Softer than a child, braver than a fighter Profile by Serene Assir The phone rings in Paris, as I sit in Beirut on the eve of the 30th anniversary of the outbreak of the Lebanese civil war. "Hello?" answers a man with the voice of a child. "Marcel speaking... I am in France. Do you mind if we do the interview long- distance?" It's worth it, I decide, still trying to grasp just how young his voice sounds, and that it really is Marcel Khalifa on the line. Born in a torn nation, yet rising above the barriers of sect and war through his work, Lebanese composer and singer Khalifa has gained international recognition as one of the most prominent, eloquent, active, imaginative, and committed artists to have emerged from the Arab world in recent times. Labelled at various times as an experimentalist, a Communist, a pan-Arabist, and a heretic, throughout his adult life Khalifa's trademark has been his active and often explosive combination of his roles as musician and citizen. Perhaps he is best known for his songs on war, pain and freedom, since when Lebanon first collapsed into a bitter war that was to last over 15 years, he was there to sing about it. And, transcending national boundaries, when the Palestinians suffered, he sang of their strife too -- very often in the first person. For Khalifa, the integration of politics into music -- or perhaps music into politics -- is the result of the world constituting, in itself, a "great political question", and of his firm belief in his obligation as a musician to express both his "private and collective selves". However, though I try to steer the interview towards a discussion of politics, the first subject Khalifa goes into in depth is love. "There is something I need to confess. I feel that the greatest thing about music is its ability to inspire people to love," he tells me in a handwritten reply to one of my questions. "I am also very interested in the relationship between one body and another. I believe in free, unpoliced love." Yet, these are really political statements, for at the core of his discourse, whether spoken or composed, lies the concept of freedom, sometimes expressed at the expense of musical tightness and "technical routine". The result is all the more convincing, given its humanity and closeness to raw emotion. Although the form Khalifa uses of oud and voice accompaniment is a classical one in Arab music, he started to compose during the years immediately preceding the Lebanese war, which were, for him, "an era of experimentation. It was a time when we were all searching for new forms of expression and for new ways to combine the arts with popular discourse." Thus, in order to understand Khalifa's music, we need to understand pre-war Lebanon. "I never start a project from scratch. Rather, each new endeavour takes off from the last," musical or otherwise, since "music responds to reality." The early 1970s constituted a time of hope for many Lebanese, "when society was blooming, and when people were fostering a new love for life and developing the courage to pose new cultural questions." The shattering of these hopes as a result of the outbreak of the bitter war brought about their collapse for years to come. However, this pain also found its voice, all too clearly, in Khalifa's music. Khalifa collaborated during this period and later with the renowned Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, at whose readings hundreds of Lebanese and Palestinians would gather in wartime Beirut, when the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) was based in Lebanon. As a partner in this artistic relationship, Khalifa composed what would later become his best-known songs -- songs written in simple classical Arabic that were accessible yet eloquent, and complex yet explosive, because of the political connotations of such a collaboration in such a setting. Indeed, many Lebanese could not forgive Khalifa for this stance. Many were, and many still remain, resentful of the PLO's presence on Lebanese soil and of its use of what is described by both sides as "Lebanese hospitality" to man the resistance against Israel from its already long-suffering northern neighbour. Others in Lebanon have not been able to accept Khalifa's music because of his long-term involvement with the Lebanese Communist Party. In 1999, scandal broke out over Khalifa's setting of a poem, I am Joseph, oh Father, written by Darwish. The Lebanese composer faced charges of profanity as a result of the song's inclusion of a Koranic verse and its use of the first person for the words of defiance and rejection uttered by Joseph to God. A Lebanese court sought a three-year prison sentence against the composer as a result, and, asked when he thinks he might return to Lebanon for good -- given that he has made Paris his home in recent years -- Khalifa gives no clear reply. Nevertheless, he seems intent on continuing on his present path, wherever his current base may be. "I am currently working on new projects inspired by music from Al-Andalus. I am always looking for new avenues," he says. Unlike many musicians who find it difficult to describe the artistic process in words, Khalifa is eloquent in his discussion of how he composes his music and where he finds the energy to press on. "I start by searching for a new form," he says. "Then I find a way of taking myself back to my childhood," in order to express a given thought or feeling as if this were mirrored in "childhood memories. In this way, I express myself from the point of view of a 'pure being', and I also find ways of expressing a beauty that lies beyond corruptability," with which, presumably, children can identify more closely. "I live under the constant shadow of pain and loss," Khalifa says, explaining the difficulty he has in purging any bitterness he might feel in order to let the child within him speak. Through this process, Khalifa feels, he is able to attain freedom. "Songs give words the power to dance, and they give us the ability to free ourselves from traditional forms of expression." Thus, "songs constitute the embodiment of freedom. They are a wild intellectual attempt at freeing the individual from the state. Music gives me my vision. And if others can learn to see with me, then I have fulfilled my aims." Perhaps it is because of this absolute commitment to what music is, rather than to what might be gained from it, that Khalifa has gained the respect and love of so many people across the world. Even in Lebanon he has been able to transcend the confines of sect, ironically to the degree that he has been attacked by the mufti of Lebanon for what the latter viewed as an act of blasphemy, despite the fact that Khalifa is of nominally Christian descent. How does Khalifa see the future of Lebanon? As the country again undergoes political crisis, the composer's view that "we all live constantly under the influence of politics" gains new significance. A small incident in Beirut illustrates this perfectly: as a friend and I were shopping in one of the city's more elegant areas recently, a truck outside the shop offloaded some stock. The sound scared the shop attendant, who stared and said, "God, was that a bomb?" Politics and fear took over in an instant. "In our era, we need to learn to emerge from pain, hardship and angst and seek liberation, both personal and collective," Khalifa says. "And in general true artists cannot accept the status quo. We seek instead to change reality. The role of music today must be to free humanity." Such freedom for Khalifa is multidimensional, but its focus is on liberation from the constraints of capital and from control by the United States and Israel. "I reject the American culture of occupation, force and illegitimacy," Khalifa says. "Similarly, the Israeli war on Palestine continues to be supported by the US," and he goes on to condemn Arab passivity. "We must not expose ourselves to destruction," he says. "We must not allow the US to render us a mere base that provides it with the space to fulfill its strategic interests. For now it seems we have forgotten all those people who have been injured or killed" through the US's endeavour for increased power in the Middle East. As a musician, Khalifa also rejects the hegemony of commercialism, including the transformation of the musician from an artist to a product. "Artists should not work for the audience; rather, they should show their work to the audience," he says. "What is the artist's value if he complies with the demands of, say, a given television station? How far will he go with his efforts at appeasement, without sacrificing his thought and freedom? The very moment when an artist rejects this pressure is a moment of light, when the space for true civilisation can exist." As I mull over Khalifa's words, the sun begins to rise, and I listen, again and again, to my favourite Khalifa song. The sound crackles on the recording of Ummi (My Mother), a song written as if from a martyr to his mother, expressing his deep love for her and asking her not to feel sad at his death. The simplicity of the music is overpowering, and my heart weeps as I am back in Cairo, having left Beirut -- at once land of dreams and pain -- behind, yet again. However, Khalifa's music, at once whole and fragmentary and sung by a man with the voice of a child, is here to tell me that I am not alone. Both Cairo and Beirut, and, indeed, the world, are still here, for there is no frontier to love and no frontier to freedom. "The road to liberation is hard," Khalifa says. But he insists that if we are to live in dignity there is no choice but to take that road and walk along it.
