Lebanese rap lets us feel Arab - and teaches us this feels nothing like the outdated stereotypes the UK media is satisfied with.

Wars colour the nations involved in the fatigue-shades of their frontline participants, and nowhere is this truer than in the story of the Israeli-Arab conflict. The rolling-news channels and the plebeian levels of opinion this information overload has led to stick to their stereotypes. There’s an unwillingness to think past the sensation, to cast aside the script. Israelis are occupiers, soldiers and zealots alike, whereas the Arabs are impoverished, wounded and fanatical. This simply isn’t the case.

Stereotypes are for Victorians, but the press perpetuates them in subtle ways. The music of Clotaire K, the Beiruti rap lord, breaks them down for us. This is what they listen to in Lebanon, and it doesn’t like the voice of ‘two thousand years of hatred,’ but a call for respect, a wounded pride trying to articulate itself. The blurred shots of Lebanon he makes his stage are the sights of a developing country, wealthier than a few Balkan EU members, with a seventies-fetish and diaspora only a few notches below Israel’s in the terms of size and scope.

Clotaire K’s roll-call of Lebanon’s communities is not however the bold statement of national-unity it appears to be, but rather an urgent appeal for a country that tragically lacks any such sentiment. Christian, bourgeois Achrafiye feels like downtown Athens, Nabatiye adorned in Hezbollah’s colours feels like ersatz Iran, whilst beach-land Jbeil wants you to think it’s in the South of France, Arabized for the occasion and nothing more. There is more than a hint of post-colonial swagger in his voice, tinged with a certain nostalgia for an Arabism that could inspire respect, not the shrieking Jihadism that educated Beirutis feel is a disgusting embrassment.

Lebanon’s sectarian divisions are well known, and monologued about pedantically by Robert Fisk and his ilk, missing the real sociological shifts that behind the headlines have changed the face of the Arab World. The rise of Dubai and Doha, Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya are globalising the region Wall Street forgot. A whole generation has worked in the Gulf or seen a relative off at the airport, received wired money and heard stories from abroad, changing mindsets and aspirations across Lebanon and its cousins. This desire, not to wreck everyone’s chances of making it somehow, pulled Beirut back from the brink last May when certain factions took to the streets with their Kalashnikovs. There is a deliberate ambiguity in the rapper’s accusations, leaving you unsure if Olmert, Nasrallah or Bin Laden are in the dock. For the region’s fragile new cosmopolitans, they all are. Things are changing in the Middle East, and sticking around in the old paradigm won’t help you understand them. Just remember, like Clotaire K, they take themselves a little too seriously.

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