The cello among the many rubble of Beirut, music challenges the battle | EUROtoday

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Among the gutted buildings and dust-covered streets of the southern outskirts of Beirut, the low timbre of a cello resonates at daybreak. TO Haret Hreikone of many neighborhoods of the Lebanese capital most affected by Israel’s fury, the Lebanese musician Mahdi Beach he selected to sit down among the many rubble and play two songs by Antonin Dvorak e Aram Khatchatourian. The video, unfold on social media, went viral. And he recounts with a number of photographs the ache brought on by the battle, recalling different related gestures born within the tormented cities: the piano performed among the many ruins of the Palestinian camp of Yarmuk in Damascus by Ayham Ahmad and the cello of the Bosnian musician Vedran Smailović who, throughout the siege of Sarajevo, performed within the bombed streets defying the snipers.

In the pictures Sahili seems sitting along with his instrument among the many nonetheless smoking ruins of the neighborhood, thought of a Hezbollah stronghold and the scene of systematic Israeli bombings. The space was destroyed in 2006 and was repeatedly focused by the Jewish state in subsequent rounds of battle towards the pro-Iranian armed motion. The musician doesn’t dwell in Haret Hreik. But he says he feels deeply related to this neighborhood. “The southern suburbs of Beirut are dear to my heart,” he says, chatting with the Lebanese media. Thirty years previous, educated on the Lebanese National Conservatory, Sahili works as a pc programmer for a dwelling. “Music occupies fifty percent of my life,” he says, between classes and small musical occasions. The video was recorded at daybreak, throughout a short lull between Israeli bombing.

The musician stopped just a few minutes in Via Luce (sharia Nur), within the coronary heart of Haret Hreik. “I took a risk but I only stayed for a quarter of an hour,” he says. “Time to play two songs, film myself and go away”. For Sahili the gesture is a message. “You can resist it in many ways,” he says. “Through culture, weapons or any other means. After all, it is always our country!”. In Arabic the cello is usually nicknamed “the voice of the sad old wise man”, on account of its similarity to the frequencies of the human voice. “When you listen to it it almost sounds like someone is talking,” says Sahili, who cites Bach, Vivaldi and Dvorak amongst his favourite composers. The notes performed among the many rubble of Beirut mirror the melancholy of a technology that grew up amidst financial disaster, political instability and recurring wars. But additionally, says Sahili, “the will to stay and continue to live”.