September 01, 2008.
A new hero for the indie-rock fans in the JO office, Tamer Abu Ghazaleh wants to be the Professor Harold Hill of Middle Eastern alternative music. His message: stop making records that suck.
Words by Lina Ejeilat
Tamer Abu Ghazaleh: Mr. Alternative. (Joseph Zakarian)
"HAD NO MORE ENERGY to write music, when all my tunes just get tucked away in a drawer,” says Tamer Abu Ghazaleh. So, he explains, he started Ekaa': a new regional production and distribution company for alternative art and music.
“What is going to distinguish this effort is the marketing strategy,” he says.
The reason Arabic alternative has never taken off, he believes, is that mainstream producers always interfere in the music, adding elements that make it sound like Arabic pop—pretty much the kiss of death for a generation that grew up on Um Kulthoum mixed with Nirvana.
“Many artists prefer doing the production on their own, and then giving someone a distribution deal,” he says. “Probably because they don’t believe they’ll find someone who’d produce their work exactly the way they want.”
With producers out of the picture, most of the support for alternative music comes from NGOs or European Cultural Centers, Tamer says. But while they've done a lot to help the alternative scene grow—think of Amman's French Cultural Center's summer concerts, or American Embassy's music diplomacy initiatives—they don’t think of the business side of it.
“Of course it’s a business,” he says. “And we want to create a mindset for the artists themselves that they’re conducting business.”
“There’s definitely a niche for this music, and every niche has its size,” he says. If only one percent of the Middle East is into alternative music, he points out, that's still 2.4 million people.
“It’s a big fat niche!”
Tamer grew up in Egypt; his mother was a Palestinian activist who founded and organized the Abbad Al-Shams Choir, a youth music group that performed actively.
“She’d take me along to rehearsals, and since I learned how to walk, I started hopping on stage with the group,” says Tamer. “Every time I saw an instrument I’d want to learn how to play it, until I settled mainly on Oud.”
When the family returned to Ramallah in 1998, Tamer continued to study music intensively under Khaled Jubran, and went on to work with musicians from all over the region on different projects. He also worked at the Al-Urmawi Center for Mashreq Music—a Cairo-based NGO that does productions, workshops and projects related to alternative music.
To start Ekaa', Tamer drew on his personal savings while finding investors and sponsors. So far, he says, he's built a small team, all artists, musicians or painters themselves, working locally in Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and Dubai.
“All of us are trying to do something in the non-mainstream scene,” says Tamer, “and all of us would die to see it larger than it is now.”
Ekaa''s status might best be called shuttle diplomacy: Tamer is based in Dubai but spends his time flying between Amman, Cairo, Ramallah, Damascus, and Beirut, meeting with artists and signing them up. His first challenge is gaining their trust.
“Our challenge is getting this first trial phase done so that we can get the skeptic thinking out of the way,” he says. He's already signed a few bands in the region to produce albums, and got distribution deals for several others.
He has no dwwwoubt that alt rock can eventually become as much a part of the mainstream in the Middle East as it is in Europe or North America.
“People don’t have one taste, they have different tastes,” he says. “But they need to start seeing those different styles and tastes in front of them.”
