Info: Boom boom
Ras-el-3abed Kalashnikovs
Shooting molasses at the masses
Sticky sticky masses
Waiving flags from everywhere but here
And somewhere in the heart of hamra
Maw3oud sits down under the last yasmine bush in the city
And plays the bee bop bee bop bee boom boom
Waiving decibels for the sticky sticky masses
His feet up on his pomegranate trolly
Why can’t I transliterate you back?
Fool. Durra. Fool. Durra. Fools.
The whole lot.
Fools. Sticky sticky fools.
Mashrouʼ Leila is not a bandʼs name. It is not a proper noun per se; Mashrouʼ Leila is Arabic for ʻan overnight projectʼ lusting out a microphone, a violin, a bass, two guitars, drums and keyboards. It started out as a music workshop at the American University of Beirut in 2008, an open platform for students of architecture and design, somewhere to experiment with sounds and make things audible. Haig Papazian, Carl Gerges, Hamed Sinno, Omaya Malaeb, Andre Chedid, Firas Abou Fakher and Ibrahim Badr have enjoyed this sound fetish savoring its façade of nonchalance and feeding on its lack of genre – sustaining their collective as Mashrouʼ Leila, an experiment.