Beirut & Beyond International Music Festival, in partnership with Dar El-Nimer for Arts and Culture, would like to invite you to an encounter with Lekhfa, moderated by Abed Kobeissy.

Lekhfa is the creation of Maryam Saleh, Maurice Louca and Tamer Abu Ghazaleh, three artists who have each blazed their different paths through the alternative Arabic music scene with solo albums and acclaimed collaborations. Experimenting and recording together during residencies in Alexandria, Amman, Cairo and Beirut, their collaborative album has been three years in the making.

With Lekhfa, this charismatic trio has given birth to a deliciously off-kilter album of sonic grit and beauty – the perfect setting for the dystopian poems of Mido Zoheir, the band’s ‘fourth member’ and one of the most talented Egyptian poets of his generation.

Channelling the mood of the times, Lekhfa is inspired by the sentiment that suffuses Zoheir’s poems. It’s a potent mix of haunting vocals and a dizzying array of instrumentation - from guitar, slide guitar, synths, beat loops and electronica to ouds, buzuq, mizmar, percussion and harmonium – it’s an album of dark and haunting beauty.