All peace, no charity?

It was meant to be a concert for peace, but there was nothing peaceful about the backstage area.

Two people on a mission had burst into the room. One was looking around frantically, spitting orders in the face of the concert organiser.

The other, an elderly man with Rasta braids and glasses, declared to the journalists and artists who were scattered about: “This is chaos. Everyone has to leave. Sean Paul's coming.''

After a heated discussion, they agreed to let some of us stay, as long as we sat quietly in the corner and extinguished those cigarettes. Ten minutes later, the man himself — wearing dark sunglasses, a beige jacket and his signature braids — sauntered casually into the room surrounded by his entourage of bodyguards, dancers and others.

Sean Paul was in da house.

The event

The location was Amman, Jordan, and the event was Project Peace 2007. According to the organisers — Jordan Public Relations (JPR) and The Youth Noise Organisation in Jordan — the proceeds from the event were for charity to spread the message of peace.

This R'n'B/hip hop event was the second of its kind. Last year the concert invited Massari to perform.

This year, the line-up was bursting with amazingly talented Arab and Western artists — Cilvaringz and DJ Sueside from the Wu-Tang Killa Beez, Moroccan/Dutch rapper Salah Edin, Canadian/Palestinian/ Jordanian rapper Arabesque,
Syrian/Lebanese rapper Eslem, Swedish/Palestinian rapper Palestine, Jordanian DJ Shadia, Canadian band TheSoundofReason and, finally, Jamaican reggae superstar Sean Paul.

First time

All the artists were excited about the show, but, most importantly, about being in the Middle East to perform. Even though most of them have Arab heritage, some of them have never set foot in this part of the world. I managed to catch up with them before the show.

“This is my first time in the Middle East, and I'm excited. I'm going to visit my family,'' Arabesque said with a smile.

“Coming from North America and being on commercial radio, holding a solidarity to the Palestinians is a very brave move, you know what I'm saying? In America they hold a glass ceiling over you, if you talk about things that might be political or shake things up.''

Inspiration

Canadian TheSoundofReason duo Francis and Ku don't mind shaking things up. One of the tracks on their new self-titled album is called Palestine.

“In university I majored in political science,'' Iranian-born Ku said. “The more you know, the more you realise you don't know. I just realised how much I really didn't know anything about what's going on around the world.'' This gave him the inspiration to write the song.

“The Palestinian conflict is a really, really serious situation. It touched Francis and me. So basically the song is just our hearts going out to the people there.''

TheSoundofReason were brought to the event by Motorola who were the key sponsors of Project Peace.

“We hooked on to Project Peace because we wanted people to be entertained, but also to raise social and conscious awareness,'' said Mohammad Chishty, marketing manager for Motorola in Dubai.

Different ways

Some artists have different ways of drawing attention to important social issues. Salah Edin is one of them.

“I could talk about the women and the bling, but for the next generation, I want to talk about things that are more important,'' said Salah, who recently released the most controversial hip-hop album and video in the history of Dutch music.

The music video was about the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh in 2004 and is now in a museum in Holland.

“When Van Gogh got killed, people started pointing fingers at me, because I look like the killer. Then I started thinking, people really see me as a radical Muslim, but I wasn't. I was just a normal guy.''

Frustrated

In the video, Salah Edin portrays himself as the actual killer, Mohammad Bouyeri, and the government tried to pull his album, Holland's Worst Nightmare, from stores.

“I don't support the reason why Mohammad B. did it. If someone fights with the tongue, you gotta fight back with the tongue — freedom of speech. But I can associate myself with his frustration. A lot of people got hurt by the things Van Gogh was saying. I was like, ok, I'm a musician, so let's make something creative out of it. And I started talking about certain issues that most people don't wanna talk about,'' Salah said.

Terrible organisation

The concert itself was a success. The evening was beautiful. There was a cool, fresh wind and the atmosphere was great with the 2,000-strong audience dancing and enjoying the music.

Unfortunately, the organisation was terrible. The media was not looked after.

Sean Paul almost refused to go onstage, and Cilvaringz from the Wu-Tang, who actually arranged Sean Paul to come and play, was left stranded with his crew after the show, with hotel rooms that were supposed to be paid for and the organisers nowhere to be found.

What charity?

Moroccan-born Cilvaringz, who grew up in Holland and recently released his album, I, was co-agent on the project and initially was happy to be involved in the concert for the name of peace.

“It's a blessing to be here with our people and be part of this peace project and hopefully bring some more awareness to the conflicts going on in this region,'' he said. But after the concert he was suspicious that things weren't as they seemed.

“The show was horribly organised. Really, really bad. It was a status thing. It was nothing about peace. And the money definitely didn't go to charity,'' he said.

When questioned about this, Ruba M. Abu-Laban, PR and media manager for JPR, refused to give a statement, but said she would send the information by email (four days after the event there has still been no email).

Finally she said: “The money goes to local and international refugee camps. Actually, we are not sending the money. We are going to provide food and stuff.''