Thomas Burkhalter - Local Music Scenes and Globalization - Transnational Platforms in Beirut

Thomas Burkhalter

Local Music Scenes and Globalization - Transnational Platforms in Beirut 1 Globalization and Digitalization in Music The accelerated processes of globalization and digitalization have revolutionized music making on many levels. Austrian music sociologists Kurt Blaukopf (1996) and Alfred Smudits (2002) use the term media-morphoses to describe in detail major changes from the first recordings on cylinder phonographs to the advent of cassettes and CDs to the complete digitalization of musical production from the 1980s onwards. The digital media-morphosis alone continually brings revolutionary changes. Throughout the world, musicians find new ways to produce music at low cost and to promote it globally. Chris Anderson (2006:57–57) emphasizes the fact that the universe of musical content is growing faster than ever. He lists three main forces that have led to this situation: the democratization of the tools of production (new and cheaper computer hardware and software); the democratization of the tools of distribution (e.g., CD-Baby); and new mediators that connect supply and demand (e.g., Weblogs, Facebook, YouTube, SoundCloud, Spotify). Anderson describes today's music market as a confusing mosaic of a million minimarkets and microstars: Increasingly, the mass market is turning into a mass of niches. The geographical location of a musician, label, or distributor becomes a minor factor, it seems. Thomas Friedman (2005), among many others, highlights the newfound power for individuals to collaborate and compete globally. It is some of these individuals, musicians from Beirut in this case, that this book is about.

SAMPLE: BEIRUT— AFRICA, ASIA, AND LATIN AMERICA Musicians from Beijing to Tijuana, from Istanbul to Johannesburg, mix and manipulate local and global sounds and ideas within their music. They network with artists and multipliers (e.g., curators, producers, journalist, and scholars) worldwide and experiment with new ways of producing, distributing, and selling music. This recent music from Africa, Asia, and Latin America is progressively reaching EuroAmerican reception platforms and is being discussed by ethnomusicologists, popular music scholars, journalists, and bloggers with increased interest. Stylewise, the sample is broad: commercially successful styles of pop music like reggaeton (Marshall, Rivera, and Hernandez 2009) and kwaito (Steingo 2005; Swartz 2008), and electronic music styles like kuduro (Alisch and Siegert 2011), nortec (Madrid 2008), baile funk (Stöcker 2009; Lanz et al. 2008), shangaan electro, or cumbia electronica form the popular end of the spectrum. The experimental end offers African, Asian, and Latin American musique concrète, free improvisation, noise music, and sound art (e.g., Wallach 2008). In the Arab world, beyond Beirut, we find a large number of upcoming musicians. On CDs (e.g., from the label 100copies) and platforms like SoundCloud, we find them experimenting with the noises of Cairo and electronic music (e.g., Mahmoud Refat, Ramsi Lehner, Adham Hafez, Hassan Khan, Kareem Lotfy, and Omar Raafat). Using Casio PT minikeyboards, Kareem Lotfy and Omar Raafat mix noise with distorted, psychedelic-sounding Egyptian melodies. Mohammed Ragab—alias

Machine Eat Man—works with analogue synthesizers. He defines his mixture of Arabic voice, flute samples, drums, psychedelic synthesizer movements, and electronics as “Egyptronica.” Further, musicians range from pioneers like Halim ElDabh to composers in Syria, rappers in Palestine, and metal musicians in Egypt. The list includes Nassim Maalouf with his “quartertone trumpet” and many other contemporary musicians (see Burkhalter, Dickinson, and Harbert 2013). In addition, there are musicians of Arab origin in Europe and the US who frequently network with musicians in the Arab world. Mahmoud Turkmani, a Lebanese musician and composer living in Switzerland, experiments with Egyptian takht ensembles, video art, and film. In his piece Ya Sharr Mout (Son of a Bitch), he harshly criticizes both the Europeanization of Arabic music and the extreme commercialism of Lebanese postwar mainstream culture. The hope of many musicians, NGOs, and other actors in the Middle East is that his and other musicians' struggles for more representation (and against censorship and physical aggression) will celebrate more successes after the Arab Spring of 2011 and 2012. Despite the many differences between these musical styles, some commonalities can be clearly identified. In this book, I argue that these musicians offer alternative musical positions and try to fight old “ethnocentric” Euro-American perceptions of their home countries in, for example, challenging and mixing up ideas about “culture,” “place,” “locality,” “tradition,” and/or “authenticity” in music. In Europe and the US not many years ago, small niche audiences listened exclusively to music from the Arab world, Africa, Asia, or Latin America. Specialists were primarily interested in Arabic maqam music and small Arab takht ensembles or sufi singers, whereas others were drawn to the famous Arabic singers Umm Kulthum, Asmahan, or Fairuz and Algerian or Franco-Algerian raï by Khaled or Cheb Mami (Schade- Poulsen 1999), or they listened to what is often referred to as oriental jazz, crossover, or world fusion. The latter include musicians like Rabih Abou Khalil, Anouar Brahem, and Dhafer Youssef, among others. This variety of music was (and is) often categorized as “world music” by record industries and media. British record producers invented it as a marketing label in the 1980s (e.g., Erlmann 1995, Taylor 1997, Mitchell 1996, Broughton 2006, Binas- Preisendörfer 2010), and the goal was to diversify the Euro-American market in order to sell more music. Consequently, to this day, “world music” is based on musical difference and otherness at its core. Due to this focus, the world music catalogue for the Arab world contains the music mentioned earlier, but few of the current rock, punk, metal, and electronic music, or electro-acoustic experiments and musique concrète, despite the fact that this very music has been produced not only in Beirut, but also in other Middle Eastern, African, Asian, and Latin American cities for many years. After a long period of nonrepresentation, musicians of these genres have now started to perform on various Euro-American reception platforms—with the help, support, and initiative of mostly small European and US-based producers and labels (some of them from within the world music networks). Many new supporters of this emerging music ignored music from Africa, Asia, and Latin America for a long time— mainly because it fell into the category “world music.” World music to them sounded “too cleanly produced,” “too much of a middle-class taste,” “too boring,” or “too cliché” (interviews and discussions by author 1994–2012). Today, many authors of blogs, disc jockeys, and curators—the multipliers of the

present—are considering a multitude of new and “trendy” terms to categorize these upcoming styles, for example, “global ghettotech” (Marshall 2007),1 “shanty house theory,”2 “worldtronica,” or “ghettopop.” In some of my articles I use the term “World Music 2.0” (Burkhalter 2010)—and I do so for various reasons. Many people— including me—hope that these latest tracks, songs, sound montages, and noises from the Arab world, Asia, Africa, and Latin America contain revolutionary meanings: That the old model of center and periphery is less valid than it ever was; that we are living in a world of multiple, interwoven modernities (Eisenstadt 2000). In other words, modernity emerges polycentrically through exchanges between the “global North” and the “global South” (Kolland 2010). We hope that these musics will support claims by social and cultural scientists that declare the one-sided theories of modernization to be unsound (Randeria and Eckert 2009). Whereas terms like “modernity,” “global North,” and “global South” are debated upon and deconstructed in academics, they are still in use in cultural networks and markets. The discussion around discrepancies between academic theory and daily practice is one of the tensions that run like a thread through this book.

2 Theoretical Frame Ethnomusicology, popular music studies, and musicology find it hard to research the rapid developments in these and similar musics and music circles. Tagg and Clarida (2003) argue that the various academic disciplines that research music cannot keep pace with rapid technological shifts. Digital revolutions and the new possibilities of producing and distributing music demand new methodological and theoretical approaches. One goal of this book is to put forward a methodological approach that analyzes music and music making from miscellaneous perspectives. The approach is inductive, built on my many years of participant observation in music and cultural markets. Overall, I work with a mix of theories from ethnomusicology, pop and media studies, culture studies, and social anthropology.

FROM MUSIC MAKING TO TRANSNATIONAL MEDIA PERFORMANCES Media channels are crucial in all aspects of music making. They regulate contact and access to other musicians, organizers, funders, and fans. Musicians in Beirut receive information on the latest trends in their specific niche music genres faster than ever before. Whereas in the 1990s metal albums were imported through the port of Kaslik, or brought in by friends or family members by plane, today's musicians can listen to their favorite music from abroad via the Internet. Their knowledge about music and their production and distribution strategies show clearly how closely music making is connected through media worldwide. That Lebanon still has one of the slowest Internet speed rates worldwide does not derogate this fact. Many of the Beiruti musicians download all possible tracks from their favorite sites the moment they step into a zone with fast wireless Internet access abroad—I observed this many times. Their musics become media products, fixed on CD, LP, or cassette, or as media files (e.g., WAV, MP3). These media products include cover images (with pictures, fonts, and graphic design), titles, logos, and descriptions. Further, video clips, remixes, posters, websites, promotion pictures, and interviews appear on a diversity of old and new media ranging from newspapers and

magazines to blogs, SoundCloud, and YouTube. They are not side products of the music; rather, they intensify its aesthetical approach and vision (in the best cases), and they help promote both music and musician. Similar to concert performances and DJ sets in front of audiences, these media products can be defined as transnational media performances. These performances include all elements of Christofer Jost's definition of media as: carriers and transmitters of data (and information); as technical means of communication; as means to create standing; as technical dispositions; and as independent “outdifferentiated” systems of function (2011:7). Furthermore, they fit Rolf Grossmann's definition of musicians, which focuses not on traditional instruments, but on the laptop as an increasingly important device for many (if not all) tasks. Grossmann highlights the changes laptop culture brought to music: “It is a new mode of musicianship: fusing selfresearch, composition, innovation, performance and distribution in a single technological device connected to digital networks” (2008:9). Many of the musicians in this book combine multiple activities; they are producers, interpreters, activists, historians, salesmen, and networkers— and many of them own an up-to-date laptop, either PC or Mac. I use the term platform whenever I speak of where these media products appear: on a local stage in Beirut, on an international stage in London, on a media platform like SoundCloud or YouTube, or in a computer game. Possibilities are huge— certainly new platforms open up at the moment of writing. With their media products, musicians perform on several of these platforms simultaneously. They trim their media products to fit—or they challenge consumption on these platforms. Similar to concert performances, where musicians reflect on effective set lists or announcements, they perform strategically (and more and less knowledgeably) on various local and transnational platforms. It is the musicians' strategic use of these platforms that I intend to research. Plus I try to show the interrelation between the production of media products and the reception on these possible platforms. German media and pop scholar Christoph Jacke (2009:144) splits pop music into four main domains: production, distribution, reception, and further processing. This book is divided along these lines: Parts II and III deal primarily with production and distribution, whereas Part V focuses on reception and further processing. The domain production includes motives of musicians and producers. It looks at the production processes and at the aesthetics of production. It does further highlight economical aspects. The domain distribution observes the role of public relations (PR), advertising, and the impact of media channels (e.g., TV channels, radio stations, blogs). It looks at distribution processes and at aesthetics of distribution. The domain reception looks at the various groups of recipients and their motives and reception aesthetics. The domain “further processing” observes all the further, often nonmusical, appearances of a specific media product. I work with a broad definition of music that—besides melody, rhythm, and pitch— includes noise(s), the sonic, and sound. The approach is linked to sound studies, which assume that the sound characteristics of a track lead into the middle of music making as a process of action, communication, and meaning (see Binas 2008:11). In sound, we hear the contradictory aesthetical, social, and economical interests and possibilities of the actors involved with the production. By working on sound, we come to the crossroads between the cultural, the social, and the aesthetical.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS: MULTISITED AVANTGARDES OR WORLD MUSIC 2.0? From my experience, interview data collected with musicians and the analysis of their media products often reveal different results. It is this gap between empirical data and the actual analysis of the media products that needs to be filled. My main research questions keep the media products of these musicians from Beirut at the center of interest: Which musical and nonmusical spheres of influence affect the music making of these musicians from Beirut? How do these spheres of influence affect them: Are they binding and inspiring, or do they offer positioning options or playing opportunities? How do these interactions between these various spheres of influence become inscribed in their media products? Approaching music in this way shows that many actors with different policies, strategies, and knowledge are involved in the process of music making (Jacke 2009:144). The paramount question is: Are these musicians and media products able and allowed to create vanguard musical positions? Do they help cocre-ate, push, and promote concepts of “multisited modernities”? These emerge polycentrically and challenge old readings of modernity as “Euromodernity” and “Euro-American modernity” (Grossberg 2010). Thus, do these media products in fact hold revolutionary meanings? I discuss these paramount questions from a Euro-American perspective. Yet, they are important for the musicians in Beirut, too—as I experienced during fieldwork. These musicians work with similar musical material, aesthetical approaches, and techniques as musicians in Europe and the US. Many musicians highlight musical similarities, and focusing on musical differences is far less evident. Their aim is to compete internationally. They search for recognition within their transnational niche networks and desire to be “trendy,” “contemporary,” “hip,” or create “Zeitgeist.” Accordingly, they want to be analyzed and even criticized through Euro-American perspectives as well. Trumpet player Mazen Kerbaj confirmed this several times, in various interviews. He aspires to reach international recognition; to be the best free trumpet player in Beirut is not enough: To be able to compete internationally is what is most important to me. Not because it is better outside, but because abroad I can play in front of an audience that has experienced free improvised music for many years. To play abroad is the real test! I hate it when Lebanese are so overconfident. Often they are very happy and proud too early. Once, a Lebanese friend and me went to see a Lebanese saxophone player. After the concert, I was very angry; it was the worst saxophone player I had ever heard. My friend answered, “Yes, but for a Lebanese, he was good.” This is what I hate; this makes me almost vomit. It's like admitting that we Lebanese are just a bunch of shits. I really hope this will change—and this is one of the reasons we want to compete internationally and prove ourselves. Consequently, I measure these musicians between two overall concepts and traditions: One is “avant-garde” that I here call multisited avant-garde to imply that it is not Euro-American exclusively. The other is “World Music 2.0.” Whenever using the term “multisited avant-garde” in the analysis, I argue that these musicians create new vanguard positions. When using “World Music 2.0,” I imply that they are still being pushed to

fulfill expectations and adapt to the worldview of Euro- American producers and audiences— and thus offer “World Music 2.0,” simply an updated version of the limiting “world music” (1.0).

A BROAD CONCEPTION OF AVANT-GARDE In current European music discussions, the term “avant-garde” is often equated with “new music”—with composers like Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez, or John Cage. I use “avant-garde” in a broader conception, based on definitions by Hegarty (2009), Jauk (2009), and Van der Berg and Fähnders (2009). Accordingly, artists of the avant-garde are those who seek a break with dominant musical canons. Avant-garde in this broad conception includes Pop- Avant-Garde: art-pop musicians like John Lennon or Pete Townsend, who graduated from art schools rather than conservatories (Jauk 2009:73); “nonacademic,” self-taught pop musicians—for example, those in rock ‘n’ roll, psychedelic rock, or punk, especially in their first experimental states; and what is sometimes referred to as “Black Sound,” a continuum from blues, reggae, calypso, hip-hop, house, dubstep, grime, UK funky, and much more. In Black Sound—White Cube, Dieter Lesage and Ina Wudtke (2010) claim that “Black Sound” remained— and still remains—largely unconsidered in the avantgarde context. Musicians from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Beirut help to change this: They perform not only in clubs and concert halls, but also in art exhibitions and events, where their work is more easily recognized as avant-garde. Lebanese computer musician Tarek Atoui—to name one example—constantly negotiates and switches between the worlds of arts, theater, live music, and club culture. He performs well-paid events in arts biennales and poorly paid shows in small music clubs. My decision to use the “Euro- American” and “military” term “avantgarde”— albeit a bit provocatively— underlines that I do not use a “relativist” approach toward music in Beirut. I challenge what scholars often refer to as “emic” and “etic” perspectives. “Emic” and “etic” are less than ever linked to place. A free improviser from Berlin has an “emic” understanding of a free improviser in Beirut, whereas to a Lebanese neighbor his improvisations and sound textures might not sound like music at all. The neighbor, however, might understand motivations and struggles of the Beiruti improviser of which the musician from Berlin is unaware. Consequently, in this book, I analyze music from different perspectives— in Parts III and V. For the aesthetical perspective, I drew inspiration from reception texts by Tagg and Clarida (2003) and Steinholt (2005) and sent key tracks to expert listeners of specific music genres in Europe, the US, and the Arab world. I further include international reviews of their media products. I also discuss, analyze, and criticize their media products from my own point of view. The goal is to see how their music is being discussed and judged within specialized music circles. Other perspectives are closer to the “Lebanese neighbor” mentioned in the preceding: for example, it looks for the sociopolitical role and value of these musicians and media products within Lebanon. The purpose is to expose as many perspectives, references, and attributions of meaning as possible and to highlight discrepancies in representation strategies of these musicians.

TRANSNATIONAL NETWORKS AND HUBS My analysis of the transnational media performances from Beiruti musicians is in line with research approaches by Jocelyne Guilbault, Nadia Kiwan, and Ulrike Meinhof. Guilbault (1993) describes the music genre “Zouk” and its local, regional, and international networks. Through her approach, she shows clearly how Zouk generates a great number of meanings for different people: “Contradictions and diverging opinions are the norm,” she writes (1993:xix). In their book Cultural Globalization and Music: African Artists in Transnational Networks, Kiwan and Meinhof (2011) work similarly. They analyze “personal narratives” and “practices” of African and European musicians, plus their interactions and interrelations (1). The authors look at the actors who constitute these musicians' networks and find them “in the wider artistic, cultural and civil society milieus of global and globalizing societies” (ibid.). The set-up is similar to Beirut, as I am going to show. Many of the involved actors are from Europe and the US: NGOs, concert organizers, arts curators, multipliers as bloggers and journalists, and embassies. Kiwan and Meinhof make an important claim: We suggest that artists who create or enter such networks follow a different logic of translocal and transnational links than is normally associated with diaspora and migration research on music. Thus we are widening the scope from “bifocal”, ethnically and spatially defined communities in sending and originating countries to the more complex and fluid flows and networking of individuals. (Ibid.) Kiwan and Meinhof define the term “hubs” according to the way they support transnational flows: human hubs, spatial hubs, institutional hubs, and accidental hubs (3): Human hubs and their social networks “cross over and link very different geographic spaces” as well as “different types of special spaces in a variety of cultural, institutional, professional and other kinds of contexts” (4). Spatial hubs refer to the important role of capital and metropolitan cities in the North (such as Paris and London) as key nodes for migration flows and migration cultures. According to Kiwan, the cities in the South play similar roles for both the translocal movements of artists within their nations and the transnational multidirectional movements between North and South. They offer access to reception platforms, and in these cities, you find a concentration of human and institutional hubs (5). Institutional hubs include particular key institutions and organizations that help organize or are themselves integrated into artists' networks. They link human and spatial hubs (6). Here we find the cultural institutions and the NGOs of the North. Kiwan and Meinhof further mention “expatriate associations” in the North. They support “their artists” in various ways. Third, they mention the “almost unresearched interconnection between artists and civil society movements devoted primarily to developmental causes of aid but which in some important instances interact with artists” (6). These institutional hubs are crucial for the musicians in Beirut, too. Accidental hubs involve, for example, the researcher, as Kiwan and Meinhof state: “We were building up the very network structures that we are researching. (…) In working with professional or aspiring artists, the chance of our turning into accidental hubs is arguably even stronger than in the anthropology of everyday practices” (7). This was exactly the case with my research in Beirut. I became involved with these musicians on many levels. Kiwan and Meinhof link their research of musicians of

Malagasy and North Africa to Transcultural Capital Theory—a very fruitful approach, even though I am not going to use it in detail in this book. They use the term “transcultural capital” to define who has which chances in the various networks. Transcultural Capital Theory shows the “highly integrated interaction of different types of capital in the lives of transnational artists” (Kiwan and Meinhof 2011:8). This theory works along the “capital” theory of Pierre Bourdieu (1987), who distinguished the main categories of economical, cultural, social, and symbolic capital. Cultural, social, and symbolic capital contain, for example, artistic or intellectual knowledge and skills, prestige, and existing social networks—all powerful resources for those who posses them. Transcultural Capital Theory offers not an essentializing concept through which artists are frozen into their ethnic niches, “but rather a strategic one, which enables us to describe the ways in which artists use the valuable resources acquired in their countries and cultures of origin to underwrite and develop their art and at the same time underwrite and support their commercial appeal to different publics” (ibid.:9). This is very clearly what I am going to show in the case of Lebanese musicians. Phenomenology and reflexive ethnography offer helpful tools for an analysis of transnational media performances in transnational networks. Phenomenology describes experiences and actions from the first-person point of view (Berger 1966). We not only analyze the structures of networks, but we also analyze how these structures influence media products. Conscious, intentional actions of an actor are put into a specific habitat or lifeworld, an environment the actor acts in. This environment offers a specific set of possibilities. Through repeated actions, the actor learns to know and maybe challenge the enabling conditions of his environment and thus gains experience: All interpretation of this world is based upon a stock of previous experiences of it, our own experiences and those handed down to us by our parents and teachers, which in the form of “knowledge at hand” function as a scheme of reference. (Schütz 1975:72) Overall, the phenomenological approach enables us to put forward farranging theses without ignoring the complexity, inconsistency, and processoriented nature of human (and musicians') behavior and strategies. Informants move beyond their “historic role as cultural actors playing out a script to being fully engaged cultural participants actively engaged in their experiences” (Barz and Cooley 2008:19). This kind of research implements demands by prominent social and cultural scientists. Bourdieu and Wacquant state in Reflexive Anthropologie (1996) that it is neither the individual nor the collective that social sciences should focus on, but the various interrelations between the two. In order to catch this in-between world, Appadurai (1998, 2003) and other scientists (Beck, Giddens, and Lash 1996; Beck 2002; Giddens 1995; Hall 2008, 2007, 1996) focus on beliefs, ideas, reflections, and visions of human beings. It is in these thoughts and ideas where important theoretical concepts like identity find their living and often contradictory expressions. Appadurai calls for a “new ethnography” that is capable of evaluating the role of imagination in today's lives and is thus able to understand the variety of changes we go through on our planet (1998:24). He (and others) suggest the introduction of films, theater plays, novels, travelogues, and other cultural expressions and forms of art into the ethnographical research—not only as side elements, but as its sources (ibid.:37). Consequently, I would argue that the analysis of music and the discourses around music offer us detailed and nuanced

insights to the socioeconomic conditions and structures in which musicians are living and acting. Hence, a systematic, empirical ethnomusicological research offers a vital contribution to the debates on worldwide processes of globalization and localization.

A REFLEXIVE CONCEPT OF CULTURE Media products and transnational media performances from Beirut encompass musical genres of multiple nations and continents; are mixed and transmitted by modern technologies; and are promoted and supported by human, spatial, institutional, and accidental hubs. These complex interrelations between production, distribution, reception, and further processing ask for a fundamentally reflexive concept of culture— one which is process- and dynamic-oriented, media sensitive, broad, and as nonnormative as possible. It is not absolutely necessary to link discussions of this book to concepts of “culture” from an academic point of view. In daily discussions with producers, labels, journalists, funders, and fans, however, musicians are often confronted with “old” concepts of “culture” that have little place in academics anymore. Still, they flourish in daily life and in categories and promotion strategies on cultural markets. Such discussions appear strongly when music travels far distances— when Middle Eastern, African, Asian, or Latin American music reaches Euro-American reception platforms. As this book addresses a nonacademic readership, too, some reflections might be useful. Clifford Geertz offered a reflexive concept of culture many years ago. He defined culture as a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life (1987:7–43). This concept of culture does not at all end at national borders. I myself am part of many cultures: I am Swiss and Dutch by passport. I share a great amount of knowledge (that I received through socialization and education), language, conventions, and convictions with my fellow Swiss citizens. I see the world from a specific position and perspective; I anticipate how others from my “culture” will react to specific phenomena—for example, noise pollution, work ethics, social invitations, and much more. In my Dutch “culture,” I primarily share experiences with my grandparents, the Dutch language (at least a bit), and some nostalgic childhood memories of specific food, but almost nothing of present-day Netherlands. I am further an academic, the third “culture” I feel part of: I again share with colleagues a certain amount of knowledge (that I received through my studies, reading, and conferences), language, conventions, convictions, and worldviews. Then, I work as a cultural producer, I played saxophone, and today I work with computer software to edit and manipulate music and sound; as such, I am part of specific music circles, my fourth “culture.” Again, I share specific knowledge, language, conventions, and convictions with other members of this “culture.” In addition, there are many other “cultures” that are defined and created by the specific knowledge, language, conventions, and convictions shared by the members. This includes discussions and arguments around knowledge, language, conventions, and convictions. It is these discussions that lead to change, usually slowly but at times quickly. When working with Lebanese musicians, I share parts of their “music culture” knowledge but nothing of their knowledge of being Lebanese citizens. The discussions within these “music cultures” are very specific: ranging from flow,

swing, and sound textures to insider discussions around key references in the specific genre, origins, criteria for production qualities, and ways of editing, arranging, mixing, and manipulating material. In this book, I hear and judge their music through this “music culture” knowledge; this allows me, a scholar from Europe, to use an insider approach to Beiruti music. For the musicians, this “music culture” however is just the starting point. From this position, they hope to be heard and recognized outside their “cultures” as well: by parents and peers, ethnomusicologists, music journalists, cultural funders, and organizers. Their music might have a specific translation potential. This means that, outside of the “musicspecific” discussion (see the preceding), it speaks to greater audiences—or to different niche audiences. The musicians in question could be good entertainers, produce onthe- edge video clips or other media products that draw attention, or they may be great company or good at writing project proposals. The translation potential of music and the translation skills of musicians become crucial— they are what Meinhof and Kiwan call “transcultural capital.” To translate is, however, delicate: The musicians can become criticized as “sellouts,” to name one example. In London, many of the musicians of Indian and Pakistani origin that started to sell their music in the “white” Euro-American market were declared “coconuts” by their peers— brown on the outside, white on the inside (Burkhalter 2000). Working on different reception platforms—and thus translating between different “cultures” (within the same country or between countries)—is always a complex and surprising matter. Again, the musician can be criticized heavily—or he has to play it smart on these different platforms. I became European tour manager for the BritishAsian bhangra band DCS from Birmingham for a while. One day, the organizers of a big Swiss festival, OpenAir St. Gallen, called me and wanted to book DCS— alongside bands like Massive Attack. I called Shin, the leader of DCS, to tell him the great news. Shin consulted his diary, saw that DCS was booked to perform at a local wedding on the same day, and said no to St. Gallen. Shin was wise, I thought: DCS plays around one hundred weddings a year, so that is what pays their rent. The moment the word got out that DCS prefers to play in Switzerland, he could be declared arrogant or snobbish, and it could destroy his key market.

THE IMPACT OF THE RESEARCHER My role as a researcher is not to be underestimated—on several levels. Whenever I talk with musicians about their production and strategies, they talk in retrospective. I ask how they started their careers, how this led to that, how they gained bigger audiences, or how they produced this track. They would always tell me their “stories” in ways that I understand and that make sense to a potential readership. Often chaotic experiences (when working on a career night and day) gain logic and coherence in retrospective—we know this. For example, when looking back on our lives, we might see how this decision led to that, and how that led to another, whereas at the time a lot happened through coincidence and luck. Similar issues occur when discussing future plans and dreams: Living in a region full of conflict, the musicians find it hard to see what the next years may bring. This is what biographical research teaches us: We always reconstruct our biography (and career) out of the present. We bundle, categorize, construct, and reconstruct. Musicians, in a similar way, perform their life story to an interviewer (see Hermann 2003). As a researcher, I try to see behind these

performances as much as possible. I do so in analyzing their media products, too, and in getting to know as much as possible about these key musicians through other actors in the field.3 Alfred Schütz further argues that the scientist creates the world—in a humoresque moment, he even compares the scientist to God (1975:287). The informant— musician in this case— becomes the puppet of the scientist. I classify, describe, interpret, and analyze structures of experiences in ways that answer to my own experience. In the humanities, this and other problematic issues are discussed in the “writingculture- debate” (Clifford and Marcus 1986; Marcus and Fischer 1986) and highlighted with the term “crisis-ofrepresentation.” Ethnographers tend to reproduce their own positions and perspectives in their ethnographies, “including their epistemological stances, their relations to the cultural practices and individuals studied, and their relationships to their own cultural practices” (Barz and Cooley 2008:20). I am aware of this problem. I decided to write in first-person singular at many points in this book, underlining that I write out of my perspective and position. Two points from “writingculture- debate” are important: 1. Data Transparency: splitting of the empirical data and the analytical consequences. One has to know who is speaking: Is it me the scholar or me the musician? This is one way to limit the “ethnographical authority” (Clifford 1988, cited in Hermann 2003:7) of the scholar at least a bit. In this book, I introduce comments and notes from my field diary as well as direct and unedited parts of my interviews with musicians. I further introduce comments from expert listeners from a reception test and international reviews by international journalists. 2. Dialogical Editing: This book proceeds according to the principle of “dialogical editing” (Feld 1982:239–268). I sent drafts of this book back to the musicians to discuss. I deleted quotes if they wished, and I corrected mistakes. These exchanges via e-mail helped a great deal in improving this text. In the book, I highlight some of their fundamental propositions and critiques now and then. I allow myself my own critical point of view at times4—for example, in sections marked “Fieldnotes.” No approach or position is neutral: In performances studies, the “other” may be part of one's own culture (non-Western or Western), or even an aspect of one's own behavior. That positions the performance studies fieldworker at a Brechtian distance, allowing for criticism, irony, and personal commentary as well as sympathetic participation. In this active way, one performs fieldwork. (Schechner 2006:2) I am involved with the musicians on many levels. With some musicians, I performed on stage with the Norient project Sonic Traces: From the Arab World, and from others I licensed tracks for the compilation CD Golden Beirut— New Sounds from Lebanon. I invited some musicians to Switzerland for concerts or performances, and I wrote articles in newspapers or produced radio programs or radio features about others. For this research, I needed to be involved, I believe. I needed to understand these musicians' daily praxis in cultural fields in order to be able to write about them. Inside ethnomusicology, it is a common theme that scholars feel the necessity to play non-Western instruments of the non- Western cultures in which they conduct their studies (see bi-musicality in Hood 1960), but how many ethnomusicologists master the instruments of the digital age? Some actually do, but it is a small minority. So, do today's music theorists need to become experts in laptop culture, DJ-ing, sampling, and sound engineering? To a certain extent, I believe, yes.

While researching, my goal was to find a good mixture of closeness and (critical) distance to the musicians. I needed to find their trust, and I am now very careful in how I represent them. The musicians offered me a lot of their time, and I gave them back at least some public coverage. Even with this book, the musicians hope that it is supportive for their career.

3 Methodological Approach Ethnomusicology enjoys the advantages of being an inherently interdisciplinary discipline, seemingly in a perpetual state of experimentation that gains strength from a diversity and plurality of approaches. (…) In this sense, ethnomusicologists are in a unique position to question established methods and goals of the social sciences, and to explore new perspectives. These new perspectives are not just for ethnomusicologists but also for all ethnographic disciplines. (Barz and Cooley 2008:3) In order to achieve a close reading of the discrepancies and interrelations between the musical production, the musicians' motives, and the reception on local and on Euro-American platforms, I work with an experimental, multidisciplinary research layout. To stand the test of time, this analysis has to be close to the musicians, the music, and the daily realities on the international reception platforms. This methodological approach thus switches between close reading of music and broad overviews of contexts and trends. MULTISITED ETHNOGRAPHY This book works with approaches of “multisited ethnography” (Marcus 1995). Its claim that local culture is always configured from transnational contexts is crucial in this analysis. Multisited ethnography not only describes a specific lifestyle from a local perspective, but it also tries to understand the bigger political, economical, and cultural frame that influences local life and work. Many of the points mentioned in the two editions of the book Shadows in the Field are inspiring, for example, the approaches “virtual fieldwork” by Cooley, Meizel, and Syed and “Internet Ethnography” (2008:90–107). Researching via the Internet, discussing questions and articles via e-mail, and following the bands via Facebook became important whenever I was not in the field. I constantly observe the musicians (and their media representations). This keeps my research up-to-date. I can even see with whom the musicians network and what they discuss, and this generates new research questions. I keep in mind that online performances on Facebook are very specific, and I would even argue that they are simply valuable data, when discussed with the musicians–or at least with other actors in the field.

MAIN PERSPECTIVES: MUSICIAN, MUSIC, MEDIA PRODUCT In my methodological approach, I work from three main perspectives: 1. The perspective “musician (as an actor)” involves all spheres that affect the musician as a human being and artist: for example, the geographical position in which he (or she) lives; mobility; financial possibilities; position of the musician in his (or her) country; and knowledge (through socialization and education). All of this leads to the musicians' motives (why he or she makes music) and to identity constructions (and positioning toward the world). 2. The perspective “music making (as a practice)” involves the processes of music making and music production (writing, composing, recording, mixing); hard and software and their inherent laws; the impact of musical influences and references; and trends within the local music circles and transnational niche genres. 3. The perspective “music as a media product” involves reception and further processing: It looks at music, culture, and arts market(s) (and their possibilities); secondary markets (video clip, film music, game soundtracks); and reception ideologies of funding organizations, media, and fans. This category offers various options for action: promotion and networking strategies, representation ideologies, and performance strategies. These three main perspectives overlap, and they are temporary working categories only. However, perspective one (musician as an actor) asks for an empirical culturestudies approach; perspective two (music making as a practice) for an analysis of music and sound; and perspective three (music as a media product) for a broad analysis of the reception platforms with their networks and power structures. Here, musicians act strategically within a complex network of organizers, agencies, cultural sponsors, and media. According to Susanne Binas- Preisendörfer (2010), it is a task for ethnographers to reconstruct the interaction of these forces and to focus and reflect on the ensuing aesthetic ideas. This is exactly what I do in this book.

ETHNOGRAPHIC FIELDWORK The main data of this long-term study derive from several pieces of field research in Beirut–the main ones were conducted in 2005 and 2006, when I lived in Beirut. Smaller ones I conducted in short research trips (between one and three weeks) between 2001 and 2011. I used some of the methodological approaches of grounded theory (Strauss and Corbin 1996). Basically, grounded theory enables us to put forward far-ranging theses without ignoring the complexity, inconsistency, and process-oriented nature of human (and artist) behavior and strategies. To approach musicians in Beirut as closely as possible, I used a set of qualitative research methods: different forms of interviews (structured, semi-structured, informal/themebased, biographical/with single informants or groups); participant observation; and systematic observation (Beer 2003:119; Hauser-Schäublin 2003:33) of the musicians in their daily life and during concerts. I focused on many actors of different age-groups working in or around the field of music in Beirut. All in all, I met and interviewed around one hundred musicians; composers; scholars (musicologists, ethnomusicologists, and social anthropologists); music producers (record producers, festival and concert organizers); media people (journalists and editors); members of arts councils (from different international institutions); and

music lovers. Further, I observed their activities in numerous settings: from international music festivals in Baalbek, Beiteddine, and Byblos, to club concerts in the trendy Beirut areas of Gemmayzeh and Hamra, to rehearsal sessions in small cellars or in big villas. My aim in meeting that many actors was to become as well informed about the Lebanese context as possible. This became increasingly important the more I met the key musicians. Most of them I met several times in different constellations. The intention was to slowly bring the discussion to the deeper levels of music making and to sensitive issues like their childhood in war. To do so, I needed a lot of knowledge on the local context so I could ask and re-ask the right questions. Often, the interviews and discussions went on for many hours. After one meeting, Charbel Haber told me that he had never talked so much and never given an interview that was that long–we had discussed music for nearly five hours. It took Raed Yassin and me five hours to go through his piece “CW Tapes” for the first time.

MUSIC ANALYSIS – RECEPTION TEST Two of the main decisions this book is based upon call for a rather special approach to music analysis. The first decision was to work cross-culturally and to use emic and ethic criteria to analyze and describe music. The second decision was to focus on a generation of musicians (born during the Lebanese Civil War) instead of a specific musical style: rap, rock, metal, MBM, free improvisation, or electronic music, for example. One minor problem is that we cannot transcribe the variety of musical styles similarly. In most of the cases, I thus create tables with timelines of specific musical events, and I describe in written text specifics such as which chords are played, what scale is used, and so forth. I use the classical form of notation in the track “Aranis” only. The problem with notation and transcriptions remains that they can show only a glimpse of the actual musical phenomena. Furthermore, the moment a musicologist applies a traditional notation, the social scientist and the untrained reader are excluded from discussion. The major difficulty, however, was (and is) that I am not an expert in all the musical styles that I focus on in this book. Having played clarinet in a music school and saxophone at the Swiss Jazz School of Bern (and in some local bands) for quite a while makes me understand more about jazz and free improvised music than about metal music. Today, I further perform in audiovisual performance projects, and I sometimes DJ. This gives me some knowledge of live electronics. I further use various software programs to edit and manipulate sounds for radio features and podcasts. To gain more knowledge across the various music styles, I decided to conduct a small reception test. I sent these metal, rap, rock, free improvisation, and electronic music tracks to thirty listeners in Europe, the US, and the Arab world. Most of them were musicians, ethnomusicologists, musicologists, and music journalists. They knew neither that this music was from Beirut nor the names of the musicians. In this book, I include only small parts of their answers. However, I used their comments within my research: to ask different and new questions to the musicians, or to discuss certain criticisms. The book Rock in the Reservation– Songs from the Leningrad Rock Club 1981–86 by Yngvar Bordewich Steinholt (2005) inspired this reception test. Steinholt adapted a reception test by Philip Tagg–see Music Analysis for “Non-musos” (Tagg 2001:9– 14) for his study. In his book, he asks amateur musicians to listen to four pieces of

music, and he edits and adds their comments in his analysis chapter. With his reception test, Steinholt further aims to achieve the same goals as I do: He states that the feedback of the listeners would cover a “sufficient basis” on how the bands from Leningrad “use and combine Western musical styles” and to “which extent their recontextualisation of rock styles creates particular local styles” (Steinholt 2005:12). This setting is challenging. The ideal is to get a multisited ethnography and to receive results that show the complexities of musicians' actions in today's globalized and digitalized world. I need this highly abstract yet flexible theoretical and methodological framework in order to approach, read, and make “thick descriptions” (in the sense of Geertz 1987) of very specific examples in music practice. In this manner, I wish to fulfill the fundamental requirement of popular music researcher Binas-Preisendörfer. She argues that “a scientific exploration of the musical phenomena in a modern globalized and mediated world demands both reflexive theoretical concepts as well as very specific, small-scale studies” (2010:103). One aim of this book is thus to propose a way of analyzing music in today's globalized and digitized world. This analysis should be close to the musicians and the music, but it should not ignore power balances and realities on the cultural markets. I try to apply this proposition, working with the following hypothesis: Music making in an increased digitalized and globalized world is influenced more than ever by both virtual transnational trends and phenomena and by local musical and nonmusical spheres of influence. Contemporary music analysis has thus to link analysis of music (and music performance) with cultural and social studies and collect data in transnational contexts.