Darwish’s album, Ard el-Samak, produced by El-Rass, is a perfect example of it all.
Hani al-Sawah, aka Darwish, a native of Homs, moved in 2012 to Beirut; the Lebanese capital that he had initially visitedin 2011 to participate in a multi collective album, Khatttalet, that brought together rappers from the Arab world. It was then that he weaved meetings, collaborations and friendships that, once he settled in Lebanon,allowed him to live, survive and have a roof to sleep under, at least for the first period, before he got used to Beirut.
Getting used to Beirut, however, did not happen overnight. He did not see one single upside to the city; he found it to be as detrimental as «a Gulf city within Bilad al-Sham,» with its life requirements and its economic system that take it in that direction. But in reality, «the people here resemble us, they do not resemble the people of the Golf. This is less so in Beirut, but the more you go towards the south or the north, the more the similarities». These are similarities that were felt right from the first meeting with Mazen el-Sayed, alias El-Rass, from Tripoli; complicity in identity, culture, traditions, life, concerns and Sufism in its broadest sense. This complicity, human, professional and private at the same time, and based on improvisation and reflection, is at once evoked by the two of them; their words, collected separately, do not cease to spontaneously overlap on so many subjects, issues and concerns, through a synergy of thoughts and goals.
Towards a different kind of unity
From questions of identity, borders, redefining the geographical spaces, similarities across these borders, religion, secularism, equilibriumin the heart of the feature represented by the city of Beirut, «an island of possibilities within an explosive environment», the artistic responsibility, the failure of an era that has proved its powerlessness to the need for a comeback in the Arab world inevitably linked to the language... the discussion with Darwish and El-Rass constantlydovetails their socio-political and artistic commitment.
The Ard el-Samak (Land of Fish) album reflects, through its title, on this being exiled from its environment; that fish that reminds us of our so-short-memory that does nothing but repeat the same mistakes without even being aware of it. Even if Darwish presents the album more like a collection, a booklet containing ideas written in the form of texts and complemented by the music of El-Rass, even hesitating over the use of the word rap, given all the stereotypes hovering around it, he stresses on the specificity of this «Arabic rap», which is in the process of shaping its personality for the last 5 to 6 years and which is a logical and normal development of thelanguage; this Arabic language that is one of the key conveyors of identity, as El-Rass puts it.
The ideas do not stop intersecting, beyond people’s expectations or aspiration of this collaboration. Hence, Darwish at once confirms his astonishment every time he’s asked whether this collaboration is helping to evolve the Lebanese-Syrian relations. «But what relations are we talking about in the first place?», he blurts, those of «the Syrian mandate, the Syrian regime and its Lebanese allies?». Claiming to be of those who believe that setting borders between one country and another, over a period of 60 years, does not create two separate civil societies, he thinks that «we are currently in the very act of creating a new concept of what unity is, of being on the same front, of having a common enemy...I regard this as a geographic expansion of a new generation across the Arab world. There’s a community that is being built on a concept of unity, but one that is modern, new, resembles us and resembles what we want». That same askew smile takes hold of El Rass’ features, who points out that «this joint work is not based on a precise definition of the identity. The question of being Lebanese or Syrian is an open-ended question, it is a «blank page» that is at once a starting point and a field for work, and on which are written the ideas that are being exchanged in words and in music; maybe then we might feel, one day, that these ideas serve to build an approach to an identity that actually «suits us, because what’s currently «on the market» is just not for us».