27 August 2011

BEIRUT: During its three-day street festival, Hamra will be traffic (and car-horn) free and redolent with Lebanese apples.

“Maraya 2011, Hamra Streets Festival,” as the rebooted Hamra Festival has been called, will, from Aug. 30 to Sept. 1 host handicrafts stands, concerts, contests and other activities designed to highlight Hamra’s reputation as a boisterous commercial and cultural center.

To facilitate all this, cars will be banned from a strip of Hamra Street, and some of its side streets that people have come to regard as “Hamra.”

The object is to create a dynamic carnival atmosphere to encourage pedestrians to enter boutiques they wouldn’t have even noticed if they were in their cars en route to a bar, yelling at the taxi that’s unpredictably stopped in front of them.

This is the second edition of Maraya and the first time to be centered on the theme of apples.

Hamra’s streets will be stocked with red, green and yellow apples – fake and real – in order to demonstrate the country’s agricultural breadth.

It’s hoped that, with this theme, the festival will link the “urban and rural landscape, coast and mountain,” and give Hamra an ambiance that would usually be associated with European market and fair towns, with craftsmen and farmers coming to pitch and sell their produce.

Starting 5 p.m., a range of local and international acts will perform in front of the Estral Center – which in the last couple of years has become one of the neighborhood’s bar micro-hubs.

On day one, the Red Herrings, a young five-man jazz band out of Kent in the U.K., will take to the Estral’s bandstand with their interpretations of jazz oldies.

As the schedule stands right now, the first day of concerts will close with Australia’s renowned country-rock band The Flying Circus, who promise to interpret such best-loved hits as “Hayride,” “Ballad of Sacred Falls” or “Maple Lady,” all from 1972.

No Lebanese festival would be truly Lebanese without local artists, of course, and on day 2 Beirut rapper-twins Ashekman will bring their brand of locally inflected hip hop to the Hamra audience. Also known for their urban street art and clothing line, the Kabbani brothers will fill the air with wartime reminiscences and their views on the state of Lebanese society in an up-beat and energetic flow of lyrics.

Beirut’s Banana Cognacs promise to electrify the crowd with their funk and blues, combined, as their Facebook page would have it, with “hip hop pitch.”

What makes Maraya 2011 different from most of Lebanon’s other entertainment festivals is its interest in creating green areas – the green theme having also been pressed into the service of the Fete de la Musique back in June.

In collaboration with the Beirut Municipality, AUB and other sponsors, this year’s festival will, according to Maraya 2011’s pres release, “allocate space and funds in order to add to Beirut these valuable needed green areas and spots.”

During these few days, Maraya will hold a contest for the best-designed bench. The lucky winner will walk away with a pair of tickets to Paris or Rome, complements of Middle East Airlines, thereby reducing his or her carbon footprint in Beirut.

With this wide and diverse program, Maraya 2011 festival expects to attract over 200,000 people during these three days, whether it be families, tourists or students. It promises to be an entertaining way to enjoy Lebanon’s multiple identities.

“Maraya 2011, Hamra Streets Festival” will begin on Aug. 30 at 11 a.m. until Sept. 1. For more information please call 70-502-370 or visit their Facebook page.

Copyright The Daily Star 2011.