Prodigy will this weekend become the biggest international band to play a concert in Beirut since the end of the country’s internal military conflict.
The Essex chart-toppers are taking their live techno carnival to the battle-scarred capital of Lebanon on Saturday, May 9. A special stage has been constructed in Martyrs Square, which runs through what was known as the Green Line – the combat frontline between the warring Christian and Muslim militias during the civil war that raged from 1975 until the late-’80s.
The area is currently undergoing reconstruction and is surrounded by the remains of Ottoman churches, mosques, and bullet-ridden French style villas originally erected in the ’50s when the Mediterranean city, then regarded as the jewel of the Middle East, was a favourite resort for Europe’s wealthy and connected.
On their current tour, the Prodigy have so far performed in Reykjavik, Moscow, Istanbul, Talin (Estonia), Katowice (Poland) and Prague.
Prodigy’s spokesperson says: “They’ve been playing relatively out-of-the-way places recently. They’ve developed this style of nipping off and playing places where only the locals turn up. They’re in the enviable position of sticking a pin in the map and going where they want.”