Mashrou\u02bc Leila is not a band\u02bcs name. It is not a proper noun per se; Mashrou\u02bc Leila is Arabic for \u02bban overnight project\u02bc 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 fa\u00e7ade of nonchalance and feeding on its lack of genre \u2013 sustaining their collective as Mashrou\u02bc Leila, an experiment.<\/p>\n
You can hear Leila, cascading melts of masculine vocals only suspended with thrusts of violin, beats and bass \u2013 attacked by neurotic melody that means no harm \u2013 sometimes tender, even sometimes on pause. Through the music, you can smell where Leila has been, in bed sheets, on sidewalks, jasmines in ri\ufb02es and spilled coffee on dresses as she made you play with aubergines, dancing her dance. Music has constantly been their place to play with things, to match and mis-match, a project.<\/p>\n
In the various performances, Mashrou\u02bc Leila is a constant attempt to taste and produce, more than happy to harvest anyone from the audience as a guest in their encores. They have performed around Lebanon since 2008, playing in various venues in Beirut, taking over supposed public piazzas as well as clubs, pubs, hybrids and the such \u2013 they also played in Zahle, Sour, Jounieh, Saida and Deir el Qamar, each of which pushed forward their thinking about how to go about their music, lyrics and performance. It is only when Mashrou\u02bc Leila goes live, that you can actually catch a glimpse of Leila. As it talks to you of Beirut, the city that tastes of the absurd, the product of its day-to-day experiences, its stubborn security and lack of the latter, its musical bombshells, incoherent sexuality and thrusting pleasure\u2026narcotic pain \u2013 as it brings forward hints of Arabic Tarab, rock, to folk pop, electro, you can see Leila in every man and woman in the silent- come-raving audience. In this trajectory, they participated in music workshops and concerts in Amman and Cairo to maneuver their way into a pan-Arab music scene, to know and to announce, more importantly to grow, musically.<\/p>\n
In March 2009, Mashrou\u02bc Leila won the Lebanese Modern Music Contest jury prize and public vote organized by Radio Liban in partnership with CCF, Incognito and the Basement. They are currently recording their debut album with B-root Productions, to be released in December 2009. The music in the album is a reclamation of the aftertaste; sequel-ing a dose of Beirut.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mashrou\u02bc Leila is not a band\u02bcs name.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":217238,"template":"","tags":[],"class_list":["post-12384","directory","type-directory","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-public-figures"],"yoast_head":"\n