s script for its authenticity and awareness – high praise for a show about a ménage à trois.

The script follows Rashid, an Egyptian-American photographer, Leila, a westernized Egyptian writer now living in America, and Doug, the couple’s buffoonish American third wheel.

The trio of swingers can’t really swing, and their awkward attempts bring much of the show’s comedy. But the laughs soon turn to serious introspection, as El Guindi explores sexual and gender politics, as well as tricky geopolitical concerns.

“In both script and production, the articulate Leila’s struggle to come to terms with sexism, ‘orientalism’ and the pursuit of power resonates with intense passion and pain,” Wattenberg wrote.

The move to New York will likely only heighten that production, bringing a bigger and more refined “Threesome” to an audience primed for quality theater.

Source: www.oregonlive.com

The United States wants Israel to commit itself to its version of a two-state solution which seeks to preserve “Israeli apartheid,” says David Cronin, a journalist and political activist from Belgium.

Cronin made the comments in an interview with Press TV on Friday, when asked about recent remarks by National Security Adviser Susan Rice about the Obama administration’s expectations from both the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Palestinian Authority to commit to a two-state solution. 

“We look to the next Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority to demonstrate — through policies and actions — a genuine commitment to a two-state solution,” Rice said Wednesday at the annual meeting of the Arab American Institute.

Cronin said, “The United States is putting pressure on Netanyahu to commit to a two-state solution… but does it make more likely that Israel is going to allow the formation of a viable Palestinian state, in my opinion, it does not.”

“If a Palestinian state was actually formed, it was probably only comprised of a minuscule sliver of historic Palestine and the Palestinians would be probably confined to even smaller ghettos than what they’re confined to at the moment,” added Cronin, a contributing editor of Electronic Intifada.

The kind of two-state solution that is being discussed by US and Israeli officials “is about preserving some form of Israeli apartheid and allowing Israel to accord Jews greater privileges than everyone else,” he noted.

The majority of Palestinian activists are “opposed to” the US-backed solution, and instead they want a “democratic state” that would guarantee equal rights for all the people living in that state, he said.

“It’s significant that the voices coming from serious Palestinian activists are diametrically opposed to what western leaders are saying,” Cronin concluded.

Source: www.presstv.ir

GREENSBORO — Ever since my trip to the Holy Land earlier this year, I have wanted to learn more about this troubled region.

That’s why I was fascinated to see “Zones of Contention: After the Green Line,” an exhibit of Israeli and Palestinian artists at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro’s Weatherspoon Art Museum that wraps up this Sunday.

My son and I stumbled upon the exhibition during spring break, and we were interested in finding out what it was all about.

The exhibit is small, but because it includes video installations, you could spend hours examining art created by seven artists who have lived in an area of conflict for generations.

Curator Xandra Eden writes in the exhibit guide, “Through photography, video, collage, and sculpture, the exhibit addresses some of the complexities of social, personal and cultural life amid the difficult circumstances in this region of the world.”

It should be noted that the joint participation of Palestinian and Israeli artists in an exhibit is rare, because of the result of the boycott against the Israeli occupation. That in itself makes this show a bit of a rare event.

In 1949, Israeli military leader Moshe Dayan drew a map of British Mandate Palestine to demarcate an armistice boundary following the Arab-Israeli war. That green line was the inspiration of the exhibit’s title. But thanks to the artists, we can view the exhibit through the eyes of everyday people who live in this area.

The artist Francis Alys made a 17-minute video called “Sometimes Doing Something Poetic Can Become Political and Sometimes Doing Something Political Can Be Poetic.”

In it, he carries a dripping can of green paint along the Green Line. You can choose from among 11 different narrators, who share their personal histories as related to this line. During the course of the video, you can see how arbitrary that line is.

Another video is called “A Declaration,” by Yael Bartana, in which a young man rows out to a rocky outcropping off the coast of Israel, replacing an Israeli flag with an olive tree. The olive tree has long been a symbol of peace, and I discovered on my trip the importance of olive trees to West Bank agriculture. Some trees there date to the time of Christ.

The same artist recreated the work of Leni and Herbert Sonnenfeld in “The Missing Negatives of the Sonnenfeld Collection.” The couple had photographed Palestine and Eretz Israel from 1933-1948. Bartana used young Arab and Jewish residents of Israel to recreate these photographs. There is hope in every frame — hope for a better future.

In another video, Dor Guez, who lives in Jaffa, produced a video called “(Sa)Mira,” in which a young woman discusses a conversation with her boss in which she feels discriminated against because of her name.

He also saved some family photographs, nearly destroyed because they had been put in his grandmother’s kitchen drawer and stuck together. His grandfather had taken the photographs of his family’s desecrated gravesite in a Christian-Palestinian cemetery. In “40 Days,” Guez has enlarged those photographs to 3 feet by 2 feet. Although they were clearly affected by time, the photographs are still powerful. It’s hard to believe that someone would be so cruel, a final act of ugliness against someone from a different culture. Guez reports the culprits were never found.

Wafa Hourani, who lives in Ramallah, created “Panorama from Qalandia Project,” a mixed-media sculpture of cardboard and photographs that shows what it’s like to live in a Palestinian refugee camp, which is near one of the many busy checkpoints.

In “Sabbath,” Nina Pereg, who lives in Tel Aviv, documents the closing off of ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods in and around Jerusalem just before Sabbath. Men and boys drag out seemingly rickety gates, which nonetheless serve as barriers for their community. No cars are allowed during Sabbath, so the closed-off, silent area stands in stark contrast to traffic that whizzes by on the other side. Pereg shows how yet another barrier exists — albeit temporarily — between cultures.

When it was too expensive to try to get zebras into the Gaza Zoo, the owner simply painted two local donkeys to look like zebras. The video “Bath Time,” by Sharif Waked, who lives in Haifa and Nazareth, imagines what one of the animals might have gone through at the end of the day. This is a humorous look at some of the absurd situations the conflict has caused.

The largest installation in the show is “The Breakup,” by Michael Rakowitz. The artist comes from an Iraq-Jewish heritage and now lives in Chicago. He had the brilliant idea of paralleling the break-up of the Beatles with the breakdown in Middle Eastern relations that led to the Six Day War in 1967. Interestingly, the Beatles’ final concert was originally to be held in Libya during the same time period.

This installation includes video, text, collage, records, maps and other memorabilia. It was the one my son and I found to be most accessible.

“Everybody knows about the Beatles,” Eden notes. “Music through time connects us. I think it has helped with younger groups because it is something familiar. They realize that history is still relevant.”

“The Breakup” certainly helped us understand a bit more about the conflict in this area of the world. As did all of the exhibits.

And that’s exactly what Eden wanted.

“My whole concept was an attempt to create a space for artists who are representing different viewpoints, not right or wrong, but somewhat neutral,” Eden says.

The more research she did, the more she realized how little she knew about the Middle East. “We didn’t want to turn people away. We wanted them to think and look.”

The topic is one that you usually only talk about around the dinner table, Eden says, and it’s been gratifying for her to bring this issue into a public forum.

For more information about “Zones of Contention: After the Green Line,” visit www.weatherspoon.uncg.edu .

Source: www.salisburypost.com

Mo Amer still recalls the moment he knew stand-up comedy would be the one and only thing he would do with his life.

His elder brother took him when he was 10 to see Bill Cosby perform at the Houston Astrodome.

“I really didn’t know much about American culture,” Mr. Amer told The Washington Times. “That was my first-ever experience of stand-up comedy,” which he calls the only other “indigenous American art form” besides jazz.

He recalls how Mr. Cosby’s act quickly had 60,000 Texans in the palm of his hand. Mr. Amer asked himself, “What is this art that he’s doing? I made the decision right then and there that that was what I was going to do for a living.”

Mr. Amer will record his one-hour special, “Legally Homeless,” at the Warner Theatre on Sunday, the culmination of a lifelong quest.

But chasing a career as a comedian was the last thing his family wanted to hear.

Born in Palestine and raised in Kuwait, he and his family escaped Kuwait in the lead-up to the Persian Gulf War. Mr. Amer’s family then settled in Houston. His brother was pursuing a doctorate in biochemistry at the University of Houston. Education was always a paramount concern for his parents, and Mr. Amer attended a British school in Kuwait before the family’s escape.

“My father came from a well-to-do family and worked for a telecommunications engineer for the Kuwaiti Oil Co. and made millions of dollars,” Mr. Amer said, “but it was all gone overnight [when they came to America]. So it was just this process of acclimating from east to west.”

Adding to his travails in the New World, his father died when he was a teenager. He started skipping school and taking unsanctioned trips to Mexico with his friends.

“[That] was a big, big black spot for my family, especially where I come from,” he said of his “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” period.

Despite his family’s insistence on education, his comedy dreams were not to be erased. A kindly English teacher, fearing Mr. Amer would flunk out of high school, pulled him aside and told him, “’Mo, how would your father feel if you didn’t graduate?’ It pierced my heart. I said it would be absolutely horrific.”

The teacher made a deal with him: If he performed a monologue from Shakespeare in front of her class, she would reinstate his grade before his truancy began and allow him to try his hand at comedy in front of the class every Friday.

“It was a no-brainer to me,” he said. “I would show up every Friday with my new set, excited to go up, terrified, but the first time I heard the laughs, everything else would melt away and I was just a natural at it.”

Mr. Amer graduated and immediately threw himself into his passion, hitting Houston’s comedy clubs as often as possible to refine his act while working a day job at a flag manufacturing company owned by a family friend — and trying to get fired to spend more time at the mic.

Now he is a veteran of two decades of performing at home and at U.S. military bases around the world. He has performed in Muslim countries and found more comedy in those experiences. He recalls being surprised when he met certain Palestinians who spoke with a “redneck” timbre.

“It messes with your head when [someone] speaks Arabic with a Southern accent. That’s hilarious,” he said.

Much of Mr. Amer’s act centers on the typical immigrant story of moving to a new land and the inevitable culture shocks that ensue. To wit, 20 years after arriving in Texas, Mr. Amer was still considered a refugee by the U.S. government and didn’t even have a passport.

“Stand-up comedy, to me, is about being real, about being honest,” he said. “I tell stories. I excel at telling stories in a very particular way. I traveled to over 20 different countries without even having a passport. And you can imagine how many interrogations I had, both abroad and coming back into America.”

He relates an anecdote about flying into Houston from overseas, where he was tossed into a holding area with others without proper documentation.

“We’re all waiting because they have our passports or, in my case, my travel document,” he said.

Striking up a conversation with one of the guards, Mr. Amer commented on the man’s military haircut and which military branch he had served in, saying his own brother was a Marine. After correctly guessing where the officer served overseas, Mr. Amer asked the guard if he could fetch his documents: “He literally comes back two minutes later, and he’s like, ‘Have a good one.’”

Despite turning the pain of feeling like an outcast in his adopted country into comedy gold, Mr. Amer speaks seriously of the plight of legal immigrants like himself. For 20 years, he said, he worked and paid taxes in America despite not having citizenship. (He is now a U.S. citizen.)

“You want immigrants to come here and be like, ‘You know what? America embraced me when I came here, I had nothing on my record, I worked very hard, I gave all I could, I always care, I want to vote, I want to be part of this society, I am party of this society,’” he said, “‘and I just want to be recognized, and to be recognized and to be embraced says a lot.”

At the same time, he is ever-cognizant that there are those who seek entry into the U.S. to do harm. He said closing the borders isn’t the answer but concedes that immigration authorities need to be vigilant.

“As a government, I believe we have to protect our borders — that’s No. 1,” Mr. Amer said. “I agree with that wholeheartedly. [But] they’re incredibly unorganized,” Mr. Amer said of the U.S. immigration hierarchy.

He also has dealt with homegrown hatred: The mosque he attends in Houston has been vandalized on more than one occasion.

“There’s a lot of demeaning language, as well, that hurts people,” he said. “The vast majority [of immigrants] are genuinely here trying to make a living and trying to move forward.”

He recalls that during his citizenship test, the final question on his oral exam was “Have you or anyone else you know been involved or funneled funds to the Nazi Party from the period of 1933 to 1945?”

“Obviously, I wasn’t even alive,” Mr. Amer said. “And then he asked me, ‘Are you a terrorist? Are you not a terrorist?’ That is very demeaning of a person’s spirit.”

All of this and more will be featured when Mr. Amer records his comedy special at the Warner Theatre on Sunday evening — the first one-hour special taped by an Arab-American. He will be joined by Bassem Youssef, known as the “Jon Stewart of Egypt” because of a similar satirical program he hosts — and on which Mr. Amer once appeared.

“Mo Amer is one of my favorite stand-up comedians,” Mr. Youssef said in a statement. “That’s why I had to feature him on my show.”

Mr. Amer also has opened for Dave Chappelle, who describes Mr. Amer as “hilarious, thought-provoking and inspiring.”

Now it is Mr. Amer’s turn to take center stage, a chance he relishes.

“I feel this is my first introduction to the world,” he said. “This is who I am, this is my experience, this is what I went through. Here’s my observations. Maybe there’s some solutions, maybe there isn’t, but I’m telling you this is how I feel and it’s very, very funny.”

Source: www.washingtontimes.com

A group of central Wisconsin Muslims is trying to build a mosque in the Wausau area and hopes to have construction complete within the next two years.

Adeel Aslam, a member and general secretary of the Islamic Society of Central Wisconsin, said the Muslim community in the region has grown since the first mosque, Masjid Al-Noor, opened nine years ago in Marshfield.

The group now is large enough to support a second house of worship, he said.

About 15 families are regular members of the Marshfield mosque, which draws Muslims from the entire north central part of the state.

The Wausau area has about 30 Muslim families and a new mosque would also draw members from Stevens Point and areas to the north, Aslam said.

“It has been very difficult for them to have to travel to Marshfield and other cities that have a masjid (a mosque) to attend prayer and services,” he said.

The Rev. David Klutterman of Wausau’s St. John the Baptist Episcopal Church, who long has been involved in the city’s interfaith efforts, said he welcomes the group to Wausau’s faith community.

“It represents that Wausau and this area will have representation of the larger world and therefore the challenge will always be before us to somehow see what unites us instead of divides us,” Klutterman said.

“Their presence will allow us to be in dialogue at a local level,” he said.

While Islam, Judaism and Christianity have differences in faith, there are many similarities, he said.

“Seeing faith being lived out locally amongst neighbors is always helpful,” Klutterman said.

Source: www.marshfieldnewsherald.com

Thirty years ago, when we launched the Arab American Institute, the political forces that fought to marginalise our community were stronger than our efforts to be included. Our history and culture were denigrated. Our organised efforts were excluded from mainstream political activity and, all too often, simply being identified as an Arab American was considered a liability.

Because this state of affairs was wholly unacceptable, we resolved to fight back. Today, our community still faces challenges to full inclusion. But what has changed is that Arab Americans are now in the forefront of mainstream political coalitions working for justice, equality, and peace at home and abroad.

All of this was on display at our recent annual two-day awards event, which provided an opportunity to showcase outstanding Arab Americans.

A highlight for many was the presence of actress (and activist) Salma Hayek who was recognised for her outstanding humanitarian work, as well as her efforts to promote her Lebanese Arab ancestry. In receiving the award, Hayek related experiences from her recent visit to Lebanon where she had just premièred her new film, Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet. She also spoke about her visit to Syrian refugees and the generosity of Lebanese host communities.

Michael Baroody was recognised for (his years of public service) the contributions he and his family have made to advance debate on the critical issues facing America. We were also delighted to honour New York University’s John Sexton and Pulitzer prize winner Lawrence Wright. Mr Sexton is a visionary who understands that as the fate of nations and peoples have become more intertwined, our educational institutions must keep pace.

This year, we also welcomed national security adviser Susan Rice, who delivered a wide-ranging foreign policy address.

Ms Rice began by noting how our community had “to overcome barriers of exclusion and intolerance”. She spoke of the role we now play in “helping to lead … on a range of civil rights and political rights issues”. She singled out several young Arab Americans in attendance who have dedicated themselves, from an early age, to public service and advancing public awareness of social issues plaguing our country and our world.

Ms Rice then listed a series of major challenges facing the US and the Arab people, beginning with a restatement of the administration’s commitment to a comprehensive Israeli-Palestinian peace that included an end to the occupation, and “an independent, viable, and contiguous Palestinian state based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps”.

She also restated the administration’s opposition to Israel’s settlement activity and expressed concern with the slow pace of work in Gaza saying that “we must accelerate reconstruction and … address core challenges to Gaza’s future”. She singled out the need to “reinvigorate Gaza’s connection with the West Bank”.

She made clear that the administration is committed, together with coalition partners, to defeating ISIL and to achieving negotiated solutions to Syria’s long war and to the escalating conflict in Yemen.

Ms Rice also pledged to continue its role in providing humanitarian support for Syrian refugees. She also noted the administration’s efforts to assist Lebanon not only in its battle against ISIL, but in its struggle to support its people and its communities.

She also affirmed the Obama administration’s resolve to complete a pact with Iran to limit that country’s nuclear programme, while making clear that the US would work with and support its partners in the GCC to assure their security.

All in all, it was a powerful set of messages and commitments intended to reassure the Arab world. These themes were enlarged upon the next day when our national leadership went to the White House for a briefing with the administration’s top Middle East policy advisers.

Those who have traced the trajectory of Arab American political struggles over the past few decades could not help but come away from this year’s event with the clear sense that the community has made real progress.

There are, of course, critics who are more comfortable with what they describe as their “purity” and who prefer to wallow in their impotence grousing from the margins of American politics. But for those who understand that politics is hard work, and that gaining respect and recognition requires engagement in the process, this year’s event was one to remember.

James Zogby is the president of the Arab American Institute

Source: www.thenational.ae

Im Tirtzu, a Zionist organization, has demanded that Prof. Joseph Klafter, president of Tel Aviv University, “strongly and unequivocally condemn” the call for film submissions to the Zochrot film festival, which was sent out to TAU film department students and graduates.

The festival in question is the third International Film Festival on Nakba and Return, which, according to the Zochrot organization, is “designed to raise public awareness of the crimes of the Nakba and of the return of Palestinian refugees as critical issues that should be on the agenda of the Israeli public.”

Zochrot is a Tel Aviv-based organization that works to promote the idea of Jewish- Israeli accountability for the Nakba, with the end goal of establishing the right of return for Palestinian refugees.

Im Tirtzu, calling Zochrot an “anti-Israel organization” in its letter to Klafter, stated that “No one disputes that flooding the State of Israel with millions of Palestinians means not only turning the state into an Arab country but also into a battlefield between different religious communities, just like what is happening in the Middle East.”

The letter went on to state that “the massive distribution of this message by the university on its official mailing list to students and graduates is in our view a matter of grave concern. This action encourages university students to take part in propaganda festivals calling for the destruction of Israel and its citizens.”

The Zochrot organization responded by applauding TAU for “believing in academic freedom – as is fitting for a self-respecting institution of higher learning.” It stated that the choice to participate should be made by each individual according to his ideology and not forced upon students by the academic institution at which they chose to study.

Its response went on to react to the Im Tirtzu organization, stating that “the letter from Im Tirtzu suggests censorship, limiting freedom of expression and art, and limiting academic freedom. This isn’t surprising, of course, from an organization that the courts have declared as having fascist characteristics.”

The reference to the courts is based on a ruling from 2013, in which the court denied most of the case Im Tirtzu brought against leftwing activists who opened a Facebook group calling Im Tirtzu a fascist organization.

The judge stated in his decision that certain similarities exist between the ideology of Im Tirtzu and aspects of fascist ideology.

Zochrot concluded its response by inviting members of the Im Tirtzu organization to attend the film festival in question.

TAU responded by stating that the film department routinely receives information and invitations meant for students, and the information is passed along by the secretaries without consultation with anyone else in the faculty.

“The university has no connection to the advertising of the ‘open call,’ and informing the students in no way indicates a university opinion on the issue of the ‘Nakba.’”

Source: www.jpost.com

Over the past three decades, the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival has become known as an “impressive festival that balances the tried and true with the adventurous and mixes established performers with rising talent,” in the words of The New York Times. Charged with momentum from the launch of BCMF Spring, the festival’s first spring series … Continued

Reuters Ahram Online Maysoon Bakir’s exhibit titled Peace and Hope was held at Mahmoud Darwish Museum in Ramallah. The display opened Saturday 25 April and ran for three days. The exhibit brings together 18 pieces, merging realism and abstraction, primarily centering on familial ties, and also showcasing the Palestinian culture, its traditional dress, weddings, and … Continued

Tamara Chalabi: The very fact that Iraq has a presence in Venice is a huge statement. But Iraq is not unique in this; there are many places dealing with questions of art and creativity in the midst of conflict. It may not sit well with the glitz and glamour of the art world, but art produced in such circumstances goes to the heart of the human condition. In Iraq — be it in Baghdad or Kurdistan or the south — there is no art market to speak of. And the few scattered galleries are not galleries in the internationally understood sense of the word. They don’t represent specific artists and they don’t understand the role that a gallery assumes in taking on an artist.

Then there are the art schools, which are state-run, their curriculums unchanged since the 1970s. They function like turn-of-the-century beaux-arts schools. And even that style of teaching has been degraded because of the security situation: you can’t have nude models for life drawing, for example. One thing that has changed since [the US-led invasion of Iraq in] 2003 is that you now see lots of angry, rebellious students, all with an interesting sense of fashion, and all at war with the faculty. That is a very healthy thing. But the faculty remains bureaucratic, almost Stalinist, completely cut off from trends in contemporary art today.

Source: www.christies.com

BEIRUT – On a recent night in a dimly lit basement of a theater here, the Syrian rock band Pressure Cooker opened for screaming fans, many of whom had been waiting over an hour to watch them play.

The rock band, whose name in Arabic is Tanjaret Daghet, fled civil war and found a music scene that has embraced them, in spite of tensions in other parts of the city over the influx of refugees from the country.

But Beirut’s avant grade music scene has gone against the grain. It is one of the few places where Syrians and Lebanese here can work together and learn from each other – all in the name of art.

“The culture in Lebanon is more welcoming to music like rock and rap, much more than in Syria,” said Haya Haddad, a 21-year-old Syrian who has been in Lebanon since 2013, as she waited to watch Tanjaret Daghet perform.

Lebanon, unlike Syria, has been heavily influenced by popular Western culture. There are more than 50 bars in Beirut, many of which host live music, and a number of larger theaters. There is less government oversight of the arts scene than in Syria, allowing for more freedom.

“In Aleppo, [there wasn’t a place for] electronic music,” said Samer Saem Eldahr, a musician and founder of a music genre called “electro-tarab,” a fusion of electronica and elements from traditional Arab music.

Rappers Hani al Sawah, from Homs, Syria, and Mazen al Darwish, from the northern Lebanon city of Tripoli, said their work together was a natural one, not defined by nationality or religion, but by shared grievances.

“As Lebanese and Syrians we are suffering from the same issues,” said Al Sawah, who goes by the stage name Sayyed Darwich. “We have the same socio-economic problems as youth in this region – a lack of job opportunities, people leaving the country, a lack of stability and lack of clarity on our identity.”

Their recent Arabic rap song draws comparisons between their hometowns of Homs and Tripoli. “I opened my eyes, people were crazy, the ground divided in half, a game of traders and thieves, they want the scenario in Homs to be repeated in Tripoli… No way,” Al Sawah sang in a song called Minet Homs, or Homs Port.

Tanjaret Daghet’s 33-year-old singer and bassist, Khaled Omran, moved from Damascus to Beirut with his two bandmates in 2011, when the conflict at home put their dream of making an album on hold.

When he first arrived, he moved apartments several times, and said Lebanese landlords would often raise the rent, exploiting him and his roommates because they were Syrian.

He currently lives with three other Syrians in a crowded Beirut apartment, all trying to make ends meet through their music and by picking up odd jobs.

But their music is being played to a wider audience than they might have reached at home in Damascus.

Just three years after arriving in Lebanon, the men of Tanjaret Daghet have produced an album and played across Lebanese stages. Their lead vocalist, Omran, has played with Lebanon’s most famous musicians and even for Fairouz, a legendary female singer.

“Perhaps if the crisis hadn’t happened, we wouldn’t have reached this point,” he said.

Source: blogs.wsj.com