A gift of two very different mixes, contributed by artists and musicians in Beirut. A soundtrack of the last 12 years, and this terrible year.

Ziad Nawfal has been recording and releasing music from musicians in and beyond Lebanon since 2008, by way of his label Ruptured and his weekly radio show “Ruptures”. For Time in this Time, he curated his own mini-capsule alongside long-time collaborators, using a combination of existing songs, (in mix #1 The Ruptured Sessions: Time in this Time) new compositions (in mix #2 Caught in Flux), writing, and photographic contributions.

The musicians capture the ebb and tumult of compounding timelines in Beirut — between a revolution, pandemic, devastating explosion, financial crisis, and the tests and joys in daily life. An anchor and an invitation.

Below, listen to the mixes (or open them in soundcloud), and read Ziad's writing about making music in this time. Throughout are photos. Studio images capture live recordings over the years of The Ruptured Sessions series from before the pandemic. For mix 2 Caught in Flux, Ziad asked the  musicians creating new pieces to also share a photo from their camera roll in 2020 expressing “what time in this time means to you.” Album art by Nour Raad, Ziad's collaborator and wife, features her own photographs of emblematic images from Beirut. Words by Ziad Nawfal.

These sessions, that took place during my radio program Ruptures on Radio Lebanon, were dubbed “The Ruptured Sessions,” as a tribute to BBC radio host John Peel’s own Peel Sessions. He was an all-time hero of mine, and I had spent innumerable hours listening to his radio shows on a small portable radio, while growing up in Beirut in the 80’s and 90’s.

The sessions began hesitantly in late 2008, and became more frequent over the course of the next few months. The idea behind these recordings was to bring to light the various contributors to Lebanon’s alternative music scene, and enable them to reach a wider audience. Lebanese folk songstresses Nadine Khouri and Youmna Saba were the first to perform live on Ruptures, in September and October 2008 respectively. The initial “acoustic performers only” focus of the program eventually grew to encompass electronic performers struggling with Radio Lebanon’s limited technical means (Munma, Tarek Atoui), free-form improvisers performing both acoustically and electrically (Sharif Sehnaoui, BAO), and rock artists performing acoustically (The Incompetents, Mashrou’ Leila, Wake Island).

When similar compilations started proliferating in Beirut, the series went on temporary hiatus in 2013. Ziad Nawfal still welcomed musicians in his radio shows, hosting them for interviews and the occasional live session.

In the summer of 2020, Nawfal and Fadi Tabbal started work on what they envisioned would be the 6th and final volume of “The Ruptured Sessions.” They dug in their archives to gather both older, unused sessions, as well as more recent recordings from up-and-coming Lebanese talent. On the week that the new compilation was meant to be released, a deadly explosion struck the Port of Beirut, causing death and destruction in all surrounding neighborhoods, and crippling the city indefinitely.

When “The Ruptured Sessions Vol.6” was eventually released, later in August, Nawfal opted to donate all sales from the album to Tabbal’s recently-established "Beirut Musicians' Fund", aimed at providing relief to musicians most impacted by the deadly blast of August 4th. A way to give back to Beirut’s community of musicians, singers, artists and performers, without whom the Ruptured label would not have existed in the first place.

Then I proceeded to contact these musicians and requested 2 items from them: a piece of music, preferably unreleased, and a picture, preferably from their phone, both of which should be an actual representation of the year 2020 for them. Lebanon is experiencing what I believe is the toughest period in its already tumultuous history, from an unprecedented social uprising that erupted in October 2019, to a violent military crackdown on protesters, to a deadly blast that tore half the city to shreds last August, to ever-increasing numbers in Covid-19 infections. Most of the musicians created new music especially for the occasion; others provided me with older tracks from their archive.

The resulting mix of music is vastly different from the earlier one. To say it is darker is an understatement; the pieces are ambient, instrumental and eerie, as opposed to sung, composed and tangible. Guitar and synth lines are layered, sometimes purposefully, sometimes unevenly. Strings are bowed, vocals are distorted. Where there are voices, they float in mid-air, anchorless. A reflection of the times we are living in, surely?

Some of the pieces I’ve edited, to make for a tighter and compact mix. Others I’ve left as is. I am grateful to the artists who donated their tracks, and trusted me to make good use of their music (and images). In addition to the 7 brand new pieces made especially for this mix, I added an older one (Munma’s “Moyen-Orient”) that has not appeared in any of my previous mixes, and made sense in
the overall structure.