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- In many ways, the civil war stunted a previously thriving music industry and impacted the careers of even the most well-known artists. Al-Mounzer, though, was among the exceptions.
By day he would spend his time at Polysound, a recording studio in the basement of an apartment building in West Beirut’s Corniche al-Mazraa, where he put his characteristic sound on scores of progressive albums by the leading pop artists of the time. After dark, he played live in Beirut’s night clubs and restaurants, including a regular gig in the piano bar of the Commodore Hotel, where he entertained foreign journalists covering the civil war.
In the same period, he also released his own groundbreaking “belly dance disco” albums – instrumentals that fused Middle Eastern melody with Western rhythm, putting forward his concept for an entirely original and localised version of disco music.