Lebanese musician Marcel Khalife is a star in the world music scene. His inspired blend of traditional and modern sounds, and his anti-establishment stance have garnered comparisons with Bob Dylan. But as he reveals, there's more than meets the eye. Starting out as a student of traditional Arabic music, Khalife went on to become a professor of the oud at the National Conservatory in Beirut. Artistic curiosity found him integrating Western styles and harmonies into his work. He was confined to his home during Lebanon's civil war in the late 1970s, and later fled to Paris, where his work quickly became known and internationally celebrated. Over the course of his nearly four decade-long career, Khalife has sung about love, exile, freedom and longing (or, perhaps more accurately, longing for freedom). In 1999 he was given the Palestine Award for Music, and in 2005 he was named a UNESCO Artist For Peace. His career has not been without controversy; in the late 90s and early 2000s, he faced criminal prosecution for degrading Islam, by singing two lines from the Quran in his song "I am Joseph" (based on a poem), but was later found innocent. One of his defenders throughout the trials was poet and friend (and writer of the original poem) Mahmoud Darwish, whom Khalife has called his “heart’s artistic twin.” The two met in the early 1980s, and went on to form a long-lasting creative bond that gave rise to many popular anthems in the Arab world, including the deeply moving "Passport", a poem/song exploring issues of nationality, identity, and exile. Khalife's latest album, Fall Of The Moon (Nagam Records), is a tribute to Darwish, who passed away in 2008. Symphonic in scope and sound, the double album includes contributions from Rami Khalife on piano and Bachar Khalife on percussion (Marcel's sons), longtime Khalife vocalist Oumaima Khalil, Roma clarinetist Ismail Lumanovski, and the Al Mayadine Ensemble and Kiev Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Vladimir Sirinko. As arts site Lucid Culture noted, the album "juxtaposes ornate western classical orchestration with stark Middle Eastern melodies, both songs and instrumentals" and concluded that "(f)or sheer majestic sweep and vision, there’s no other album released this year that can touch this." Filled with mournful ballads and sensuous, stirring rhythms, Fall Of The Moon is a captivating listen made all the more poignant by the Arab spring revolutions of 2011. Though currently on tour through Central Canada, with European dates to follow in November, Marcel Khalife kindly offered his thoughts on revolution, poetry, along with the nature of creativity, and why everyone should read the work of Darwish.

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