«The space of the dance floor became a site of communitas, a place for boundaries to be pushed, and limits to be broken.»
This quote is from the article «We Want More Britney! A Dance Party in Pre–COVID-19» by Rabea Hajaig. The article is part of the virtual exhibition «Norient City Sounds: Beirut» curated and edited by Rayya Badran.
Published on August 25, 2022
Last updated on August 25, 2022
Like several landmarks of Beirut’s nightlife, Bardo did not survive the brutal financial and economic crises that have struck Lebanon since 2019. Its Friday nights were especially famous for their buoyant energy. Rabea Hajaig, who regularly DJed on Friday nights, gives readers an insight into his role as dancefloor firestarter and the often thorny terrain that came with it.
Being recognized as queer in Lebanon can disturb connections with communities that would otherwise be embracing and safe. Spaces that welcome non-normative others into their midst while acknowledging their differences are rare. These include the homes of supportive families, a handful of NGOs, and a few commercial venues such as Bardo1, whose defunct website once declared, «Everyone is welcome at Bardo … We believe in love».
Situated in an affluent neighborhood, Bardo was a quiet Buddhist-themed restaurant by day and a makeshift dance club by night before it shut down in 2021 after the country’s economic collapse. The segmented space – which, according to a former owner’s son, was once part of a restaurant established by a Jewish couple from Germany during the Second World War – blended contemporary design, ornate tiles, massive light globes, and a golden ceiling. After nightfall, the lights would be dimmed, and young, often queer, music selectors with laptops and auxiliary cables replaced the gentle background jazz and pop playlists.
On weekends Bardo filled up with well-dressed and mostly young male partygoers, allowing for new connections to be made and contributing to the alleviation of queer isolation. To make the venue more inclusive, the management did not enforce a cover charge or bouncer policy, setting it apart from other nightclubs in Beirut.
Navigating the Dancefloor
As the resident Friday night DJ for many years, I aimed for a soundscape that was equal parts cool, sexy, and camp, conscious that the music played there would be galvanizing new affirmative life configurations. I tried to make my sets eclectic, mixing mainstream pop with a wide range of tracks from diverse eras, negotiating between the chart music expected by the crowd and the artists from independent labels and alternative music which I was excited to share. I imagined that the latter would resonate with those who felt alienated or different, but no matter how danceable these tracks were, they were often ill received; moving bodies would lose momentum, glare at me and wander off.
With time, my repertoire evolved to include disco, pop, and hip hop tracks situated somewhere between the hegemonic imaginary of music suitable for queer social spaces (congruent with the sound of mainstream gay bars in the Anglosphere, with some kitsch Arabic pop thrown in) and what I wanted to play.
I saved my crate-digging findings for early in the evening while people dined, and as the night progressed, I deployed raunchy tracks by female artists like Nicki Minaj or Azealia Banks, to draw the younger crowd onto the dance floor and pave the way for hesitant others to join. Transitioning from Beyoncé to a risqué Lebanese pop diva (the kind that challenges local notions of good taste), would shift and expand the energy of the room; the more daring would jump onto tabletops to belly-dance as others whooped and whistled. An eruption of intense celebration animated by some unspoken mutual understanding. It was as if these tracks acknowledged and reinforced something about what they were and could be.
When I got it just right, it felt transcendent: DJ, writhing bodies, and throbbing music merging in a joyous abandon in the smoke-filled room. The space of the dance floor became a site of communitas, a place for boundaries to be pushed, limits to be broken. As Lebanon continues to sink into economic and political uncertainty, respite from an increasingly constraining reality is harder to access for everyone across the board.
For the LGBTQ+ community, the closure of Bardo means that dance floors once available for creating alternative socialities, experimenting with gender and self-expression, and finding sanctuary from an oppressively heteronormative world are much narrower, leaving queer folk with one less space that anchors and extends them in the world, when it is needed the most.
This article is part of the virtual exhibition «Norient City Sounds: Beirut» curated and edited by Rayya Badran.
Published on August 25, 2022
Last updated on December 18, 2023
The Indonesian summer is very hot. It’s when our writer usually shelters at home listening to music, only to realize that the state between slumber and consciousness can not be as innocent as it used to be.
One sunny day in July 2022, I woke up from a siesta with a foggy head. A dainty piano solo filled the hot air with the beauty of a swan gliding on a clear lake, followed by a weeping sound of cor anglais – an obscure choice of woodwind oboe. Then, Chrisye’s vocals entered. Soothing, cold, and clear like a flow of ice water dripped onto my forehead. The song enveloped me like a layer of sonic cocoon. My body: comfortable and unmovable in bed. My head: wrapped in transcendence.
The song «Sendiri» was released in 1984. Indonesia had never heard music like that before. It consists of only two instruments and one male vocal, arranged by an ambitious, young composer named Addie MS. Besides its status as a song that single-handedly lifted the benchmark of Indonesia’s pop music, «Sendiri» also has passed the test of time and still is one of the best local masterpieces today.
The song opens a playlist on my Spotify, Road Trip With Parents, which contains mostly Indonesian old songs my mom and dad used to play in our family stereo. It’s actually a playlist I made especially for lazy days like that, because I love the heavy sensation of nostalgia while having my head wrapped in the tranquility of a fresh nap in the middle of a very hot day.
Between Cradle and Deathbed
Laying there in the twilight between slumber and consciousness in the peak of a tropical heatwave, the stream of the elegant track brought me back to a specific point in time and space when I occupied the most comfortable state of my life. Between the dreamy three-minute-window, I was again just a baby and had just woken up from a comfortable drowsiness in a cradle.
Sound is such a powerful time machine.
July in Indonesia is the dry season, when we enjoy – or rather, suffer – from excessive sunshine. People would shelter at home, while children could be found running topless flying kites at clearings.
Meanwhile, I personally love the heatwave. I love playing my oldies on the loop, sitting on the balcony, sipping my iced milk coffee with brown sugar. I love it when it becomes too hot outside and I come back inside to lay down in my frameless bed and fall into a little nap. I will wake up 30 minutes later drenched in healthy sweat, welcoming consciousness in the constant loop of my comfortable songs.
I heard that Europe in the summer of 2022 was hit by a powerful heatwave, something that maybe I have learned to love all of my 30-odd year life. As a person living in a tropical country with a ridiculous rate of deforestation, I will be among those who are the first to be killed at the dawn of the apocalypse. I’m sure on one especially hot day like this, my iced coffee will become runny and Chrisye’s mellow favorites will serenade me to a sleepy death.
«Sonic Worlding» is a monthly Norient column. It invites writers and artists from all over the world to to think and speculate with and not only about music. Where most music writing treats music as something that can be categorised and placed in pre-determined boxes (personality cults, end-of-year lists, genres, origins, styles), «Sonic Worlding» is interested in the vast potential of rhythms, ideas, and worlds that are still to be unlocked, attempting to spin new webs of thought spanning the globe. Edited & curated by Norient editor Philipp Rhensius.
Published on August 11, 2022
Last updated on April 09, 2024
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