Interview with Michel Elefteriades, Emperor of Nowheristan and Founder of MusicHall

Could you please give us a brief introduction to Nowheristan?

Nowheristan is a concept that brings solutions to a lot of problems that humanity has been facing for too long. I thought that if the answers were in this box that everybody has been searching in forever, they would have found it. So, I thought of answering from outside the box, thinking the way the philosophers taught us to - tabula rasa, which isto remove everything from the table, to rethink the system from scratch. So, it's basically bringing down a system that is obsolete, useless and cannot work anymore and to try to rethink a system that can adapt to the modern world, to the way humanity has evolved, to modern ideologies, economy, media and communication. We cannot continue thinking with systems that have been established 150 or 200 to 1,000 years ago. We have to find new systems.

Can you talk a little bit about what has changed since two years in terms of development in Nowheristan?

Nowheristan is growing. I am letting it grow on its own. I just presented this ideology. It might be applied one day, may be not under the same name. I read a lot about people speaking about ideas that are related to Nowheristan, but in another context. It's not something that I want to claim rights over; it's not mine. It's a vision and I got inspired from different systems and I want to let it grow on its own.

Do you see the global trends such as rise in inequality, rise in nationalism in Europe and tensions in South East Asia affecting the global political systems? Where do you see the world heading in five years?

I think there is a lot of manipulation going on from the Super Powers. This has been going on for centuries and it's not stopping; it's taking other forms like neocolonialism for instance. Their excuse now is "we want to bring democracy to a country; we want to remove a dictator" and so on. This kind of action is even worse, because it is much more hypocritical. It's using noble causes or great slogans like 'revolution' to bring more slavery or misery to the Third World. I believe we are facing the ugliest form of exploitation of man by man.

Lebanon is known for its problems and people are more hesitant to come here because of the national and regional instability. What is your outlook for tourism this year and for 2015 and how does it compare to the last couple of years?

Tourism and stability go hand in hand. People would rather go to a nice place with stability, than to paradise, where there is instability. Lebanon is a very beautiful country. It has everything to attract a lot of tourists from everywhere, but when you have kamikaze suicide bombers, it is difficult to convince people to come. There is instability all around us. Political instability also abets sectarian instability. It's time for the politicians to get together and find a solution. I don't think this will happen easily. They are so corrupt. They need to be sent home. We need strong people to control the country; people with values; people who really love this country; people who can bring about peace. Many a times the solution is usually with the warriors. A real soldier is really someone, who wages a war to bring about peace. So we need a strong army that is in control, not an army manipulated by politicians, or an army that has to wait for orders from politicians.

From a business perspective, how have things changed from, say two years ago, in comparison to this year? Are the tourists visiting?
 
We are still at the beginning of the season, so we cannot really evaluate a year or a season, unless we have reached the end of it. If the situation gets better, we can still save this season. If what has started at the beginning of the season continues, then it is going to be a catastrophic season, may be the worst in the last few years.

Nightlife is a big business in Beirut. How does the MusicHall compare to other venues in Lebanon? How do you set yourself apart from places such as Sky Bar?

What we offer is unique. We are not a night club. We offer cultural entertainment. I launched an innovative concept 12 years ago, which is a fusion between culture and nightlife. So the MusicHall is somewhere between a theatre and a night club. This is unique. A lot of people try to imitate it, but it requires a lot of skills in different fields to create what I have created. One has to know about nightlife, but also about music, about artist management, about lighting, acoustics and so on. Someone has to go into details of this matter. I am someone who is obsessed about going into the details of things. I torment people, who work with me, with my attention to detail. I am very picky. I have a mental scanner of sorts. So, when I enter the MusicHall within two minutes I assemble all my people, the managers, people in charge of the bands etc. and I tell them "that is wrong; this should be this way and so on." I don't miss even the smallest of details. So, it will take a long time before someone is in a position to copy the concept behind the MusicHall.

The MusicHall Waterfront has been successful and how is that going for you?

The MusicHall Waterfront, an outdoor venue, is doing really well. It's an outdoor venue that combines the advantage of being outdoors with nothing but the sky above you and the venue as such has a luxurious mix of minute details and the ambience of a five-star hotel, where people are seated on red velvet couches. The floor and the lighting have all been given a touch as if it has a ceiling, but it is really not there. I also like to emphasize on the contrast between the way it looks from the outside and from the inside. From the outside, it has apocalyptic scenery with rusted containers and old olive trees. We didn't kill them; they were already dead when we bought them. From the outside, it's like it is the end of the world and when you enter inside, you discover this oasis of luxury. So the idea is to convey the message that we might be in a troubled area, or in a place that is going back to the medieval times with crazy mad Maxes roaming around us, but we still want to produce, beauty, culture, music, entertainment and nightlife.

That sounds very interesting. We'll have to make sure to go there. What is the type of clientele that the MusicHall attracts?

I never think of creating a show for my clientele. I want to create beautiful shows, eclectic and very diversified shows. This attracts people, who like music. Sometimes we have grandchildren partying with grandparents. Sometimes they don't even know that their grandparents are there and they bump into them at the MusicHall. We have very rich people coming from all around the world. When they are in Beirut, they go to the MusicHall and we have students, who can only afford to drink one or two beers. On the one hand we have this guy, who is opening big bottles of rosé and champagne and on the other there is this guy having his beer. We respect all of them. I am very keen on having this diversity in my clientele. I don't want to be targeting only one profile of socio-cultural background. I like it the way it is. We have very sexy women seated next to veiled women.  We have everything.

 How do you meet the demands of an always changing audience?

The danger of fashion is that it always gets out of fashion. So, everything that is fashionable now will not be in fashion in a few weeks or a few months. So the advantages of not being a fashion victim or not thinking all the time about what is fashionable today, is that we never go out of fashion. So, the MusicHall has been going on for 12 years and it's still fashionable and it will always be there. It's a classical place. And in art as well, the artists, who think of fashion are not real artists; I mean Picasso was never looking for fashion. Or look at people, who created great paintings 500 years ago like Da Vinci or David, for instance. No one can say their art is now out of fashion. Whereas when it comes to people who created fashion in the 70s or 80, no one would be interested in knowing what they are doing now.

When we last spoke to you, you were in the process of expanding the MusicHall in Dubai? What is new on that front?

The MusicHall opened in Dubai in early 2013 and today it's doing very well. It's in the program of all the people, who visit Dubai. It has become a landmark of Dubai's nightlife. From the beginning I was aiming at not making a club for the Lebanese alone in Dubai. I am very happy now to see that 80% of my clientele is non-Arab. 20% is Arab and only around 3% to 4% are Lebanese. So, this is a challenge that I put to myself and I succeeded in doing that in reducing the Lebanese acts to one and Arab acts to two. And we have acts that are appealing to different communities in Dubai. So we have a Russian act, an Indian act and a German act. So, we are doing things that we do not really do at the MusicHall in Beirut, because Beirut is less cosmopolitan than Dubai. The MusicHall in Beirut mainly targets the Lebanese. The people visiting Lebanon will not be bothered to see a lot of Lebanese acts. In Beirut, we have two to three different styles of Lebanese music.

What do you do to accommodate those who are fasting this year?

In Dubai, of course it's illegal to serve alcohol during Ramadan.  Instead of closing, I thought of an innovative concept for Ramadan called Masrah Ramadan, which means a 'theatre for Ramadan'. We serve traditional Ramadan food and sweets and non-alcoholic drinks. On stage, we have different acts from different parts of the Arab world with traditional Arabic music – different styles from Morocco, Egypt, Aleppine Qudud from Syria, even Khaleeji music. I believe in rearranging music by making it very acoustic and not commercial. When it is commercial, it is still commercial music with credibility. It is not cheap music. It is doing really well. It is almost full throughout Ramadan.

Where do you see investment opportunities globally and in Lebanon?
 
I believe that in times of crisis, one should invest. There are a lot of opportunities in big capital ventures in Europe. Any crisis will always come to an end. But I always prefer to invest in prime locations. Due to what's happening in Europe, investing outside the capitals might not be a very good idea. The population is shrinking. So, there is no growth in the number of houses and villages are being abandoned. This is not going to change very soon. There is no baby boom expected in Europe. Investing in Lebanon is very risky, but it could be interesting, because our population is growing. The Lebanese Diaspora is making good money. Every Lebanese wants to have a small house or a piece of land in Lebanon and there is not enough land. Mark Twain had said, "buy land, they're not making it anymore". Lebanon, except for those few kilometers on the sea, is not growing, and it is a good country to invest in. If someone is willing to take risk, because if there is no risk involved, there is no big reward either. So, the rewards are for those who take risks.

 What is your vision for tourism in Lebanon?

The vision for tourism in Lebanon, like I said before, goes hand in hand with stability. No one can predict what will happen with all this turmoil that is raging around us. Will we be able to stop all this crazy collective hysteria? Will be able to stop all those terrorists coming from far-off places such as Chechnya or Yemen or God knows where, to fight in the Middle East? These are issues that we never faced before. Anyone who is familiar with terrorism will tell you that suicide bombers are the most difficult people to deal with, because they are coming to die. Usually, when you want to stop someone, you say, "stop or I'll shoot", but this guy is here to die. He would not care. He would continue to walk by and shoot him; you are actually exposing the civilians to a big danger, because he will explode. This is very new. The question is: how many of them are there in Lebanon? How many will be able to enter Lebanon? No one can answer this. If you are only speaking about 4, 5 or 10 or 15, we can think of a future investment in tourism or nightlife. But if there are hundreds, no one would go out. I know it is a very pessimistic view, but it is a very realistic view. I really don't know. I ask a lot of officers, friends, but no one can tell. We know that there are more than one million Syrians here. How many of those one million believe in this ideology of death? We can't say.

You are being generous with the one million. Allegedly it's much more than one million. It's very unfortunate.

I believe in what Dostoevsky said about beauty: "beauty will save the world". Culture and beauty can really save the world. If we could expose all those terrorists to culture and beauty; if we could help them to discover this beautiful world; if we could show them all the interesting things that can be created, they would not be such a hurry to go to heaven. A lot of them want to go to heaven, because they think that there are….

Magical mermaids (laughs)?

Or maybe beautiful figures waiting for them. But there are also a lot of beautiful girls here. 

But they want the virgins.

There are a lot of virgins here too. Some of them are good looking as well or they could make an effort to groom themselves well. They can find beautiful virgins here as well and do a lot interesting things here. After all, we are here only for 70 or 80 or at the most 100 years. They don't have to be in a hurry, because time is short anyway and they will go to this place that they want to go. In the meantime, they can enjoy themselves and not harm others and live and let live.

If they could hear what you are saying right now, would this be your message to them?

My message is, those who are really guilty for what's happening are the Super Powers, who manipulate and then they say "we created a monster". You cannot create a monster and then hope that you can go on controlling this monster. The Monster may escape and wreck havoc on us. For them, we might just be collateral damages, but for me it is my life, the life of my friends, my family. They cannot go on creating those monsters and then give us weapons to fight them or feel sorry for having them or issue statements condemning these attacks. They created mujahedeen that became Al Qaida. They indoctrinated or brainwashed those people. They created this form of Islam that never existed before. Islam was known as a religion of tolerance. People living under Islamic rule were able to live very well in the Middle Ages, when the Muslims ruled Al-Andalus, the minorities were able to survive. This form of extremism is a product of American and Western think tanks that created them to fight communism. Now that communism is not here, those people keep on fighting and they destroy everything that moves. They kill everything. They created killing machines and now they cannot deactivate those machines, but we are paying the price for it.

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