Category Archives: Blog

A deadly bomb exploded this morning in the southern suburbs of Beirut not far from the site of the January 2nd bombing. The Red Cross is reporting that four people have been killed, and 35 injured. Gunshots are currently being heard near the scene of the blast. Sadly, the frequency of bombs here is showing no sign of slowing down. After today’s suicide bombing, Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblatt said, “Lebanon has entered an insane circle, and we expect more bombings in the country.” Video of today’s explosion has already been posted on youtube (below), and Al-Nusra Front has already claimed responsibility for the bombing in a statement. You can follow up-to-the-minute coverage of this morning’s suicide bombing in Beirut here…

As sanctions against Iran begin to ease, many media outlets are designating Iran as the hot new place to be in 2014…

In Martin Luther King’s speech, “Beyond Vietnam: a Time to Break the Silence” (above), he quotes a Vietnamese Buddhist teacher in his denunciation of the Vietnam War:

This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words, and I quote:

Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom, and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism.

When Dr. King nominated Thich Nhat Hanh for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967, he wrote in his letter to the Nobel Committee:

I do not personally know of anyone more worthy of this prize than this gentle monk from Vietnam. He is an Apostle of Peace and Nonviolence. His ideas for peace, if applied, would build a monument to ecumenism, to world brotherhood, to humanity.

The ongoing conversation between these two historic figures about ending the Vietnam War took many forms. While he was in America in 1966, Thich Nhat Hanh strongly encouraged Dr. King to speak out against the war. Previously, on June 1st, 1965, Thich Nhat Nanh had addressed a letter to Dr. King entitled, “In Search of the Enemy of Man.” In his letter to Dr. King, he wrote:

I believe with all my heart that the monks who burned themselves did not aim at the death of the oppressors but only at a change in their policy. Their enemies are not man. They are intolerance, fanaticism, dictatorship, cupidity, hatred and discrimination which lie within the heart of man. I also believe with all my being that the struggle for equality and freedom you lead in Birmingham, Alabama… is not aimed at the whites but only at intolerance, hatred and discrimination. These are real enemies of man — not man himself. In our unfortunate father land we are trying to yield desperately: do not kill man, even in man’s name. Please kill the real enemies of man which are present everywhere, in our very hearts and minds…

Yesterday in a class meeting, a student of mine prayed: “Lord Buddha, help us to be alert to realize that we are not victims of each other. We are victims of our own ignorance and the ignorance of others. Help us to avoid engaging ourselves more in mutual slaughter because of the will of others to power and to predominance.” In writing to you, as a Buddhist, I profess my faith in Love, in Communion and in the World’s Humanists whose thoughts and attitude should be the guide for all human kind in finding who is the real enemy of Man.

When Oprah interviewed Thich Nhat Hanh last year (below), she began the program by mentioning Dr. King’s nomination of Thich Nhat Hanh for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967–though no winner was picked that year. On this anniversary of Dr. King’s birth, it’s worth remembering his warm and revolutionary friendship with Thich Nhat Hanh and other Buddhists in Vietnam…

It is not enough to say we must not wage war.
It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.
We must shift the arms race into the peace race.

— MLK

Most people don’t realize that Martin Luther King journeyed with his wife Coretta to Beirut in 1959. On this day when many people are remembering his life and celebrating his legacy, I’m also thinking about his time here in Beirut…

Over the past few years, there has been a notable increase in the publishing of works by and about Dr. King in Arabic. During the “Arab Spring,” thousands of copies of the Arabic version of “The Montgomery Story,” a comic book about the Montgomery Bus Boycott, were distributed around the Middle East. In 2012, the Global Americana Institute, along with Dar al-Saqi (the leading Arabic publishing house) published Marshall Frady’s biography of Martin Luther King, Jr. in Arabic.

Last year in Beirut, as you can see in the video below, Lebanon joined the world in celebrating the 50th anniversary of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech with a flashmob (to the music of Bob Marley & Michael Jackson) on the Mediterranean (not far from my home). Over forty years ago, MLK traveled to Beirut–and today his memory here lives on…

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just…

— MLK

I attended a film screening tonight of an old friend from Brown, and it was a joy to see him and his work here in Beirut. A 2008 Guggenheim Fellow, Ben has spent the past several months traveling to film festivals around the world to show his new feature film, A Spell to Ward Off The Darkness. The program this evening, however, consisted of short films and videos by both Ben and Basma Alsharif. The diverse landscapes in their work transported us to places like Suriname, Malta, Greece, Palestine, and the Badlands of South Dakota…

Ben Russell (b.1976, USA) is an artist and curator whose films, installations, and performances result in immersive experiences concerned at once with ritual, communal spectatorship and the pursuit of a “psychedelic ethnography.” A 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship and 2010 FIPRESCI award recipient, Ben has had solo screenings and exhibitions at the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Rotterdam Film Festival, the Wexner Center for the Arts, the Viennale, and the Museum of Modern Art. He began the Magic Lantern screening series in Providence, Rhode Island, was co-director of the artist-run space BEN RUSSELL in Chicago, IL, has toured worldwide with film/ video/ performance programs and was named by Cinemascope in 2012 as one of the “50 Best Filmmakers Under 50.” Ben lives between the USA and Europe and is currently calling every new location home.

Many of the questions after tonight’s screening were related to the short film below. The footage for this “psychedelic ethnography” was filmed in Suriname–a place to which Ben has a long and intense connection…

Ben’s new feature film, A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness, is a collaboration with the British filmmaker Ben Rivers. The film was born out of genuine concern for our perilous present. It is a post-existentialist attempt to invoke utopia in the present–a meditation on how to move forward at a time when “things are moving to the dystopic.” The trailer for this new film is below…

A SPELL follows an unnamed character through three seemingly disparate moments in his life. With little explanation, we join him in the midst of a 15-person collective on a small Estonian island; in isolation in the majestic wilderness of Northern Finland; and during a concert as the singer and guitarist of a black metal band in Norway.  Marked by loneliness, ecstatic beauty and an optimism of the darkest sort, A SPELL is a radical proposition for the existence of utopia in the present…an inquiry into transcendence that sees the cinema as a site for transformation.

Because of the collaborative nature of Angklung music, playing promotes cooperation and mutual respect among the players, along with discipline, responsibility, concentration, development of imagination and memory, as well as artistic and musical feelings.

— UNESCO

As a performer of Javanese gamelan music who lives in Beirut, I’ve been dreaming of bringing Indonesian music to Lebanon–but it looks like the Indonesian military beat me to it this past week-end.

On Saturday in southern Lebanon, members of the Indonesian Military (TNI) in the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) played angklung music for an audience of personnel from the French Force Commander Reserve to demonstrate Indonesian music as part of a cross-cultural exchange. Angklung is a musical instrument from Indonesia made from two to four bamboo tubes suspended in a bamboo frame. Because each one produces a single pitch, players must rely on one another to make a melody. In Bali, angklung music is often played for temple anniversaries or in rituals related to death, such as the cremation ceremony (ngaben). In addition to traditional Indonesian music, angklung can be used to play everything from Beethoven to Queen.

In 2010, UNESCO inscribed angklung on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. In the video below, you can see how an angklung is made.

Angklung promotes social harmony, teamwork, and mutual respect. The angklung orchestra, usually made up of twenty players, is considered a symbol of our interdependence, with each instrument making a singular contribution to the beauty of the the greater collective harmony…

The most basic, most rudimentary spiritual need of the Russian people is the need for suffering,
ever-present and unquenchable, everywhere and in everything.

— Dostoyevsky

When I lived in Russia, one of the biggest cultural differences was how Russians tend to respond to the question “How are you?” An Op-Ed today in the NYTimes, on how to answer this seemingly innocuous greeting in Russian, explains the culture clash behind this “simple” question…

Since I spend so much time doing research in Central Asia (and even tonight I’m trying to finish a new chapter on religion in the region), I’ll be disappointed to miss the book talk below, since I’m so far away in Beirut.

Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia’s Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane
Date: Thursday, January 23, 2014
Place: Columbia University
1512 International Affairs Building
(420 West 118th Street)
Time: 5:15 pm – 7:00 pm

In this sweeping and richly illustrated history, S. Frederick Starr tells the fascinating but largely unknown story of Central Asia’s medieval enlightenment through the eventful lives and astonishing accomplishments of its greatest minds–remarkable figures who built a bridge to the modern world. Because nearly all of these figures wrote in Arabic, they were long assumed to have been Arabs. In fact, they were from Central Asia–drawn from the Persianate and Turkic peoples of a region that today extends from Kazakhstan southward through Afghanistan, and from the easternmost province of Iran through Xinjiang, China.

I discovered the secret of the sea
in meditation upon the dewdrop.

— Khalil Gibran

If you’re near Brooklyn this week-end, czech out this year’s Zlatne Uste Golden Festival, hosted by Zlatne Uste Brass Band (featured in the video below). With over 70 bands performing on four stages over two nights, you’ll certainly get a taste of the beauty and richness of Balkan and Roma music and dance…

Trio Kavkasia exuberantly quashes the myth that world music traditions are most authentically represented by indigenous musicians. This threesome hails from North America, but here they render Georgian vocal polyphony’s often weird-sounding harmonies and scale tunings with precision and panache…

— Ethnomusicologist Ted Levin in BBC Music Magazine

If you’ve never heard Georgian music before and you live in New York–you’re in for a real treat.  This week-end, there will be a Georgian polyphany concert on the Upper West Side. The main event will be Trio Kavkasia–putting in a rare NYC appearance to celebrate their 20th anniversary.

Concert Details:

DATE: Sunday, January 19
TIME: 7 p.m.
PLACE: Grace & St. Paul’s Church
123 West 71st Street, Manhattan
$20 suggested donation