Last week, I have attended with few close friends the “Oriental Night 10” concert held in Biel and organized by Aghani Aghani and MTV Lebanon which is part of the Beirut Holidays 2016 concerts. Just a small note about myself: I rarely attend concerts (or even not at all) and I am not a big fan of loud music and I have also been disconnected from the latest songs and singers in Lebanon.
The concert that was held was supposed to have around 20 singers crowned by Haifa Wehbe.
We arrived to Biel at 7 pm trying to avoid the traffic (which surprisingly was more than fine). When there, we asked the security guy about the starting time and he said: “the concert will not start before at least 2 hours”.
So to kill the 2 hours of waiting, we went to Mandaloun sur Mer. This is a between brackets note concerning our stay in Mandaloun sur Mer: the place was almost empty. Only few tables had a little number of customers. When the waiter asked if we had a reservation, we looked around and said no so he looked at us offended and then asked us if we were planning on having dinner and we said that no dinner, so he looked at us again disgusted (and to add fuel to the flames, we did not respect the dress code of the place: no full makeup, no chignon, no high heels, no short skirts or smoke suits). And the service came to prove how disgusted he was: careless, slow and wrong orders (which were overpriced simple coffees – the nescafe and coffee mate sticks with hot water). This is not to criticize the waiter or anyone. I have a huge respect to those people who serve other people and have to deal with all kinds of human beings but this is a bit a note to show how much our society became superficial, pretentious and relies on appearances without any focus on our human aspect.
We went afterwards to our places in the concert. We had seated places. At the beginning, the crowd number was low but when the concert started to be live on TV, the presenter mentioned around 13,000 attendees. Later on during the night, people started showing up especially that everyone was eager to see Haifa’s appearance.
The concert started and that was a moment in my life in which I am still not capable of defining: I am tormented between the hilarious things I’ve seen that made me laugh as if I was watching a funny play and between the sad reality that the concert was serious and people actually liked it which made me feel isolated and living on another planet with a whole different taste for life.
And here are 20 of the observed moments in the show:
- Singers were sorted by popularity: the least popular singer started and the star of the night Haifa closed the concert.
- More than 17 singers sang before the appearance of Haifa that people were waiting for.
- After more than 5 hours of waiting and being tortured with unknown songs which all sounded the same, Haifa appeared. 2 minutes after her appearance, people started leaving. Not because they don’t like Haifa, but because their main goal of this night was to see Haifa and take a picture of her and after 5 hours of waiting, they reached this goal and were satisfied and were even ready to die now.
- We were almost the oldest people in the audience.
- The concert looked like a circus at different stages: the backgrounds (which sometimes included masonic symbols with no clear reason at all), the dancers (who sometimes performed like strippers and had barely few clothes on (good show for the kids there)), the decoration, the shows performed, the singers themselves and their artificial attitude, girls dancing with a disco ball in their heads or with hoops, girls dressed like butterflies, clowns, tall clowns, etc.
- Most of the singers were fresh and new. I personally haven’t heard of most of them.
- They sang unknown songs and asked people to sing along which was a bit funny. All songs sounded the same; same aggressive offensive words and same beat.
- It was a playback singers’ show. Only few dared to sing live. I wonder how people who paid 100,000 LL felt after watching this playback show.
- Two male singers wore the same T-shirt: there was a “P/Philippe” written on the T-Shirt in glitter.
- Male singers wore shirts that were shinier than women’s clothes (or barely clothes). Women were all dressed as cat-woman that night.
- Whenever an unknown singer wanted to make people scream loud so that it can be caught on TV and that he/she appears to be a singer who lights the night up, he/she shouts out loud “zaafeh la Beirut” (clap for Beirut), “zaafeh la lebnen” (clap for Lebanon), “tahiyeh lal jeich el lebneneh” (salute to the Lebanese army). The “Oriental Night” was suddenly transformed to a patriotic night. Whenever anyone said one of those three magical words (Beirut, Lebanon and Lebanese Army), people became blindly uncontrollable and the sense of patriotism became extremely high for a second in a song which had nothing to do with patriotism. It was a bit funny and sad to hear the salute to the Lebanese army in a song called “Jebtilleh ekherteh” (it is a bit difficult to translate this, but it is a song about a man telling a woman that she is killing him because she is unbearable in an offensive way etc.).
- Every singer after his/her first performance said the same thing: “our show today is to show people that we love life, we are here to live, and we will never give up”. 20 singers said the exact same message that we have been hearing for the past 30 years and yet once the music stops, bullets and insults rise up…
- The sad thing is that people were dancing on offensive songs like “Jebtilleh ekherteh” (you are killing me), “Waata trou’ hkini bas tethazab hkini” (a woman singing to a man saying calm down before you talk to me in an offensive way), “kbari chi chway” (a man telling a woman to grow up and of course in an offensive way), “ya Allah, ya Allah” (not a religious song at all, just someone complaining about a woman).
- One of the singers- after appearing on stage – shouts out loud “badna nwaleaa” (we will light it up) accompanied by few pretty cute sexy ballerinas dancing on the beat of the tableh and mezmar…
- One of the female singers who was barely dressed and was showing a slight arrogance in her attitude on the stage said after finishing the playback song “I love you more than you love me” and then my friend next to me says “this is amazing, how did she know that!”.
- Yuri Mrakadi made a good appearance (although the sunglasses were not necessary at 11.30 PM): his performance was good and his comeback was elegant with no playbacks.
- Jokes made by some singers were extremely terrible and not funny at all: one of them says: “I am glad to announce the presence of Abou Wadih (George Wassouf) here in the back and I am thankful for his continuous support” and at this moment everyone in the audience turns and start looking around searching for the popular Abou Wadih when the singer says: “I am just kidding”. Another singer asks the audience: “Do you like Ziad Al Rahbani” and everyone shouts yes and he says: “so we will sing few songs written by him” and starts singing English oldies…
- As part of the show, one of the singers was holding a guitar and acting as if he was playing hard rock but the actual song did not even have a guitar sound effect…
- All singers had the same very fake attitude by pointing their fingers towards the audience as if they were recognizing someone in the crowd. I am trying to analyze this and I think it is for the pictures: it is great to have a picture holding a microphone, smiling, focusing on a zone and pointing your finger somewhere towards the audience; most of the singers around the world have a similar picture.
- In the end, it seemed to me that most of the audience enjoyed the show (except myself but it seems that I am getting old and grumpy) and it seems that this is what people want (“aljoumhour ayez kida”) and what makes them happy, smiling, dancing, and screaming out loud for the rise of Beirut, Lebanon and the Lebanese Army.
Dina Hajjar 