MIDDLE EAST PROFILES SERIES – INTERVIEW WITH LEBANON’S ZEID HAMDAN – PART 2

Zeid shares thoughts on the relationship of music and politics in his work.

Althea Middleton-Detzner and Cassie Balfour of The International Center on Nonviolent Conflict on Zeid Hamdan’s song ‘General Suleiman’

“Put Your Weapons Down” by Cassie Balfour and Althea Middleton-Detzner 

Zeid Hamdan’s song “General Suleiman” illustrates how music can serve as an amplifier for civil resistance, an avenue through which messages of peace, unity, freedom from corruption and violence, can be communicated to a wider audience. In this case, the messages are embodied in a fun and lively children’s song that serves to plant the ideas of a nonviolent alternative in the minds of Lebanese youth.

From a civil resistance perspective, “General Suleiman” articulates a new “vision of tomorrow” for post-civil war Lebanon. The vision is of a Lebanon led by a Peace General, Suleiman who kicks out all of the warlords, militia men, weapons dealers, corrupt politicians, troublemakers, foreign intelligences, telling them to, “Go Home!” thereby clearing Lebanon from the influencers of civil war to create a place where, “everything is fine, and there’ll be no crime.”

The vision that Hamdan sings about in “General Suleiman” is not far from the truth. General Suleiman is not a fictitious character in a children’s song but a Commander in the Lebanese Armed Forces who played an essential role in the peace agreement process at the end of the civil war. Having garnered the support of both government loyalists and the opposition, Suleiman was elected President in 2008 where he still serves today.

“General Suleiman” is a song that urges the Suleiman to shed his military background and become the President, leaving behind his position as the commander of the armed forces. In an interview published in Mashallah News, Hamdan describes his thinking in writing the song, “the song is making a parallel between African nations, where armies have accessed power through using weapons, and Lebanon, where the military man, General Suleiman, in fact was the one who didn’t resort to weapons when he handled two rival factions.”

For writing this fun, upbeat, humorous song about a “Peace General” that later happened to become President, Hamdan was detained. “They put me in jail for like 8 hours, there was such a big fuss on the Internet worldwide that the government and presidential guys they didn’t want this publicity. It wasn’t worth it. This song is so stupid and harmless it wasn’t worth the bad publicity the country had.”

At the time, insulting the President was against the law, a punishable crime. But the fact that “General Suleiman” is a “silly,” fun song set to a reggae inspired beat allowed Hamdan plausible deniability. How could he be arrested for a children’s song? Apparently, a large swath of netizans agreed.

Just because General Suleiman isn’t a serious song doesn’t mean we should devalue its power to create an impact. The government certainly didn’t. Arresting Hamdan for writing this little ditty proved that the Lebanese government was fearful his song would cause people to question the current regime. After Hamdan’s friends utilized the web to draw attention to his arrest, other Lebanese citizens joined the call for Hamdan’s release, and people all over the globe expressed their concern with a regime threatened by a children’s song.

This worldwide petition communicated to the rest of the world that Lebanon’s government was fearful, reactionary, intolerant of free speech, and lacking a sense of humor. For governments that want to maintain (if even just a façade of) a democracy, global scrutiny poses a dilemma. Allow the “silly” song to stand and risk public defamation of the President, or continue to detain a popular musician whose fun-loving song is adored by the masses? Internet petitions aren’t always effective in raising global awareness or creating political pressure, and “shaming” governments doesn’t always work either. But in this case, when Facebook groups were leading to write-ups in the BBC, a President trying to maintain a moderate image in the immensely diverse Lebanon didn’t want the reputation of being a ham-fisted ruler.

Hamdan adds, “at the time when I wrote the song, there were no revolutions. The Arab world was still asleep. Today, it’s totally different. And the trend is, that every time the military sides with the revolutionaries, the revolution succeeds. Then we have another very difficult problem: for the army to accept handing power back to society. The military never wants to do this. They want to keep control. They get drunk with the power. Therefore, my song is more essential than ever.”

Cassie Balfour is a recent graduate of the University of Michigan and an Editorial Assistant at ICNC. She had the opportunity to study and intern in Cairo, Egypt in 2012 where she witnessed first-hand how art was leveraged to create meaningful social change.

Althea Middleton-Detzner is Senior Advisor, Education and Field Learning at International Center on Nonviolent Conflict where she has worked on core programmatic and educational initiatives for almost eight years. She is also a consultant in the field of civil resistance, has a background in music, and believes in the power of story-telling and the arts to create social change.

follow Althea on Facebook or Twitter.

Executive Producers: Maziar Bahari, Daryn Cambridge, Tim O’Keefe
Produced by Jahanshah Javid
Directed by Tim O’Keefe, Arash Sobhani, Irene Su
Edited by Irene Su
Interviews by Jahanshah Javid, Arash Sobhani
Camera & Sound by Mohammad Talani, Jahanshah Javid
Freedom Beat logo animation by Sang Un Jeon
Freedom Beat Middle East Series animation by Beth Wexler
Music by Tim O’Keefe

Special thanks to Iranwire.com and The International Center on Nonviolent Conflict for their support & collaboration in the making of this series.