The music group “Safar”, in Damascus, Syria, on August 13, 2021 afp_tickers
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–This content was published on August 19, 2021 – 05:48
(AFP)
The musical success of the summer in Syria speaks of love and breakup. But more than the lyrics, the popularity of “Ya Weel Weely” (Oh misfortune, my misfortune!) Comes from its clip that humorously reproduces the country’s permanent power outages.
Since its release in late July, the ballad by Syrian group “Safar”, co-founded by singer Shadi Safadi, has garnered more than five million views on YouTube.
When the group of six musicians set out to make the low-budget music video, the main challenge was filming it in the midst of daily power outages.
“Every time I visited one of them (the musicians), the power would invariably go out,” recalls the clip’s director, Yazan Shorbatji.
“So why not film the song and highlight the situation in the electricity sector?” He asks, explaining that he finally integrated the problem into the video using flashlights and rechargeable batteries.
In a country where war, unleashed in 2011, devastated the economy and infrastructure, Syrians’ daily lives are marked by all kinds of hardships, including electricity, with outages that can last up to 20 hours in Damascus, the capital.
The video, about five minutes long, begins in the dark. A hand lights a lighter. Then the pale beam of a flashlight pierces the darkness of the room, dimly illuminating a goldfish in its fishbowl, before settling on the musicians, all dressed in black.
Two hands are seen on a synthesizer, then fingers scratching the strings of a zither. Finally, the singer begins his melancholic ballad with a guttural voice: “Don’t say that my heart is hard and made of stone,” says Shadi.
In another scene, the group is shown worshiping a lamp that has a quivering filament. And in other pictures, it is seen that the instruments and the microphone stand were decorated with various colored lights.
“This video was made with all kinds of LED bulbs and battery-operated lamps. True Story !!!”, reads the end of the clip.
“People liked the lyrics and the music, but the audience was also moved by the clip,” said Wafi al-Abbas, one of the Safar members.
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