BEIRUT: As a child, Ziad Rahbani confided from behind his piano, he did not have a sense of smell. The problem wasn’t fixed until he had surgery at the age of 18. When he finally could smell, he continued nonchalantly, “the smell that entered my nostrils was one of shit.”
The audience erupted into laughter. “This whole time you guys all smelled it and no one spoke up?” Rahbani yelled with an exasperated air. “Why don’t you speak up?”
This bit of wit came in the midst of Sunday evening’s performance of “Mneeha” (“Good”), Rahbani’s most recent interweaving of music, vaudeville theatrics and acerbic social and political commentary, which has been playing to sold-out houses in Damascus and, this week, at Unesco Palace.
Rahbani is an icon from a family of Lebanese musical icons that includes Fairouz, Asi and Mansour Rahbani. As a composer, he’s credited with the invention of oriental jazz – a form redolent of Levantine folk idioms inflected through jazz modalities. Rahbani dipped into this oeuvre as soon as he sat at his piano, leading percussion and horns in a jazzy tune at once eastern and western.
The mostly under-30 audience, largely in casual dress, began applauding and cheering the performer long before he walked on stage. When the black-suited Rahbani finally did appear, accompanied by his 39 musicians, the theater was filled with an eruption of cheers and whistles.
“Mneeha” unfolded as a raucous cacophony of mocking sarcasm and beautiful melodies, pointed anecdote, political criticism, and colorful costumes. At one point in the show, a female accompanying vocalist belted out a classic Fairouz tune.
Rahbani, meanwhile, stepped from behind the piano to don a ’70’s-era Afro wig, a yellow football t-shirt and bell-bottoms, strumming an electric guitar while the violinists in his ensemble were served tea by a random man. After he finished, he replaced the kettle on a stove in their midst.
The irreverent nostalgia for the ’70s was pointed. Ziad found his musical voice during the Lebanese Civil War, attracting a loyal audience through his series of Brechtian musical comedies (widely appreciated for their hilariously elegant encapsulations of the Lebanese condition) and more improvised vaudeville-style performances, on which “Mneeha” is modelled.
The show’s mix of beautiful melodies, bawdy comedy and sarcasm was evident with Rahbani’s second tune, a ballad-esque duet with a female vocalist. “Look at me!” he commanded aggressively when she glanced away from him, provoking another eruption of laughter from the crowd. By the end of the tune, the singer and her accompanist were arguing loudly, Rahbani ending the tune by telling her, “Shut up!”
The official Masters of Ceremony for the evening were Maya Diab and Layale Daw. But rather than introducing the numbers, the pair emitted toothy, often hilarious anecdotes.
At one point, they performed a girl-on-girl version of “0007,” one of Rahbani’s hits from “Bema Enno.” In the original, it’s a duet in a restaurant with Rahbani and one of his female vocalists. Here, the modestly dressed Diab practically begs the scantily clad Layale to dress more modestly.
“If you keep asking me to,” shouted Daw. “I’m going to take off all my clothes.”
The anecdotes moved from cultural criticism to socio-political commentary and the audience seemed of no fixed opinion about how well Rahbani’s splicing of music, theater and politics works in the 21st century.
Walid al-Hadi, one audience member, was critical, remarking that Rahbani’s criticisms have been “the same for 20 years.” This show does not offer any new commentary, he observed. He then modified his view, saying, “Maybe it’s because nothing has changed in 20 years.”
“The music was marvelous,” Hebba Midani thought, but could not comment on the social commentary because, “there is too much to say.”
Sarcasm and mockery aside, the music itself was both powerful and moving, especially when Racha Rizk – featured on the soundtrack of Nadine Labaki’s 2007 film, “Caramel” – performed a soothing duet with Rahbani.
The leap from the serious to the hilarious kept the audience on the edge of their seats, pulling them through an unusual range of emotions. Sometimes, the comic meshed with the classic, as when one back-up singer stood up with a white handkerchief in her left hand, to enact a parody of Umm Kalthoum for a minute or so.
At one point, Rahbani, accompanied by musician Bassam Dawoud, appeared on stage with binoculars, peering at the crowd while the musicians performed a spy-theme. By the second half of the show, most of the male singers were in bell bottoms, Afro wigs, and sunglasses while Daw was wearing a white cocktail dress spackled with giant red hearts.
Rahbani’s “Mneeha” is at once irreverent and raw, fun, crafty, and intelligent. The audience felt free to clap and sing along and at least one audience member stood up to dance in the middle of a piece.
When the final group mawal was performed, Daw incited the audience to join in and the theater exploded with cheers and cries as people sang along. This festive feeling was cleverly undermined by the mawal itself, when one of the performers – wearing a green fisherman’s hat, a maroon button-up shirt, and khakis – sang,
“Can the people really stay positive when rockets are flying into and out of the country?”
The remark contrasted with the festive mood while adding to the comic air, as the theater again erupted with laughter.
Maya Diab’s closing remarks evoked both the poetry of the evening and the society that provoked it. “If you don’t look into their eyes when they are walking past you on the street, then it is as if they never looked at you in the first place … So keep your eyes on the ground and you will look to the sky.”