The day Fox News calledIn 2003,
UTN1 became poster boys for the so-called liberation of Iraq: a
home-grown boy band who loved Westlife, wore Converse and sang in
English. So what happened next?
Stuart Jeffries
The Guardian,
Saturday 27 December 2008
One day shortly after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Hassan Ali answered
the door to his family home in Baghdad. Some strange men were standing
on the doorstep. "I’d never seen anything like these huge armed men in
flak jackets. They were scary. My father was worried they were going to
kill us." The men turned out to be bodyguards for a Fox News crew, come
to interview Ali and the other four members of his band UTN1.
Fox News weren’t the first or last western journalists to visit. During
2003, wave after wave of advancing media troops from Britain and the US
fell on UTN1, each one withdrawing in triumph with the same putatively
sweet story. In the middle of the unremitting bleakness of war, here
was comforting, upbeat news about five cute guys who, inspired by
Boyzone and Westlife, had firmed their abs, modulated their harmonies
and followed a career path comprehensible to us in the west: they had
formed a boy band.
It was an irresistible story. UTN1 wore singlets – like Take That! They
pouted broodingly for the cameras – like Ronan Keating! They sang in
English and wore Converse! They crooned about peace, rather than
detonating themselves at army checkpoints!
Better yet, somehow these plucky guys had managed to imbibe western
popular culture (meaning the Spice Girls, Boys to Men and, just
possibly, Blue). They were a multicultural melange of Muslims and
Christians, Sunnis and Shias – thus pointing the way to the fine
democratic future that Bush and Blair said Iraq would enjoy as soon as
the west had won. In a marvellous piece of cultural imperialism, the
west wrote up these five men – Shant Garabedian (30), Akhlad Raof (28),
Artin Haroutiounian (31), Hassan Ali (26) and Nadeem Hamid (26) – as
Iraq’s only boy band, and a symbol of the country’s bright post-war
future.
The story suggested Iraqis wanted to be like us; and, more, that our
invasion was to liberate people like us from people – devils, really –
who weren’t.
Iraqi culture thus apparently consisted of citadels of western-facing
music and art in an otherwise toxic wasteland. Iraq had one boy band.
It also had just one heavy metal band, we learned, called Acrassicauda,
who had a similar tale of battling Saddam’s censorship to hear the
inspirational tones of Metallica and Napalm Death. If only western
journalists had dug deeper, they might have found Eminem’s spiritual
brother in Mosul, Iraq’s answer to Tracey Emin in Basra and an
underground network of Harry Potter nuts extending from Kurdistan to
the Gulf.
Only one problem with UTN1’s story as it appeared in the west. It
wasn’t true. "We weren’t a boy band," says Hassan, who is UTN1’s
guitarist and singer. "That was just a handle for the western media."
"We formed just before the millennium," recalls keyboardist
Haroutiounian. "We wanted to do something unique in the Arab-speaking
world: writing and performing our own songs in English." Their
ambitions were written into the band’s name: UTN1 stands for Unknown to
No One. "We were very influenced by Boyzone and Westlife. I was
fascinated by the Spice Girls."
Why, for the love of Mel C, why? " We liked the harmonies of singing
together in these groups. Each singer had a different line," says
Garabedian. "In Arabic music there is no such harmonising group
singing; it’s usually just one vocalist. We really wanted to do what
they did, but with our twist. Yes, we were inspired by western pop
music, but that was never all we were."
How did UTN1 feel about being made into poster boys for the liberation
of Iraq? "The media interest was an opportunity for us at the precise
moment when there were no other opportunities for us as musicians and
the future for musicians in Baghdad looked – as it has indeed proved to
be – very bleak," says Hamid. "We didn’t see ourselves as poster boys:
we saw ourselves as musicians struggling to carry on our careers in
very difficult circumstances."
But the band had previous in pursuing dubious-seeming opportunities.
They once wrote a song celebrating Saddam Hussein’s birthday; it was
commissioned by a radio station run by his son Uday. It’s not entirely
clear to me whether they were exploiting or exploited. "Let me explain
how that happened," says Artin Haroutiounian with a grin. "We wanted to
be the next U2, and we thought it was possible if we sang in English."
So the band wrote a love song that they wanted broadcast on the Voice
of Youth, an English-language radio station in Baghdad.
VoY agreed to play the song, but on one condition: UTN1 would have to
write another commemorating the birthday of Saddam.
"We wrote the song in three days!" says Raof. All five chuckle over
this memory as if it were just one of those crazy things one has to do
in showbiz, like Take That wearing nipple-gaping tops to titillate
pre-pubescent girls in the early 1990s. Didn’t you have qualms? "We
wanted our record played," says Haroutiounian, staring me down. Their
song included the following lines: "All bells let them ring/ As we all
will sing/ Long live dear Saddam." "They told us we had to use the word
‘Saddam’. Otherwise we probably wouldn’t," Haroutiounian says. VoY
played it incessantly, but only spun their love song once.
UTN1 went on to make an album of songs in English, funded by Alan’s
Melody, the only shop selling imported CDs in the Iraqi capital. Ali
says: "In Saddam’s Iraq there was no satellite TV, no internet, not
much access to the outside world, so [the shop’s] influence was vital."
They sent copies of their CD to record companies in London, says
Haroutiounian. "It is a capital of the musical world and we wanted to
go there." But it wasn’t to be. It was now late 2003 and the dictator
whose birthday UTN1 had been obliged to celebrate in song had been
swept from power and their homeland was being razed. "None of us had
passports and getting new ones in wartime was impossible. It would have
taken a year and a half."
As a result, the boys contemplated giving up music. Handily, while
working for an import-export company, Garabedian met an American
businessman called Larry Underwood whose Laudes Corporation was
operating in post-Saddam Iraq. After hearing the CD, Underwood, who saw
commercial possibilities of Iraq’s first ever international pop group,
decided to invest in them and so arranged for his new charges to go to
Jordan. Once in Amman, the members of UTN1 successfully applied for a
UK visa at the British embassy. As a result, they spent seven months in
London in 2005 and 2006, learning to dance, sing and finesse the
buffing of their six packs in the manner deemed requisite by UK style
gurus. "It is a great city and we want to go back there sometime," says
Haroutiounian. "Yes," agrees Raof, "we never did go on the London Eye."
Seemingly UTN1, funded by an American and groomed by Brits, was being
moulded to became even more western than before. Ali, who not only
plays guitar, but also oud on some UTN1 tracks, denies this: "Yes, we
perfected that kind of boy-band style, but our Iraqi identity is
clearly in the music." The band also uses the joza, a violin-like
instrument which Hassan describes as having "its own special scale of
sadness". You can hear it on their first single called While We Can. In
the song’s video (available on YouTube), children carry wooden guns
which they symbolically drop at the end. "It is about stopping war,"
says Haroutiounian. "That is what we believe in."
Once their UK visas ran out, UTN1 settled in Beirut. Why the Lebanese
capital? "It is impossible to make music in Baghdad. We are musicians,
so we are in Beirut," says Hamid. "If we were freedom fighters, we
would be in Baghdad."
Only one problem: they moved to Beirut in 2006, shortly before the
Israeli-Lebanon war broke out. "War seems to follow us," says
Haroutiounian. UTN1 withdrew to Amman, returning to Beirut only after
hostilities ceased.
They remain exiles in Lebanon. Do you want to go home? "We go back to
Baghdad occasionally," says Hamid, "and we would like to play a concert
there, but it is not clear whether that would be too risky. As for
living there – yes, perhaps, sometime, though who knows when?"
What do your families make of your chosen careers? "When we started
some of them thought it was crazy for us to try to make our livelihoods
in music. It just didn’t happen. But now we’re successful, we hear less
of this," says Ali. All five prefer not to discuss their families who
still live in Baghdad.
"One day," says Raof, "we hope to return to Baghdad. We want to set up
a music school there, or a music store, or do something for our
homeland. Iraq has too little music these days. We have been away for
too long and we have so much to give back."
We’re sitting in the new offices of UTN1’s management company in
central Beirut. From the fourth floor window one can see not just the
Mediterranean, but also gridlock reportedly caused by a Hezbollah
rally. Outside a muezzin is vying with the jackhammers and construction
cranes as he summons the faithful to prayer at the Al-Omari Mosque.
Beirut’s city centre is being rebuilt. Only in Shanghai have I been
more overwhelmed by the omnipresent sound of construction. This, I say,
to UTN1, is what Baghdad will sound like in a happier time. All five
giggle obligingly but none comments.
Instead, they tell me about their latest career move. Last year they
decided to start singing in Arabic, recording a single called Jamila,
which means beautiful. "It was number one across the Middle East," says
Haroutiounian proudly. Why was it a success? "Because we sang Arabic
but with western-style harmonies. There is nothing like it in the
world. It blew people’s minds." It did too: if you consult UTN1’s
MySpace page, you’ll find encomia from around the world.
Hassan Ali tells me they have already recorded an album of six English
and six Arabic songs and their management is waiting for the right time
to release it. "Our hope is to heal the wounds between east and west,
to spread a message of reconciliation."
Are you a political band? All five shake their heads. "We always wanted
to show that something good can come out of Iraq," says Haroutiounian.
"We are three Muslims and two Christians. We show how things are
changing in Iraq." I notice that on the band’s MySpace page, Nadeem
cites Robert Fisk’s The Great War for Civilisation: the Conquest of the
Middle East as one of his favourite books. "I will remove that
reference. I am not sure that I trust his politics, having now finished
the book."
Are you happy the British are leaving? "We’re glad that the withdrawal
shows that Iraqi police and soldiers can now look after their own
country," says Hamid.
What would you be doing if you weren’t successful in music? "I have a
qualification in agriculture so I would be a farmer," says Garabedian.
"I have a degree in chemistry, so I would be working for a
corporation," says Ali. "I would be a porn star," says Haroutiounian
who, I think, isn’t taking my question seriously. "I would be his
assistant," says Raof. "I studied biology," says Hamid, "but I don’t
see myself in a lab coat."
It’s all smiles until Hamid adds: "Actually your question is
impossible. None of us can imagine what we would have done. It’s hard
enough to know what you’ll be doing in two weeks’ time if you’re an
Iraqi. It’s too dangerous to imagine the future. Hassan couldn’t have
been an industrial chemist because for him to step outside his house in
Baghdad would have been suicide. Shant couldn’t farm – it would have
been too dangerous. And Art is Armenian so he would have been abducted
by some sect. Normal dreams weren’t available to us."