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In the midst of the struggle for a new Syria, the country’s musicians are eyeing the Islamist rebel leadership warily and hoping to build on the gains made during the nearly 14-year civil war.
The conflict energized and focused the nascent heavy metal scene.
When the fighting stopped, a thriving electronic music and dance show industry emerged from the ashes, leading to a resurgence of Syrian nightlife.
Its members are now preparing to turn to the government led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, a group with roots in al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.
“We have to be organized before we go to them because they are so organized,” said DJ and musician Maher Green. “We are ready to talk to them with logic. We are ready to talk to them with a real offer.”
Electronic music organizers found a way to talk to the security services working for the former president, Green said.
“They didn’t realize that 50 boys and girls had gathered and were dancing so stupidly,” he said. “We have built a relationship with them over the years to do this in a good and peaceful way.”
The Assad regime was less tolerant of heavy metal rockers who formed underground bands in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
They saw it as a subversive Western subculture associated with Satanism.
“I’ve gone to the intelligence agency maybe three times just because I was selling this kind of music,” said Nael al-Hadidi, a music store owner. “I was forced to sign some papers that I will not do this again.”
When the brutal suppression of the democratic revolution in Syria sparked a bloody civil war, the focus shifted.
“Before the war, even if you grew your hair long, wore black T-shirts, metallic dance T-shirts, you were taken away by security. They suspected you were a Satanist or something,” al-Khadidi said.
“After the war started, they were too busy to dig like that. They were more afraid of political things.”
This paved the way for the emergence of a vibrant heavy metal scene, the subject of Montzer Darwish’s documentary Syrian Metal is War.
The war may have energized metal bands, but it ultimately led to a mass exodus of musicians who felt the country no longer had a future.
“Ninety percent of my friends are now in Europe, the Netherlands and Germany,” al-Khadidi shook his head.
Vide Hair is a musician who stayed but quit music in 2011 when the killing began.
“It seemed that whatever lyrics I would write, they would not express what really happened, no words could express what was happening then,” he told me.
It was only last year that Khair finally started playing and recording again. Now he wonders what Islamist leadership means for creative freedom.
“We have to be bolder,” he said when asked if he would hold back until the situation was clearer.
“We should be heard. We have to let all the people know that we are here. We exist. It is not only the “Islamic Front” and the “Islamic State”. I don’t think it’s good for anyone to be reticent under these circumstances. .”
Khair was encouraged by the pragmatism shown in the days following the rebel takeover. “The indicators are such that we are hopefully on the way to the best,” he said.
But while he was talking, we heard that VTS had closed the Opera House. “Bad omen,” if true, exclaimed Khair.
We rushed to the site, but officials outside said it was a false alarm, that the venerable institution would reopen a week after the rebels’ victory, along with other public buildings.
HTS certainly promises to respect rights and freedoms, declaring that it has long since broken with its extremist past.
This seems sensitive to the cosmopolitan culture of Damascus. State television began broadcasting Islamic chants last week, but stopped them less than 24 hours later as social media exploded with protests.
On the square near the Opera House, Safana Baklekh tried to perform revolutionary songs with the choir she directs. Joining the enthusiastic youth, she handed over her drum and let them chant and sing.
“It may not be an easy road,” she said. “Maybe we will have new obstacles, but before we had corruption, there was a dictatorship, there was a secret police. We are still very hopeful for the future… because we have a very, very large group of people, the opposition, artists and actors, musicians and composers and the future of Syria.”
But they don’t want to trade political authoritarianism for religious fundamentalism, al-Khadidi said.
“I hope HTS lives up to its words of freedom because we don’t want to be another Afghanistan or another country ruled by a certain party or rulers who force (follow) some rules.”
Determined to remain a part of Syria’s future, Green said it’s important for the arts community to act quickly.
“It does not seem that in the first week after the liberation of Syria (HTS) is ready to look for the cultural side. They have many problems, they are looking for the economy, they are looking for the creation of a new government,” he said.
“We’re trying to get organized before they start looking at the culture. That we get there first, (and we must be) united in our opinions.”
Like others here, Green experimented by mixing traditional Arabic music with electronic beats.
The culture of Islamist insurgents “is religious songs and that’s it,” he said.
“It’s a little bit backwards for us. We were here in Syria before the war and inside during the war, (when) we had so many experiments. We have evolved so much. We have so much mixed culture.”
The Syrian music scene, which had recovered and even flourished during the civil war, now faced a new and unexpected challenge.