Psychedelic rising in LEBANON
Well here we are now, Lebanon is entering the very private club of the psychedelic scene. After long years of war, the future generation is seeking for freedom, peace, love, unity and respect. Our country hosts so many beautiful locations that the parties are always a blast in terms of psychedelic experiences.
Trance parties in Lebanon started nearly around 1995-96 with couple of DJ’s from Finland. They brought the spirit of raves by raising underground events in places like parking areas, buildings destroyed from the war or beaches. At that time we used to be a few hundreds of people attending those gigs. The atmosphere was very exciting and people were all united. We have had a few police raids since those days, but the events are usually safe as long as you behave respectfully.
In the year 2000, a Lebanese organisation was born: The Bug System (Beirut Underground). Formed by Stamina, Kaa, Nandi & Nami as DJ’s & VJ’s, the Wild Imo as organiser and A&R. They organise around two events each year and always manage to transform the venues into a special onirik world. Recently a new crew called Psycult started gathering psychedelic artists and organising events with the collaboration of Bug System’s DJ’s. The average of people that attend those parties our days are around a thousand at its best which is a lot for a country with three million inhabitants. New Lebanese talents are emerging and we have all the inspiration inside our country to make a perfect psychedelic event, from deco designers to jugglers and fire performances. Very promising new DJ Gunther is focusing on music production with Stamina and they are both very active in developing the scene in our country.
The Art lounge in Bourj Hammoud is a nice place where you might meet psyfreaks and party-lovers. I advice you to visit the downtown of Beirut also, more precisely the Monot street, where the Lebanese jet set get warmed up for the night! The B018 is one of the clubs hosting psychedelic parties in Beirut. It’s famous for its opening roof that exposes the club to the world above and reveals the cityscape. There is also the X-OM club in Sin-el-Fil, a slick-looking-darkish venue with a lounge area.
The United Nations got interested in the scene by raising the »Dance mine action« party in November. The goal was to raise money to help Lebanon to get rid of its 500,000 remaining landmines. The humanitarian organization contacted Psycult and the group »Lebanese ravers« to help them organizing this event. More recently the Lebanese ravers group had a workshop at the Art lounge entitled: Understanding electronic music. They developed subjects such as the psychedelic music and goa trance, DJing techniques and production in music. The people are eager to learn more, and the scene is counting new psyfreaks every day.
With so many different initiatives, I think I’m not taking a big risk by saying that Lebanon has a very promising future. There haven’t been any big names from the psychedelic scene playing in our country yet, but it will happen soon that’s for sure!
Facts
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The native language in Lebanon is Arabic of course but the average Lebanese is often fluent in English or French. Also many well educated Lebanese are tri-lingual.
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Visitors must have a valid passport and a visa. Visas are delivered by Lebanese diplomatic missions abroad. Tourists from the US and many Arab and European countries can obtain visas at the airport or any Lebanese border upon arrival.
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The official currency of Lebanon (Lebanese Pound) is pegged to the US dollar at approximately 1520 LBP to the dollar.
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The temperatures in Beirut start from 13.4 °C (average centigrade) in January until 27 °C in August.
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Lebanese time is G.M.T plus two hours in winter and three in summer.
Links
Contacts
Text
Kaa
 djkaa@hotmail.com
Music producer, graphic designer, DJ & VJ for Exposure productions. He is one the first artists to offer a live performance of DJ & VJ, which is the DVJ’ing.
“Watch the music, hear the visions”
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photos by Kaya & Kaa
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