Word: beirutization
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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While MTV may have popularized the music video, in the Middle East it is chasing its clones. Competitor Rotana has four Beirut-based music channels, financed by Saudi billionaire Prince al-Waleed bin Talal. Melody, out of Cairo, is controlled by Egyptian telecoms magnate Naguib Sawiris. Mohammed Yanez, MTV talent and music director, says his channel will be different. Sure, there will be stars like Elissa, Nancy Ajram and Amr Diab, but Yanez wants a little less melodrama. "We are always weeping in Arabic music," he complains. He plans to mix it up with Arab hip-hop, a genre that...
Taking advantage of a debilitating political crisis in Beirut, overstretched security forces and a lifeless economy, the Bekaa farmers this year have cultivated the largest hashish harvest since the war-torn 1980s when this fertile valley was awash with drug crops. Lebanese police estimate that some 16,000 acres (6,500 hectares) of hashish and a small amount of opium poppies were planted this year on the sun-baked plain of the northern Bekaa. "Lebanese hashish is the best in the world, better than Turkey and Afghanistan," says Ali, a Bekaa farmer standing in his field of knee-high hashish...
...funds never materialized and the program was dropped in 2001. Most years since, the ripening hashish crops are destroyed shortly before the harvest by drug police protected by hundreds of Lebanese troops. But this year, the Lebanese army's manpower was stretched to the limit with security commitments in Beirut, along the southern border with Israel, the eastern border with Syria and in the north of the country where troops fought a bloody three-month battle against Islamist militants during the summer hashish growing season. Furthermore, the hashish farmers threatened to burn down the houses of local tractor owners...
...life of about two years, most dealers plan to sell their products in the domestic market. Recreational drug use is on the rise in Lebanon. "The problem is that drugs are readily available and relatively cheap," says Brigitte Khoury, a clinical psychologist and professor at the American University of Beirut. A problem that will only worsen if the Bekaa farmers return to their old ways...
Remember how gypsy music was supposedly making a comeback? Praised in the blogosphere after their 2006 debut, Beirut was lumped into the same Eastern Invasion category as Gogol Bordello, simply because both bands cited gypsy influences. However, Beirut eschews Bordello’s hedonism and registers as a slightly more ethnic Neutral Milk Hotel. “The Flying Club Cup,” Beirut’s second album, seeks inspiration further west of their old sonic haunts and finds it in France. The influence is evident, superficially in the pretentious Francophone chatter at the beginning of songs...