2 posts tagged “lebanon”
By his own admission, Brian Eno hangs around middle-eastern supermarkets in West London scrounging cassettes. The 'vocal wobble', the classic decoration used all over the Levant, is (he thinks) the most erotic thing in music.
Fairuz is one of Lebanon's treasures, an icon who has for instance been described by an Amazon reviewer thus:
To a Lebanese, Fairuz . . . created an image of a Lebanon that few are certain ever to exist. The remote village, grape vines under the moonlight, people singing with no care in the world. Particularly during and after the end of the civil war (1975-1990), people became attached to this image of Lebanon that no longer existed, and because of that, Fairuz became the Lebanon that we always wanted. It's probably hard to explain, but she represents Lebanon more than our flag does.
This, especially now, reminds me of Bruce Chatwin's elegy for Afghanistan, written shortly after the Russian invasion. At the time I thought it ludicrous - all things pass - but now it seems sadly prophetic.
