The Beauty in Chaos- An Interview with Bliss

by Ridita Manzur

Through political turmoil, Israeli airstrikes, and foreign military intervention, Lebanon has been living through an increasingly chaotic era of its history. For most Canadians, this is where the story of Lebanon and other Middle Eastern and North African countries ends. As tragedies. 

However, this perspective is only a part of the picture. Despite the chaos, Lebanon still thrives and blooms with its unique and vibrant music scene. I had the privilege of sharing this perspective through an interview with Julie Abou Kasm, lead singer and bassist of the Beirut based grunge band Bliss. 

Bliss started as the meeting of three students, Julie, Rebal, and Bob in the music room at the American University of Beirut. 

“In our first year of uni we met in AUB in the practice room and we would just play covers with random people. People would come and go. But it was always just me, Rebal, and Bob. We played casually in the AUB practice room for two years in the before we made the band.We started the band when everyone graduated and we were in our fourth year.”

The three of them each contribute in different ways to the band. When asked about the division of labour in the song writing process, Julie said “I actually write the melodies at home on the guitar or keyboard. Rebal, the guitarist, often has a riff in his mind, he’s always playing the guitar. Back when Bob, our drummer, was with us we would just sit in the university and just jam. And I would just say whatever I had in mind or whatever I had written down. And that’s how the songs came together. We had no orchestration or production; they were just jams that came together. Which I think really works because each person has their own spotlight.”

The band’s emergence to the scene is relatively recent, with their debut EP “You Should Quit Your Job And Play Outside (With Me)” only having been released in 2024. However, they have already managed to distinguish themselves. The music alternates quickly between hazy and softly melancholic to rough and dirty. Bliss evokes feelings of adolescence and the confusion and sadness that often comes with young adulthood.

“Our sound is different from the regular grunge or shoegaze, because of what the three of us bring. I mean, we’re all born and raised here in Lebanon and there's a lot of chaos around all the time. But I think a very significant part of our culture is hope and calmness in this chaos. So I feel like our sound is chaos with little strands of hope in between,” she says. “So when you’re listening to our songs they’re fun, they’re love songs, they’re romantic songs, they’re nostalgic, but they’re also mean hope and chaos at the same time. This is how we were raised. So much is going around us but we still have so much time to party, go out with friends, go on dates, dance. That’s just us, as Lebanese people.”

The music Bliss creates is baked in Lebanon. The conflicting sounds, the energy, and the melancholy speak from the depths of their experiences living in the Middle East. “There are a lot of artists in Lebanon I really look up to. But just Lebanon in general is a huge inspiration to me. Most of the songs are either about friends leaving or the country falling apart. It's a really toxic relationship but you gotta stay. I just can't leave. I love it so much I don't want to leave.”

I asked Julie more about the process of recording and producing music in Lebanon and the challenges that come with it. She discussed the difficulty of finding recognition in a small country without access to large record labels and festivals. Many artists in the MENA region and other countries outside of the first world often quit because of low coverage and support. 

“Here in Lebanon, you can’t just wake up and go to a studio. We have no studios and the government doesn’t really care a lot about the arts or the fine arts in general. Because we’re just a bunch of college kids, we have no money at all. So it was super hard for us to find a producer and a sound engineer and someone to record our songs in Lebanon. Luckily we found a great studio called Tunefork Studios, and this studio has been around since 2006. And the founder is actually our producer, Fadi Tabbal. He’s an amazing producer and he is the one that pushes a lot of Arab artists to take the step and put new music out there.” 

When asked to elaborate on Tunefork Studios and their impact on the Lebanese music scene, Julie had nothing but kind things to say. 

“Tunefork studios is a great studio and you should all follow them. The bigger they are and the more recognition they get, the more local artists get recognition. Whatever they get they give back. It is very important to recognize Tunefork for all their hard work. After the Beirut explosion in 2020, Tunefork worked very hard providing instruments for all the musicians who lost their instruments during the explosion. They've also raised so much money for the Lebanese people when the war happened. If it wasn't for them there wouldn't be a scene.”  

Tunefork Studios does the work to give Lebanese artists a voice and a space to express themselves and to turn the music from their minds and dreams into reality. Julie told me about the love of music that was passed down from her father and the cd’s he would send her when he travelled for work outside of Lebanon. She told me about her childhood dreams of being like Hannah Montana, dressing up as her every Halloween. 

Bliss was built from the ground up out of the minds of a small group of friends who loved music. Despite the struggles and the chaos of Lebanon, Bliss, Tunefork Studios, and the countless other independent musical acts shine as a beacon of hope in the Country. Lebanon is packed to the brim with creative people with dreams and brilliant ideas. Music is passed down from mothers and fathers listening to cd’s with their children. Music lives and breathes in university students experimenting with sound and melody until the sun rises again.