The Middle East sings, and sometimes listens, throughout the summer

Beirut -- BEIRUT: The summer season is synonymous with music festivals in the MENA region. This week witnessed high-profile concert action from Morocco to Jordan and beyond, with the nature of the concert experience varying depending on the host country's political environment.
In Lebanon, where all hands are still vibrating in the wake of Patti Smith's hard-hitting and melodic Tuesday night show at Byblos, concert-goers are awaiting the opening shows of the Beiteddine and Baalbek festivals. While Byblos was on schedule last year, Baalbek and Beiteddine fell victim to unrest in the aftermath of Israel's month-long 2006 summer bombardment.
Beiteddine opens this Saturday with a show by Moroccan diva Karima Skalli. Expat pop sensation Mika will open the Baalbek Festival, in Beirut incongruously enough, on July 27.
Morocco has become a music festival hub in the last few years, hosting a succession of events throughout the spring and summer. The desert town of Essaouira is now cleaning up after the town's 11th Gnawa and Music of the World Festival, which opened on June 26.
The festival brought together traditional Gnawa musicians - descendants of slaves originating from sub-Saharan Africa who established musical-mystical brotherhoods throughout Morocco - with international pop and jazz musicians to perform at 10 concert venues around the town.
Despite the manifold difficulties involved in entering and traveling around occupied Palestine, Ramallah too is somehow becoming a significant venue for top-flight performance. The city hosted Turkey's folkloric dance troupe Fire of Anatolia and their male associates Sultans of the Dance on Tuesday.
Then it was time for a bit of Rai, as Algerian-born French vocalist Faudel took the Ramallah stage Wednesday night. Faudel is a dogged performer: At the border between the Occupied West Bank and Jordan, he and his entourage faced a five-hour wait at the Israeli-controlled Allenby Bridge checkpoint.
Jbeil played host to another concert Tuesday evening, as the UAE's Ruweida al-Mahruqi, Tunis' Ahmad al-Sharif and Lebanon's Haifa Wehbe, Wael Kfouri and Carole Samaha came together for the Sea of Stars dinner.
In Amman, meanwhile, Jordanian officials say that singers have joined its controversial music festival, despite claims it is being organized by the same company that oversaw Israel's 60th anniversary celebrations in May.
The month-long Jordan Festival kicked off Tuesday, Tourism Board chief Nayef Fayez told AFP. "The audience exceeded our expectations and we ran out of tickets for some concerts."
Such performers as Jordan's Omar Abdallat, Lebanon's Elissa and Syria's George Wassouf performed in the northern Greco-Roman city of Jerash, concert-goers said, while Canadian jazz vocalist Diana Krall performed at the Roman Citadel in downtown Amman.
The country's 14 Islamist-dominated professional trade unions and the Islamic Action Front had urged the government to cancel the festival and called on Arab singers to boycott it. They claimed that Publicis Groupe, which has allegedly orchestrated events for the 60th anniversary of the creation of the state of Israel, was organizing the festival.
Both the Jordanian state and Publicis have denied the claims.
"We have overcome this boycott issue," Fayez said. "We did not receive any official letter from any artist or singer about plans to boycott the festival."
For conscientious Arabs, the state of Israel was created - premised, in fact - on the occupation of Palestinian land. The Jordan Artists Association had announced that several Arab singers would boycott the festival, which will feature tenor Placido Domingo and award-winning Lebanese-born singer Mika.
Although Jordan and Israel are bound by a 1994 peace treaty, many Jordanians are opposed to normalization of ties with the Jewish state. - The Daily Star with AFP