By ZAIRA LAKHPATWALA — arabnews.com — DUBAI: Shuruq is the latest platform to shine a light on musical talent from the Arab world and beyond. Launched by Lebanese cultural space Station Beirut and partners, Shuruq’s latest endeavor is the first season of “Shuruq Sessions.” Hosted on YouTube, “Shuruq Sessions” is a series of music videos by Beirut-based artists recorded at the Station Beirut space in the city. The first season features artists such as Zef; trio Adib, Yassine and El Khazen; El Rass; Clara Kossaifi, and the band Taxi404. Station Beirut, which was launched in 2013, has served as an art and cultural center for both the public and private sectors with a “curatorial focus on special practices that invite critical thinking and civic engagement,” Nabil Canaan, creative director and producer of Shuruq, told Arab News. The space has played host to several theater programs, live concerts and visual arts exhibitions over the years. Its next endeavor was in the world of music. Shuruq was officially launched last month at an event featuring artists like Sarah Mansour, Kye Akoun and the band Yalla Yalla Habibi Habibi. But the platform has been in the works since 2019. “Over time, it became clear that although there’s a lot of creativity in Lebanon and the region, everything is built on shaky foundations,” Canaan said. “So, in 2019, we designed a program that would address and focus on music and called it ‘Shuruq,’” he added.

The name “shuruq,” which means dawn or sunrise in Arabic, was one of several options but it struck a chord with the team due to its metaphorical implications, Canaan said. It was perhaps an obvious metaphor for emerging talent, but it also signified new beginnings, which was especially meaningful at a time when the world was plagued with the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the many crises in Lebanon, he added. Shuruq is built on three pillars: Capacity building and training, content creation and live events. The platform partnered with UK-based knowledge and skills company Music Ally to hold training sessions for 30 people including 20 artists and 10 music managers. Live events were difficult to host during the pandemic, so the company focused on content creation, resulting in the first season of “Shuruq Sessions.”

Although the artists in the first season are from Lebanon, Shuruq’s aim is to showcase contemporary music from across the Southwest Asia and North Africa region and its diaspora. Peers and partners in Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and Jordan often complain that despite the burgeoning talent in the country, there is a lack of professionalism and international-level platforms that are focused on music, Canaan said. He questioned the “middle” in Middle East — “It’s the ‘middle’ for whom? It is a colonial term.”

Southwest Asia emerged as a term to refer to the Middle East as well as other West Asian countries in academic circles but is increasingly being used in the cultural sector. “For us, what’s nice about it is that it allows us to obviously cover the Arabic-speaking world, which includes 450 million people, but also audiences and artists speaking other languages like Kurdish, Berber, Turkic and Farsi, all the way up to Georgian and Armenian.” He added that the languages — and the areas where they are spoken — share a common history, culture and social concerns, as well as instrumentation and sounds. “We started in Beirut because we are based here, and there were constraints due to the pandemic, but this is just the first phase,” he said. Shuruq is supported by seed funding from regional arts institutions the Arab Fund for Arts & Culture, Mawred Culture Resource, Arab World Institute, British Council and the French Institute.

It plans to launch a second round of funding to continue its efforts across the region. Shuruq is now working on its music program for the winter and also looking to hold live concerts, clubbing nights and talks that “assert the position of Station Beirut, through Shuruq, as the go-to live performance venue in the city,” Canaan said. “What has been missing not just in music, but also in general, is that the world overlooks the Middle East,” he added. “The goal of Shuruq is to empower and showcase artists from the region, but it’s also to help shift the dial on the cultural narratives about the region.”