Music scene pulses with Syrian beat

Syrian rock bands fleeing war are finding safety and new fans in neighboring Lebanon, where they are revitalizing a Westernized scene with their focus on Arabic heritage.

Dozens of Syrian bands and independent artists have now become mainstays of the Beirut music scene, performing emotive and often bleak songs in front of concertgoers eager for fresh faces.

In a Beirut apartment, two members of Khebez Dawle, an alternative rock band from Damascus, practice surrounded by freshly hung laundry, balls of yarn and cups of tea.

“You’re still alive, under the siege?” sings Anas Maghrebi, the band’s lead singer, in their song “Ayesh”, which means “alive” in Arabic. “You loved and you grew up. You spent your life savings on a house — and now that house is gone. And you’re still alive.”

Syria’s 4-year conflict has left more than 220,000 people dead and has forced millions, including artists and musicians, to flee to neighboring countries. Many civilians in Syria live in areas besieged by the regime or armed groups, cutting off their access to food and medical aid.

While some Syrian artists sing about everyday challenges and societal pressures, many use their music to talk about their experiences of war.

Khebez Dawle — the Arabic term for Syria’s ubiquitous state-subsidized bread — say their self-titled first album, released in December, attempts to give a young man’s “narrative of what happened in Syria”.

“We just tell the story as if we’re telling it to a friend,” Maghrebi said.

The band has much to recount about Syria’s war, which they fled in 2013, a year after a fellow band member was killed. Arriving to the safety of Beirut breathed new life into their music.

“The main thing that allowed us to start up again was that we were in Beirut. Half the problem was gone,” Maghrebi says.

In contrast to Syria, where they faced violence and few venues, studios or opportunities for growth, rock bands see Beirut as an incubator for their talents.

“When we came to Beirut, and we saw that there’s no pressure here, we said we want to take advantage of everything. Everything we couldn’t have in Syria, we want to have here,” said Bashar Darwish, Khebez Dawle’s guitarist.

In Lebanon, Syrian musicians have made connections with producers, filmmakers, venue owners and financiers.

Members of Syria’s Tanjaret Daghet, Arabic for “pressure cooker”, left Syria for Lebanon in 2011.

While practicing in their cluttered single-room underground studio one day, the band got a surprise visit from their Lebanese neighbor.

But instead of asking them to turn their music down, Raed al-Khazen compliment- ed Tanjaret Daghet on their hard rock sounds and eventually became their producer.

“The opportunity that these guys got here, they would have never gotten in Syria,” al-Kha- zen said. “The Lebanese scene gave them the freedom to express themselves, because we’re more open, because we listen, because we have venues where they can play.”