Swiss/Lebanese duo Praed won't let visa problems stop the tour

By Jon Dunbar

With only weeks left before their tour in Korea, the Swiss/Lebanese music duo Praed discovered that one half of the group couldn’t get a visa in time.

Lebanese national Raed's passport spent one month at the Korean Embassy in Berlin, where he is a permanent resident, while he waited for his visa application to be processed. Finally, with time running out, he requested the return of his passport so he could join his bandmate on other parts of the tour.

"Since Korea has so many tourists lately, they seem not to care much to proceed visa applications for people from the 'Third World,' even when they live in a 'First World' country," his bandmate, the Beirut-based Swiss clarinetist Paed, told The Korea Times while already in Vietnam for the first leg of the tour. "The visa refusal for Raed is not something new and of course, it is a clear made-up idea [of] who has the right to travel and who [does] not. The laws are political and are racist and it's probably gonna get worse now, if this is even possible."

Raed and Paed combine to form Praed, an exciting act that mixes Arabic popular music, free jazz and electronica. The band’s body of work mainly explores the terrain of Arabic popular music (“Shaabi”) and its interconnectedness with other psychedelic and hypnotic musical grooves from around the world, including space jazz and psychedelic rock. The band explores the strong cultural connection between Shaabi sounds and the “Mouled” music played in religious trance ceremonies.

We won't know what we're missing from the duo's full performance — judging by videos, Raed is an energetic vocal performer, among his other music duties — but at least audiences will get to experience Paed's clarinet-playing live.

"I [have been] obsessed with the clarinet since a very long time ago," Paed said. "It's a great instrument and you can play quarter tones, so you can play Arabic scales on it as well."

Paed said he would do his best to handle the duo's music solo, performing here under the name Half Praed.

This would have been Raed's first time in Korea, but Paed has toured here frequently over the years with other music projects. He came here in 2017 and 2018 as part of the clarinet trio Porto Chiusa, and again last year as part of The Mad Laboratory of Anti-Matter, a duo with Swiss Lebanese multi-instrumentalist Nadia Daou.

"I have to say that I so far did only meet very kind people," Paed said about his previous visits to Korea, "And communication is much easier than in Japan for example ... "

This time around, he's been invited to Korea to play the Dotolimpic Festival again. He also has three more shows in Seoul. After, he'll meet up with Raed in Taiwan for an eight-date tour, and then stop by Singapore for one last show before they fly back West.

Formed in 2006, Praed presents a beacon of hope for Arabic music, and Paed and Raed tackle stereotypes that are rife in the Western world. The band has frequented numerous international music festivals and toured intensively worldwide, spanning Japan and many parts of Africa, Europe and Canada.

Paed said wherever he goes, he's usually been welcomed in the music and art scenes of most countries.

"But for sure, after the last 17 months, the mask of Europe and the U.S. [has] completely fallen off. Of course, the reaction is repression in any possible form and the amount of erasure of culture from the Arab world is shocking and is becoming a bigger problem every day," he said.

A longtime foreign resident of Beirut, Paed also talked up his local scene.

"Even with all the sh-- and war, the music scene in Lebanon is very alive and diverse," he said. "Sanam, Snakeskin, Akram Hajj, Makram Aboul Hosen and so many more are covering [everything] from weird pop to electronic, techno, experimental jazz, improv and progressive Arabic music, a wide range of interesting music ... "

Paed will perform at More Music in northwestern Seoul on Wednesday, then Cake Shop in Itaewon on Thursday, Dotolim near Hongik University on Friday and ACS in downtown's Euljiro area on Saturday.

Visit paed.ch/praed for more information, and listen at praed.bandcamp.com.