went to a concert in jerash, a city 1 hour (or 45 min when you have a taxi driver that is not afraid of the law - the ride over was excellent: arab music cranked up way high and watching city being stripped of its buildings until it stood naked in its natural desert state), outside of amman, where i have been staying. jerash is the site of the fairly well-preserved, considering the earthquake that it endured, ruins of the greco-roman city. we drove past young kids selling trinkets at stoplights and other sights of poverty. it made me realize how well-off amman is compared to the rest of jordan and opened my eyes to the different layers of the social strata in this country. this nancy ajram concert was part of the larger jerash music festival. i had recently heard about her through wiki-ing arab idol following the victory of the palestinian singer mohammed assaf, who has been creating great waves throughout the arab world. we got there fairly early, but it was a bit too late to explore the rest of the ruins. we quickly found the south theatre, where the concert was slated to take place. after having our bags checked, we stumbled around until we found the south theatre, where our bags were checked yet again. the bag checks were gender specific, which I found interesting. the theatre was still fairly empty when we got it, but my god was it a splendid site. the view of the stage from the seats of the roman theatre was one of the coolest things in my life. and later, after the sun had set and a sea of black became the backdrop of the roman theatre, it became even more incredible. i don’t think there is such a thing as “sold out” at concerts. once the concert was in full swing, the place was packed. the energy was great. tons of people – young and old -- dancing and singing. i loved the diverse range of people present at the concert. nancy ajram was great. she’s an arab pop singer that hails from beirut. i couldn’t understand any of the music and eventually it all started to sound the same, but i had been itching for live music and i think the spirit of the place was really good for me. whenever people come together to celebrate their existence through music, i get excited. there was an amazing electric guitarist that had some cools solos. there was a really random element of the concert where kids (all little girls) would be brought up onto the stage. some seemed to be really confused about why they were there. they would spend a good 5 seconds on stage with nancy then after a quick photo, they were swept off the stage by body guards and carried (literally) back to their parents. at one point, a really big kid (some 20 some year old) got to go on stage and was super excited. the highlight of the concert has to be when some random kid had gotten over the wall of the theatre attached to the theatre and got as close as one of the roman columns that decorated the stage before body guards noticed and swarmed on stage to get him the fuck out of there. you go kid. there was a bit of confusion afterwards but then the concert went on as normal. after a bit, the kid was back on stage. i guess he had convinced the guards to let him apologize to nancy. after a quick apology and cheering from the audience, he was hastily led off stage. people filed out quickly afterwards. my roommate and i had made friends with the taxi driver who chauffeured us to jerash, and while we were waiting for him to pick us up, we walked through some of the ruins. there were souvenirs, food, and other trinkets laid out along the colonnade street. had some funny things said to me (e.g. “ni hao,” “welcome to jordan! Welcome to traffic!” “hello, can I show you the moving pillar?”). a lot of people started speaking in gibberish as we passed by them in an attempt to speak to me in chinese. finally, khaleel, our taxi driver arrived. we were quite glad too, it was getting to be a bit creepy once most of the people and even the police started leaving. all in all, incredible evening. can’t believe I got to see a concert at a roman ruin.
outside the theatre
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