Shocking Shaker

[BENNU]

I am aware that some of you do not share my taste in music and probably live happy lives without any new CDs from the talented singer Fadel Shaker. I have tried, but simply cannot resist listening to his music every day, and I am not the only one. It is pleasant pop, beautiful tarab and wonderful interpretations of classic Arab and Egyptian songs – all very danceable.

- Bennu








What Happened to Fadel Shaker?



Posted on: July 4 2013

Translated by: Pascale Menassa

By: An Al-Monitor Correspondent in Beirut for Al-Monitor Lebanon Pulse Posted on July 4.

إقرأ باللغة العربية

It is going to be a long time before the Fadel Shaker enigma is solved or forgotten. The Lebanese singer acquired fame and fortune in a matter of years and then turned into a jihadist supporter of the Salafist sheikh Ahmad al-Assir. Suddenly, he was a wanted man, pursued by the authorities, after vanishing with his “mentor” following their defeat at the hands of the Lebanese Army on June 24, in Sidon, in south Lebanon.

The path Shaker decided to walk shocked the Lebanese people. Lebanon had never before witnessed one of its singers rediscover his religion and return to the faith. Before Shaker, the stories of TV stars or movie actors who suddenly appeared veiled, declaring that they were forsaking the world of entertainment, had been unique to Egypt, published on the pages of magazines found on the counters at beauty salons and read by the Lebanese for fun.

The Lebanese had only experienced one similar precedent, though a bit different from that of Fadel Shaker. Antoine al-Khawli was a Lebanese singer famous in Lebanon and most other Arab countries in the mid-1980s and into the late 1990s. He went by the stage name Rabih al-Khawli. At the peak of his fame and fortune, two painful incidents befell Khawli: He lost one of his brothers to illness, and a car accident claimed the life of another person in his life. These tragedies changed the man. Antoine, aka Rabih, took an extended sabbatical from the world of singing and went looking for answers to the meaning of life and the mysteries of pain and death.

Khawli's retreat soon turned into a way of life. He quietly left the worlds of art and performance, without a declaration, speech or interview. In the late 1990s, he joined a Maronite monastery that trains apprentices on Mount Lebanon. At that point, Rabih became known as Father Antoine. Ten-plus years have passed since he took his religious vows and made a decision to spend his time in prayer, worship, poverty, asceticism and isolation.

Fadel Shaker, however, has shown the Lebanese another side of the equation that they had never heard of or known. In 2005, Shaker, who hails from Sidon, was one of the most popular emerging Lebanese singers in the Arab world. He was known for his exquisite voice and singing style and focused on romance, love and passion. In short order, Shaker experienced the transition from the slums of the southern capital to fortune and fame. Around that time, Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, a Sunni, was assassinated. Shaker is also a Sunni. After Hariri's death and the subsequent turmoil of events, including rising tensions between Sunnis and Shiites in different countries in the region, rumors began circulating in the media that Shaker had a fundamentalist brother who led a group of Palestinian jihadists in the Ein al-Hilweh refugee camp, near Sidon.

In 2008, news of a violent conflict between Shaker and Ragheb Alama, a famous Lebanese Shiite singer, spread like wildfire. As the story goes, the dispute, stoked by a political disagreement, began on a plane that both singers happened to be on. Their conflict intensified after Alama allegedly received death threats from Shaker in summer 2009, and a group of armed men tried to break into Alama’s house. It was then that the Lebanese people saw another face of the famously romantic singer.

Shaker did not leave his fans impatiently waiting. As soon as Assir launched his jihadist movement in Sidon, Shaker became his shadow. He grew a thick beard, just like the other Salafists, and became Assir’s right hand man in the jihadist group. Funding the movement with the fortune he had earned from his singing career, Shaker became the movement's media star and its most provocative voice. He soon announced that he was quitting singing altogether; his speeches then focused solely on his enemies, the infidels, whom he often described as pigs and threatened to kill. It is no coincidence that Shaker's last appearance, available on YouTube, was from a hideout for Assir in Sidon, before the army burst in. He bragged about his men having killed two soldiers and promised that the best is yet to come. Shaker soon vanished, however, and took second place on the Lebanese authorities’ most wanted list of dangerous and notorious criminals. First on the list is his mentor, Assir.

Most Lebanese are still wondering what could possibly have turned a rich, famous and successful singer into a wanted, extremist Salafist? Khawli left the world of singing to worship God, pray in a hermitage and seek peace of mind, but what could have pushed Shaker to find God in violence, hatred and murder? How could a person who had discovered the pleasures of this world leave everything behind for a small alley in a neighborhood near Sidon no more than a few meters long?

There have been similar cases in the world of Islamic jihadism, but they tend to involve two things that have typically driven suicidal jihadism: the Palestinian cause, which is a sacred call for people treading that path, and enmity toward the United States — considered the “devil incarnate” — and the war against it imbued with religious fervor. This is how suicidal Islamists linked their affiliations to “major causes,” seemingly so irrational that they render the behavior of jihadists inconceivable. Shaker, however, did not choose Palestine or America. Instead, he chose to fight a small war in a narrow alley in which he spent all the savings of his previous life and, apparently, his next one.

This is the enigma of Fadel Shaker, and it will be a long time before it is forgotten or understood.


http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/origina ... z2dOUDU3lx







Fadel Shaker: Crooner Turned Fugitive Militant

by Naharnet Newsdesk 25 June 2013, 15:59

Once adored by women for his warm voice and good looks, crooner Fadel Shaker followed an unlikely path to become an Islamist militant now on the run with fellow fugitive Sheikh Ahmed al-Asir.

The pair are now being sought in a nationwide manhunt after clashes between Asir and his Salafist supporters and the military in the southern city of Sidon that left 17 soldiers dead.

Though he grew to become one of the Arab world's most famous singers, Shaker suffered through a miserable childhood of poverty, which a onetime musician friend says helped lead him down a dark path later in life.

Now in his mid-forties, Shaker was born to a Palestinian mother and Lebanese father in the country's biggest Palestinian refugee camp, Ain al-Helweh.

Born Fadel Shmandur, he began his career as a popular wedding singer who performed from the rooftops of the camp, an over-crowded and hopeless place.

"He has a beautiful voice. Hearing him live was even more beautiful than a recording," a former friend of Shaker's told Agence France Presse on condition of anonymity.

"But he has always been naive and gullible. The more of a star he became, the further he strayed from the people who really loved him. He constantly ended up in bad company," said the friend, who lost touch with him some years ago.

In his prime, Shaker sang love songs that were instant region-wide hits. He released his first album in the late nineties, and continued to perform until 2011.

"He is a very sensitive, extremely reserved person," said Shaker's friend.

"When his Palestinian wife left him, he would cry on stage as he sang, thinking of her. He is very emotional."

Shaker's immense popularity was boosted by the fact he was also a defender of Palestinian rights, and was granted honorary Palestinian citizenship by President Mahmoud Abbas.

Shaker also opened a restaurant in Sidon and pondered swapping his music career for a less hectic life, closer to his three children.

"I knew he would leave music one day, but I would never have thought he would join Asir. It's such a shame, he has such talent. I feel sorry for him," his friend told AFP.

Shaker's brother had long been a strict Muslim, and he tried for years to convince him to leave music.
But it wasn't until after the outbreak of an uprising in Syria against President Bashar Assad that Shaker became convinced that singing is haram, or forbidden in Islam.

Shaker soon became the best-known face of Asir's small movement of openly sectarian, Sunni radicals and praised the cleric as "the lion of the Sunnis".

He grew a beard and became a highlight of Asir's rallies, helping attract attention to the phenomenon of Sunni radicalism in the small Mediterranean country.

Performing during a television interview earlier this year, Shaker swapped his love songs for a chant about jihad and death.

Sitting by Asir, Shaker smiled and sang as sweetly as ever: "God gave me the gift and invited me to join the jihad... Mother, don't cry for me... Death does not frighten me, and my wish is to become a martyr."

His latest media appearance came in an amateur video in which he boasts: "We got rid of two of your swine, of your dogs... God is great."

The video went viral, with many alleging Shaker referred to killing army troops. Others said the footage referred to earlier clashes between Asir supporters and pro-Hizbullah fighters.

Judicial authorities issued a detention order for Asir and 123 of his supporters, including Shaker, whose brother was killed in weekend clashes with the army in Sidon.

"Fadel's story makes me sad, but in a way I am not surprised. He has always been easy to manipulate," his friend told AFP.

"These people have used him. Without him, no one would have heard of them."

http://www.naharnet.com/stories/en/88179

[Cyprus100]

Hi BENNU

I do quite like the Arabic pop although not the slow waily stuff. I much preferred the stuff I heard in this video:

phpBB [video]

But of much more interest rather than the music - can you tell me which place this was recorded? I'm assuming it is Lebanon but if so, neither of us recognise it from our trips there so are guessing it may be more towards Baalbek where we're always advised not to travel...

[BENNU]

But of much more interest rather than the music - can you tell me which place this was recorded? I'm assuming it is Lebanon but if so, neither of us recognise it from our trips there so are guessing it may be more towards Baalbek where we're always advised not to travel...

Hello Cyprus100, Middle Eastern TV often brings concerts from this temple not only with Lebanese artists and I am convinced that it is Baalbek.

I think that there are a few other things of interest than the sinful music...

[Cyprus100]

Thanks BENNU

One day perhaps we will finally get there....

[BENNU]

A Lebanon crooner's journey from heartthrob to militant fugitive

http://articles.latimes.com/2013/aug/11 ... r-20130811


Fadel Shaker, who once rode atop the Arab world's music charts, is shown in a video holed up inside a bunker with a militant sheik during a deadly shootout with soldiers.
August 11, 2013|By Nabih Bulos

Lebanese singer Fadel Shaker, right, appears at a July 2012 concert with… (Mahmoud Zayyat / AFP/Getty…)
BEIRUT — With his pouty lips and soulful eyes, he was a stylish figure known as the King of Romance, a crooner of amorous ballads often seen cavorting with would-be starlets in MTV-style videos filmed on yachts, in upscale cafes and in swank homes.

But Fadel Shaker's latest video — without a note uttered — may become his swan song, portraying the balladeer in a new and disturbing incarnation: hunkered down defiantly with a militant sheik and his armed followers, holding out against Lebanese soldiers he derided as dogs and pigs.

The extraordinary transformation of Shaker — who once rode atop the Arab world's charts as a kind of Lebanese Harry Connick Jr. — is surely one of the strangest examples of how the Syrian civil war has spilled over into Lebanon, deeply dividing Syria's small neighbor.

Shaker, 44, is a fugitive wanted by Lebanese authorities in connection with the deaths of 18 soldiers in a shootout in June with well-armed supporters of the militant sheik, Ahmad Assir, at his heavily guarded compound outside the southern city of Sidon. Authorities say the onetime heartthrob was alongside Assir during the assault and that the two men escaped together. Fans of the singer were stunned.

"I still shake my head [in disbelief] every time his songs come up on my music player," said Rania, a Beirut resident who declined to give her last name for privacy reasons. "What needs to happen to someone for them to go from singing love songs to joining a militia?"

In the Arab press, reports of Shaker sightings are an almost daily occurrence. A YouTube video appeared recently that apparently shows Shaker singing a number entitled, "Prepare Like Those Who Love to Struggle," based on a poem written by none other than Osama bin Laden.

Shaker comes from the ramshackle confines of the Ain Helweh refugee camp in southern Lebanon. The young Shaker, born Fadel Shamandar, was forced to leave school at 15 to support his family after his father's death.

"I would wake up at 3 in the morning, go out and wait for the bus that would take us to the stone quarry," Shaker recalled in a 2009 radio interview, adding that he earned the equivalent of less than one U.S. dollar for a day's work breaking stones.

It is unclear how his vocal talents were noticed. At some point, he was recruited into a local band playing weddings and other festivities.

The local gigs soon paved the way for grander ambitions and Shaker composed his first song, "Matah Habibi Matah" ("When, My Love, When?"). He soon found a partner in Khoyoul, a Saudi Arabian media production company that signed him to a 10-year contract in 2000.

His first album had been a hit, and soon he could do no wrong; the single from his second album, "Bayaa' Al-Quloob" ("Seller of Hearts"), rocketed to the No. 1 spot on the Arab charts within days of its release. Shaker was a superstar. Subsequent albums were major sellers, encouraging established artists such as Shereen, Nawal and Elissa to collaborate with him on sappy love tunes that took the Arab world by storm. The stream of slick music videos accentuated his fame.

Yet Shaker grew increasingly uncomfortable. "Money from art has no blessing in it," he told an interviewer in 2009. "I found art to be a big lie."

Soon he was verbally lashing out at other artists, admonishing female singers to "cover up" and "wear the hijab," the Islamic veil. As his once-prolific output ground to a halt, Shaker, by then believed to be a multimillionaire, announced his retirement in 2012 on an Islamic channel, declaring, in an apparent reaffirmation of his native faith, "I have become a Muslim. I hated this work."

But it was the Syrian uprising, which had begun in 2011, and the deep sectarian rifts it accentuated in Lebanese society that spurred his conversion into an Islamist warrior. Many Lebanese Sunni Muslims, like Shaker, sympathize with the Sunni-led revolt against the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad, a member of the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

Shaker became a regular at anti-Assad rallies in Lebanon, often appearing with Assir, whose fiery rhetoric targeting Shiites stoked sectarian tensions. The singer embraced his new mentor's provocative style, at one point publicly threatening to murder a Shiite mayor. Replacing his saccharine torch ballads were nasheed, Islamic religious chanting, with lyrics such as "Don't cry for me, Mother, for I am off to jihad."

When the Lebanese army stormed Assir's compound in June, it was the culmination of friction that had been building for several months. Matters came to a head when three soldiers were ambushed and killed at a military checkpoint near Assir's complex, authorities said. The subsequent escalation left 18 soldiers and 28 gunmen dead, according to Lebanese officials, who said Shaker and Assir were among those who escaped the siege. Some unconfirmed reports had the pair slipping away dressed as women.

A Shaker video appearance emerged a few days later on YouTube, apparently filmed inside the sheik's bunker during the siege. Looking rough in a T-shirt, jeans and full beard (he was clean-shaven in his heyday), Shaker flashes a grin and proudly proclaims:

"Two corpses, you dogs, you pigs," apparently referring to a pair of the pro-government casualties at the scene. "Two corpses we got from you."

Bulos is a special correspondent.

Times staff writer Patrick J. McDonnell contributed to this report.