If you ask the Lebanese people where their resilience comes from after decades of war, the 2020 Beirut Blast, the collapse of their economy and more recently, Israel’s ongoing airstrikes on the country, many of them will tell you they are not resilient.
They often make self-deprecating jokes to make the best of an ongoing crisis, whether it is war, the recurring failures of their government, or even in the face of literally losing everything. You could argue that their remarkable ability to crack jokes in the most devastating circumstances is a form of resilience.
“Instead of people in Lebanon having to hear the horrid sound of Israeli drones, they can put their earbuds in and listen to his sound instead”
Beirut-based Lebanese DJ and sound artist Mohamed Choucair, who is also a core team member of Bethlehem-based radio station Radio Alhara and founder of Beirut club The Ballroom Blitz, says he too made the best of Israel’s continuing attacks on the country by the only way he knew how – making sound art.
He recently turned the incessant humming of Israeli drones, better known as UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles), into a sound that can be downloaded.
Mohamed says the drones, which are used by the Israeli army for surveillance and what they claim are ‘precision attacks’ on their targets, have been hovering in the skies above their heads for the past six months. He says the noise is continuous, with only two breaks a day when the drones’ batteries run out and the Israeli army changes vehicles. The Israeli army often uses the Elbit Systems Hermes 450 drone in both Lebanon and Gaza, designed for long endurance missions, lasting up to 20 hours at a time.
“A month ago, I had a show in Paris with [Jordanian sound artist] Lawrence Abu Hamdan for Air Pressure and I was almost not going to go,” he shares with The New Arab.
“At the end, I went and Lawrence asked me, ‘What’s the thing that’s annoying you the most?’ and I was like, ‘The drone if I could just change its tune, I don’t want to shoot it down, if it has to be there it has to be there if only I could change its tone!’” he continues.
“Then I realised I could do it in a couple of minutes. I didn’t do it for a while and then my neighbour gave me a link to share for donations, but I thought I wouldn’t share anything for donations without giving something back, so I created this sound.”
Mohamed says he wanted to create something relevant to his industry, a sound that musicians and DJs could use. His target, he says, is musicians and DJs abroad because he says in Lebanon, people are helping out with the aftermath of Israel’s attacks more practically on the ground rather than using donation links.
He says bars, clubs, musicians and DJs in Lebanon have been helping those displaced by Israel’s airstrikes; within his circle, the Beirut Synthesizer Center has been fundraising to raise money to buy mattresses and clothes and collaborating with open kitchens to feed displaced people.
More importantly, he hopes whoever downloads and uses his drone sound has fun with it. He jokes that instead of people in Lebanon having to hear the horrid sound of Israeli drones, they can put their earbuds in and listen to his sound instead.
“I think this instrument is for people suffering from this noise,” he laughs. “I want people to have fun with it. And I was like, ‘By the way, if you get a kick out of it, here’s a donation link.’”
I ask him whether, on a deeper level, he views what he has created as an act of resilience, especially given the press around his sound framing it as turning an object of oppression into a sound of resilience. Surprisingly, he doesn’t think so.
“I can’t really class us as resilient anymore. We’re tough, I’ll give you that. We have a sense of humour. Resilience — there needs to be something backing this resilience, and right now, our country is in total division. It’s a miracle we’re not in a civil war. It’s just crisis after crisis. I can’t believe the number of things this country had to endure because of our shortcomings – well, maybe not ours, not the middle class or the poor,” Mohamed says.
“However, reclaiming our skies through initiatives like this, which are funny and straight to the point, is something that I admire about us, and our sense of humour, the way we deal with a disaster that is totally out of our hands. Right now, we’re just making do until there’s a ceasefire and I hope when there is a ceasefire, we at least start becoming resilient again by applying the law, by electing a president, the very minimal minimum of a country, what’s needed for a country to work.”
However, Mohamed is grateful for the amount of press he has had around his drone sound and the overwhelmingly positive response from listeners, including other musicians and DJs, and more notably, Scottish DJ and electronic music artist Steve Goodman, popularly known as Kode9. He says Goodman even mentioned his drone sound in a lecture. The download link has expired and he has had to renew it several times, which Mohamed says is proof it has had traction.
Beirut has always been known as the party capital of the Middle East. But Mohamed says since 7 October 2023, except for the elite, many people in Lebanon have taken a step back from the nightlife scene.
More recently, some clubs and bars have reopened but have either been running fundraiser events, or they have been holding their music events underground, being careful not to flaunt them publicly.
Mohamed moved back to Beirut from Milan two months before 7 October 2023 to rebrand his club The Ballroom Blitz, but after the genocide started, he found himself unable to continue, not out of principle per se, but because it just did not feel right. Instead, he has turned his sights to audio art and sound production.
“I resigned shortly after [7 October 2023] because I wasn’t ready to keep on with the day-to-day of running the club while such a big thing was happening,” he says.
“To run the club, you need to invite DJs and you cannot control the intention of 800 people in the crowd. I wasn’t really comfortable with managing the club, so I stepped away and since then, I’ve played very few times outside the country. Inside the country, I feel like at the moment there’s no place for what I do.”
To download Mohamed Choucair’s drone sound, visit his Instagram profile. If you would like to donate to Dikken Al Mazraa, the open kitchen this sound supports, please click here
Yousra Samir Imran is a British Egyptian writer and author based in Yorkshire. She is the author of Hijab and Red Lipstick, published by Hashtag Press
Follow her on X: @UNDERYOURABAYA
