Ibrahim Maalouf, Jazz from Lebanon

Trumpeter Ibrahim Maalouf performed at Make Music New York, the New York version of the Fete de la Musique initiated by Jack Lang. He played “Beirut “accompanied by a single guitar and then performed later on the same song with his band at Drom. You listen to Beirut and you see in front of your eyes unraveling the story that the singer depicts: himself at 12, going back to Lebanon ( his family fled with the war) expecting to find images he had seen on TV and not seeing major scenes of destruction until walking alone a few blocks in the city, he by inadvertence peeks in a street to see a building crumbling in smoke. It had happened not long before. The boy sat in the street and cried. It is all there in the long a long poem on the sadness that arises from destruction and loss and yet the revival of life taking over. It is just beautiful.