13 February 2007

Interview

BYBLOS: If Asterix and Obelix played jazz harp, they wouldn't trump Marie Jan or her self-described bomb-repelling tunes. Plucking soft blues and glitzy jazz tunes from her harp, the French musician has attracted a Lebanese following through a month's worth of performances at Byblos' Cafe E.

Alice Edde first contacted Jan back in June to play a wedding at the Edde Sands beach club in Byblos. Jan confirmed in October, four months too late. Edde was shocked to hear that Jan still wanted to come play at a time when escape routes out of Lebanon are more popular than vacations into the country.

"I was absolutely not nervous about coming," says Jan. "When you play a peaceful instrument, you are protected. When you play beautiful harp notes, they float to repel the bombs!" she adds, bursting into one of her many gales of laughter.

But Jan hatched even more plans when she realized that she was one of very few harpists in Lebanon.

"She was only supposed to stay for one month and when she came she said she had to play a peace concert or her trip would be useless," Edde recalls.

Jan considers herself a hip harpist who strings out tunes for the purpose of music therapy. Part of a peace movement in her native province of Brittany, she says music can help bring Lebanese together and ease their fears and frustration.

"A musician is like a sponge. We absorb all the emotions the audience throws out. If you feel sadness or despair from the audience, you have to play harder to act as a counter-balance," Jan says. "I read the papers. I know the country is in turmoil. But I'm a musician before a politician. Harp is soothing peaceful music and the Lebanese need to be soothed now."

On Friday night, Jan played a concert for a packed house in the 900-year-old St. Jean-Marc Church, in the old city of Byblos. She shuttled between a Celtic harp and a concert harp, and covered blues, jazz and traditional Celtic music. Throughout the evening, she performed a combination of her own pieces and those of other composers.

Wearing a loud red dress, Jan plucked the many strings of her harp while sitting on a makeshift stage - an altar. Jazz harp does not carry the distinct tones of more typical jazz instruments such as the saxophone. Instead the notes pour from the harp and reverberate until the stings are steadied. Among the audience on Friday, priests closed their eyes and gently nodded their heads to her melodies, and the audience clapped fervently after each song.

"Lebanese audiences listen with children's ears. They are eager to hear a new instrument," says Jan. "You feel that Lebanese audiences ... are more straightforward with their feelings and what they want to hear rather than stiff French audiences. You see that they feel touched by the music."

Outside the church, on the narrow, cobble-stoned streets of Byblos' old souk, locals greet her with admiration as she walks by. Melodic vibrations have been cascading from her harp here for the past month.

"I was in [a bakery] the other day and a 2-year-old girl recognized me as 'the harpist,'" recalls Jan. "Now when I see her at Cafe E, I play her a lullaby."

Jan does not stifle her jazz panache for different cultural styles, but rather weaves them all together. She says she listened to Rabih Abu Khalil's music before she arrived in Lebanon. Now she says she wants to meet prominent oud player Charbel Rouhana to discuss a possible collaboration.

Edde says she hopes the harp will catch on in Lebanon, especially after the enthusiasm of Jan's audiences.

"It's a matter of enough little girls being touched by the harp and asking their moms for lessons," Edde says. "When that happens, I will contact a music school to see about setting something up here. Children always gather around Jan in amazement. The harp touches a cord."