Under a full moon in Fez, Marcel Khalife and his ensemble charmed and enthralled the audience at Bab Makina
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| Marcel Khalife |
REVIEW
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| Venetia Menzies |
Marcel greeted the audience with ‘Ahlan wa sahlan’ and thanked them for welcoming him to the city of Sufi wisdom. He dedicated a short song ‘ukhtee balladee’ (my sister country) to the locals, who sang the same back to him, immediately charmed by his charisma.
Khalife was born to a Maronite Christian family in Amchit, on the coast of Lebanon. Descendent from a family of fishermen, he first discovered his talent for music when he was tutored by an ex-military man who had retired in his village. He went on to study the oud at Beirut’s National Academy of Music, and by the 1970s he was teaching at the conservatory.
In 1976 he returned to his local village and established Al Mayadeen Ensemble. With his team of musicians, he rocketed to fame with hit songs such as Jawez Safr (passport) and Ummi (my mother). These were all based on the political poetry of Mahmoud Darwish, a Palestinian legend who had also lived in Beirut.
Enjoying listening to the audience sing his old hits he strummed a few notes of ‘Rita and the Rifle’ and said ‘sing with me’. Almost all of the locals complied, singing every word in unison from memory.
Marcel, risking his life, performed these original hits at live concerts throughout the Lebanese civil war. He later commented that he did so as “his music was a sort of balm for those wounds.”
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| An ensemble member |
Each time he began a new song, he only needed to strum three or four notes before the audience recognised it, screaming out the lyrics before he even got the chance. Nobody was leaving this concert early tonight, they were relishing every moment.
The most popular was perhaps his empowering song ‘Walking Tall’ written by the world-renowned songwriter Tim Rice. In fact, for this piece the audience did most of the singing.
“Standing tall I walk an important walk, in my palm is olive oil, and on my shoulder is a coffin, I walk and I walk and I walk”.Politely asking the audience for silence, he dedicated his next instrumental song ‘Tango for my Lovers Eyes’ to his wife and ‘love of his life’. The atmosphere calmed and, without lyrics to sing along to, the audience melted into a trance of admiration.
In what was truly unexpected, Marcel’s son Rami started the next song by standing up, reaching his hands inside the open piano, and violently tugging on the interior strings, producing a startlingly hypnotic noise akin to electronic music. After returning to his seat, Rami began to sing a solo, crooning up and down a melancholic scale as if his voice was a synthesiser. This intensified into a frenzy, as he was rocking around in his seat until you could not see his face, his long curly hair indistinguishable from his beard.
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| Marcel’s son Rami |
At this moment the full moon appeared from behind Bab Makina’s turrets, hanging above the stage as father and son began a duet.
But the crowd would not be satisfied until he finished with his top hit, Jawez Safr (passport), which couldn't be more pertinent today as it was when it debuted:
“forced to be ashamed of my name
and my sense of belonging
in the dirt which I had formed
with my own hands.
The hearts of all humans are my nationality,
so free me of this passport.”
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| Full moon and stars above Fez |
Review and photographs: Venetia Menzies
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AREEJ SUFI ENSEMBLE – SULTANATE OF OMAN - 22:00
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MOHAMED JBARA – ZAKARIA RAFOULI - 22:00
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LA TARIQA HAMDOUCHIA : LILA DES MQADMINS : FES- MEKNES-ASSILA-ESSAOUIRA - 23:00
Venue: salle de la préfecture Fès Médina
Weather: Sunny and 34 Celsius
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