Naturally, the name of the trumpet player, comic book and visual artist Mazen Kerbaj, who belongs with Sharif Sehnaoui among the main initiators of the scene, will not be lost on the list of performers who are going to appear in Prague this April and May. Kerbaj was born in 1975 in Beirut. He studied graphic arts and advertising with special focus on illustration at the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts. During his studies, Kerbaj discovered the mesmerizing world of comic books and started contributing to various magazines. It was in this medium that Kerbaj found the perfect outlet for his playful and insidiously provocative style. To this day, he has had 15 books published and has contributed to dozens of magazines and newspapers. Nevertheless, he captured the world’s attention mainly with his blog, which he tirelessly updated during the “Summer War” of 2006 when Beirut was declared a war zone and was repeatedly bombed. Unlike most Beirutians, who fled to the mountains, Kerbaj decided to stay in the city and reflect on the events of his immediate surroundings through art. As far as music goes, Kerbaj grew up mainly on rock. He experienced his first encounter with a musical instrument when he was 18 and his friend Sharif Sehnaoui gave him a used trumpet. Initially, Kerbaj attended lessons, but he soon dropped them and decided to explore the instrument on his own. After Sharif brought him a couple of Pharaoh Sanders and Evan Parker CDs from France, Kerbaj fell for the intoxicating temptations of unrestrained play and started to experiment with various non-idiomatic improvisation techniques and trumpet preparations. The Birth of a Scene Kerbaj has never been afraid to seize the opportunity to upset the conventional perception, be it in music or in visual art. In an interview with the Dallas Observer, he recalls that when he started playing free jazz in bars, the listeners were certainly not prepared to indulge in that sort of music production: “Five people would stay and three of them were insulting us.” No wonder there was a scarcity of musicians to play with in this kind of atmosphere; and so Kerbaj often performed alone, experimenting and refining his musical language. However, at the beginning of the millennium things started to pick up speed. In 2000, Kerbaj performed with Christine Abdelnour a concert at The Strike’s, which was deemed to be the first freely improvised concert in the Middle East. What started as a modest night of three performances turned in just one year into an international free improvisation festival, Irtijal, which became a meeting place for musicians from both the east and the west. In 2004, with Sharif Sehnaoui, Kerbaj founded Al Maslakh, a label devoted to mapping free improvisation activities in the area and to musical collaborations between artists from the Middle East and the rest of the world. In 2009, the label was expanded with a sublabel, Johnny Kafta’s Kids Menu, which attempts to promote Lebanese electronic music and experimental and alternative rock. Kerbaj has been equally active in scaling new horizons in his recordings, be it on his solo album Starry Night, recorded on a balcony during a bombing run, in the vibrant improvisations of the “A” Trio, the eruptive and persuasive collaborative efforts of Scrambled Eggs, or in the percussively-driven music of Rouba3i. Play! One phenomenon that seems to play a fundamental role in Kerbaj’s music and visual art alike (and to a greater or lesser degree in improvisation in general) is play. This is by no means “play” in the mimetic sense, whose aim would consist of imitation, but play whose essence is deeply rooted in exploration, experimentation, and the discovery of new contexts. For Jacques Derrida, play is a denial of stasis—it is a practice in which codes, structures, and meanings are scrambled together (just think of Scrambled Eggs) to establish a new set of relations within a system and shed new light on reality. What is most fascinating about this restructuring is that a mere alteration of one component of the system fundamentally changes the entire system. Every game rests on rules, but as we all know, sometimes rules can be bent or adapted to expose new contexts or for the sake of greater freedom. Rugby would have never been invented if the rules of football were not contested on a football field in Scotland when a player seized the ball in his hands and ran towards the opponent’s goal. In a similar way is Kerbaj open to surpassing the rules of the game in both music and visual art—he dares to subject even his own work to self-reflection and meddles with the rules of his own game and rearranges them. Brt Vrt Zrt Krt—words whose purpose consists exclusively in the sheer pleasure of their sound when they are pronounced—was chosen by Kerbaj as the name of his 2005 debut solo album and probably best captures his creative approaches and visions. Each improvisation on the album is guided by an effort to reach a unique sound expression and employs a different technique and instrument preparation. By means of a circular breathing technique, Kerbaj brings to life an almost seamless stream of sound that always varies depending on the chosen mode of preparation. One of Kerbaj’s distinct sound expressions resembles the gurgling of the hookah, another is more akin to the rhythmical hum of a diesel engine, and yet another reminds one of a bird’s twitter. As monothematic as each track may appear, in its entirety the album is an exceptionally varied showcase of unconventional and innovative playing styles. WARRR!!!! Kerbaj grew up during the civil war in Lebanon, and military conflict therefore became an everyday reality for him. The explosion of a bomb was merely one of numerous visual and sonic occurrences he would be exposed to in the course of everyday life. Surprisingly, according to Kerbaj, Beirut has never been as quiet as it was during the Summer War in 2006. “It was probably the first time we could hear birds and cicadas sing in the city,” he recalls. Recorded amidst an Israeli air strike during the 2006 war, Starry Night is an unprecedented act situated on the boundary of musical performance and sound documentary, featuring a peculiar superimposition of Kerbaj’s signature trumpet sounds and bomb blasts against the backdrop of the downcast soundscape of Beirut under attack. Each bomb explosion raises a massive wave of sound that spreads through the city, echoes off the buildings, and triggers other sounds such as dog barks and car alarm wails. Giving credit to Israeli planes as the “performers” of bombs, Kerbaj ironically underlines the sonic power of destructive war machinery and simultaneously confronts it in dialogue with a creative process. Projects Enumerating all of Kerbaj’s musical activities and collaborations would call for an article of its own. In Wormholes, a duo with Sehnaoui, Kerbaj sometimes plays the trumpet, but more often he can be seen drawing with a wide array of inks, paints, solvents, and other objects on an illuminated glass panel which is projected on a screen. Accompanied by Sehnaoui’s soothing percussive playing style on the guitar, Kerbaj creates outlandish microstories whose subject matter revolves around the very performance in progress. In “A” Trio, Kerbaj is joined again by Sehnaoui on prepared guitar and by yet another distinct Lebanese musician and visual artist, Raed Yassin, who plays the double bass and enriches the sound of the trio with his voice. Improvisations by the trio either build up a saturated melange of captivating sounds or float on a repetitive motif or loop in the background, on top of which unpredictable rhythmical and sound structures are created. Another formation in which Kerbaj can be heard is the punk-rock outfit Scrambled Eggs, composed of Charbel Haber on electric guitar and electronics, Tony Elieh on electric bass, and Malek Rizkallah on drums. Scrambled Eggs, some of whose wildly resounding recordings may vaguely remind one of the Swedish punk-jazz trio Fire!, already represent a cult article in the Lebanese punk scene. Their sound profits from a strongly distorted guitar, throbbing drum beats, effortless bass line, and occasionally deployed vocals and electronics. Nevertheless, each player is also capable of restraining his impulses and partaking in a mutual cooperation that is guided by sound associations rather than by an effort to rise to the same noise level of one’s co-players. In Rouba3i, Kerbaj teams up again with his old-time companions from Lebanon, Sehnaoui on guitar and Abdelnour on alto saxophone, along with a changing guest percussionist. The first one to perform with them was Lê Quan Ninh, whose name can also be found on this year’s festival program. The performance of the fifth incarnation of the quartet, with Norwegian percussionist Ingar Zach, was the first one to be recorded and was released by Al Maslakh as Rouba3i5. On 29 April at Studio Alta in Prague, Kerbaj will perform in a trio with Rouba3i, joined by drummer Tony Buck from the trance-inducing Australian improvisation trio The Necks. In addition to this performance, Kerbaj will play a solo concert on the following day, 30 April, and will also present artworks that will be made especially for the occasion of the festival.

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Cover photo: Entre soleil et lune (Between Sun and Moon) by L. Ghorayeb & M. Kerbaj. 2010, China ink and acrylique on craft paper reinforced on wood. Martin Lauer is a translator, music critic, and musician whose major interests revolve around improvisation, soundscape design, electroacoustic music, and literature. He was a member of the free improvisation quintet The Pololáníks and currently plays upright and electric bass in the band Syndicate, which explores interactions between improvisation and tightly-knit composition.