Why a DIY spirit can enrich the live music scene in Abu Dhabi

Why acts such as the Kenyan group Just A Band, who performed at New York University Abu Dhabi, need to be encouraged.

Just A Band performed at New York University Abu Dhabi on April 28. Courtesy Harshini Karunaratne

Expats are all too often banging on about what they miss about their home countries. But my personal bugbear with life in Abu Dhabi isn’t based around the scorching weather, bad driving, or even the unavailability of obscure condiments. I miss seeing small bands play in equally poky venues. My name is Adam, and I’m a gig-a-holic.

All of which meant that I gladly seized this week’s rare opportunity to get up close and personal with some aural entertainment of the non-covers-act variety in the capital, when the Kenyan group Just a Band played at New York University Abu Dhabi. Their interesting brand of good-times Afrobeat-infused pop rock was certainly a shot in the arm – and the ears.

In my previous life as a ­jobbing freelance music-and-culture journalist in the United Kingdom, I spent 10 years living in Cardiff. I originally gravitated to the Welsh capital for two reasons: first, because of the lack of cultural opportunities in my hometown, Gloucester; second, two friends had moved to South Wales for university and I happened to be in a noisy rock band with them. The latter led to me becoming part of a collective of idealistic gig promoters, who decided we were fed up with the bands we loved leaving Cardiff off their tour schedule. The only solution? Do it yourself. And do it we did, putting on shows for more than five years, spanning Japanese rock bands to American rappers to British dubstep DJs; from ­hundreds-strong sold-out crowds in established venues through to a 30-capacity spoken-word gig in an arts centre attic, with a good few half-­empty rooms and fingernail-gnawing financial losses in between. It wasn’t about money, but creating something to entertain ourselves, our friends and like-minded souls in the city.

When I moved to the UAE, I had grand ambitions to take what I’d learnt halfway across the world and transplant it into whatever “scene” I found here. But when I landed in Abu ­Dhabi, there was no scene to speak of; nothing to plug in to and get ­involved with, beyond staid ­concert recitals, club PAs and the enormodome concerts on Yas Island.

Why is that, I've found myself wondering sporadically for the subsequent four years. Is it the musical taste of the ­general populace, who'd rather hear hoary rehashings of Sweet Child o' Mine or Chelsea Dagger than new, original music? Possibly. The transient nature of life here is doubtless a factor, too – few people are prepared to try to build a scene; the thinking probably being why risk blowing your nest egg when you won't be living here by the end of the decade? Slightly less avoidably, licensing issues don't encourage the use of more ad hoc spaces for shows, either. It's a shame, but finally it seems a few brave types are flying in the face of this general apathy. A beacon of light in the barren gigging landscape.

Dubai’s underground rock scene is testament to the fact that these sorts of exploits are possible, even in isolation – one of the most memorable nights I’ve spent in the UAE was watching the American “flower punks” Black Lips lay waste to Bur Dubai’s insalubrious Music Room venue a couple of years back, as dozens of music lovers danced and crowd-surfed the night away.

At NYUAD, it was heart-­warming to see that a couple of hundred people of all ­nationalities were also yearning for original non-household-name musicians to visit the capital. The multiculturalism was highlighted when Just a Band’s frontman Bill Sellanga called out to various countries between songs – Africans, Americans, Arabs and Jamaicans in the crowd all cheered their home soil being referenced, while there were plenty of European faces, plus onlookers from South, South East and Far East Asia.

Naturally, in the face of a dearth of interesting events, there’s a danger of ­patronising any old rubbish in the hope of pushing the scene forward. And that was brought into focus midway through Just a Band’s set, when a ragtag bunch of NYUAD students and associated amateur musicians christened “the Bandits” joined the band onstage to play a couple of songs that amounted to a fairly ­unfocused jam session. Although the additional bodies were clearly accomplished players, the platform of playing to a healthy crowd was rather wasted, with a lack of artistic inspiration to match their musical chops.

But that’s of less importance. What needs to happen now is for people to take the ­metaphorical ball that NYUAD has kicked into the scene and run with it. And if that happens in a sustainable way, the capital’s cultural fabric will be richened infinitely more than it is by flying in musical megastars for money-spinning one-off shows.

Adam Workman is a production journalist at The National.