NLM TOUR 2011: IRAQ

NO LONGER MUSIC TOUR 2011 ERBIL, AINKAWA, DOHUK, SULAIMANI, IRAQ

19.07 – 25.07. 2011

I decided to write this blog now, because on tour, I don’t have time to write, unfortunately, each city in turn. I hope that it will be just as fun and interesting for those who read it (someone reads this?)

On July 19, we flew from Dresden to the town of Erbil in northern Iraq.

People who live there call it, however, not Iraq but Kurdistan because the vast majority of inhabitants are of Kurdish descent.

The morning greeted us with temperatures of 45 degrees Celsius:) Everything would have been cool if it weren’t for the fact that because of cultural reasons, men are obligated to wear long trousers, shoes and shirts that cover the arms So bad sauna:)

The first day we arrived home, our local promoter -named Andreas, who along with his Mexican wife, Ruth

prepared our great Italian dinner;) Multiculturalism is

wonderful;) We also met the on-site team TACO – Wilson, Janet, Susanna, and Victor – great people who live in Turkey and Jordan, and conduct missionary activities in the Middle East. After brief introductions, we ate lunch and prayed together, then different groups went to their host homes.

Adam, Joe, Ge and I stayed with a great family Annamaria, Clayton, and their wonderful daughter, Marianna. Wonderful people who have lived in Iraq for several years and work as missionaries. They previously lived in Egypt and Portugal, where he also engaged in missionary activity. Their daughter, Marianna is exquisite, and in general super sweet.

Marianna is so clever and musical, and we played guitar for some time:)

Our first concert was held in Erbil in the local park. Of course, as

usual, it was not without problems. Since this was the first concert and I was the main sound engineer, a bit of time went by before I got all the equipment.

On the whole tour I used a Yamaha 01V96, TACO table together extensions Behringer, fronts are 2 x12 “QSC page and sub Carvin forced mega severe QSC tip. We had our in-ears, also from TACO. That morning there was a problem with the current, because the light that we got a 1000 Paris 64 and all our security is a 32A current into sound and light. So we could only use four pairs, so as to not overload the current. But it was not a concern. The biggest problem that day was that something was going wrong with the amps for the whole time was a hum and distortion. Every hour, I changed each element of the chain – cable, extension cord, a column – and nothing. Last resort was to pray. And what happened?Throughout the concert the speakers did not deliver a single hum as occurred like during the sound check, and only at the time of preaching by David did the right stack begin to fail, but the same microphone, worked for the speakers on the left.This was proof that the tour will not be easy but we have help from the God!

During the concert, a guy with a knife showed up, who evidently did not like the fact that we are on the spot and talking about Jesus. Funny story. Throughout the concert, people came up to me and asked for pictures. Nice, but it was hard to focus the send and delay, and pose for photos. The translator did not quite understand what David said, so I translated it from English to more English and then he just into Arabic. Then this guy with the knife came and began to threaten us, in the beginning I did not notice the knife and I thought again that he wants to scare us, so I just sent him away; this was the moment when the interpreter explained David’s message. I was so busy and thought he just wanted to take a picture so I told him to go away. Only then I noticed the knife and the guy goes on stage and threatened to Adam … There was a moment of fear, but fortunately in a miraculous way nothing happened.

After the concert, a lot of people have wanted to know

more. Interesting and sad at the same time is that many have asked is who is this Jesus you’re talking about … I see that you need another tour in Iraq, that show people who Jesus is.

Dale took this video from a concert in Erbil:

The second concert in a town next to Erbil – Ainkawa. This is a more modern city, and a few Christians live here and people are more open and modern in their views.

We played in a city park. The venue was quite small so we decided to change the spot where we played so more people could watch the concert.That day everything went much more smoothly. Admittedly a little disturbed by the wind and we had to set up the cube a little later, but otherwise there were no major problems, at least so we thought.

At about 20 minutes before the concert the European to American power converter burned out… No one knows how but it literally blew into smoke. Consequently, a guitar piece fell, but fortunately only fuses had blown. Surprisingly, it sounded as good as the amps:)

After the concert, I took about a hundred pictures with people but there were also interesting conversation.

It looked something like this:

Our time in the vicinity of Erbil was over and we went to Dohuk. 3 hours drive in a minibus was ridiculous. Overall, it was not so bad, perhaps even though the climate was.

Anyway we got there we met a local promoter and a very nice guy who greeted us very nice and took us to the place of the concert.

That day we also ate our first local meal:)

We played at Dream City, surrounded by slides and various entertainment strange things. So we drove a local means of transport:

The stage was huge. A lot of places, unfortunately, our PA had not been designed for playing such big venues so I was a little

dissatisfied with the sound of the day but you can see that the crowd did not care.

People jumped, screamed, and there was even stage diving – and all this in Iraq. Wow.

That day there was a lot of people at the concert, and many went for the fire after concert to find out more and to pray together with David. For such a response was worth the bother in long pants:)

Live report:

The next day we left at 8 am and had 9 hours of driving to Sulaimani. In some conditioned van-sized transporter, with the luggage on the roof and all of our knees were touching.

I forgot to write earlier that entry and exit of the city along the way we had to go through a lot of checkpoints. You show your passport and go, sometimes you get checked longer and searched.

Male soldiers have with them, of course, AK47, generally a lot of people in uniforms with AK47 everywhere. After two days I had already gotten used to it.

Just like the fact that on this day, our driver happened to have loaded Glock, Somehow not in the holster but simply in his trousers, under the bar, as in the foreign films:)

The whole day we spent the drive playing Taboo, and other language games. I’m glad because now I am better at

English taboo. Even with two years and maybe I’ll actually give advice:)

We came finally to Sulaimani, totally exhausted from this little journey. We arrived at the venue and started to have problems … After several minutes it appeared that several days before there were many serious protests over political stuff in the city. We don’t know exactly why, but generally there were riots in Sulaimani and police used weapons and several people were killed. For this reason, local authorities banned the use of microphones and loudspeakers in public places, not to lead to further unrest. For this reason, the show was canceled …

The next day we had a concert in Sulaimani but rather than an outdoor show at another amusement park, it was inside the local cinema / theater / club. Authorities said nothing about concerts in closed places so it was decided – we play!

That day several of us had serious stomach problems. The worst case was Steve, whose performance was questionable due to him almost throwing up. Somehow, however, he played the whole concert. Left the stage several times to drink water but he pushed through. Great respect for him!

Since we played at this theater, I managed to negotiate a deal with the owner, so we had a really nice surround sound.

By adding that to our own PA, there were also effects that gave the impression of being in a huge stadium.

The whole concert very cool. We didn’t have the flaming mohawk this time around because earlier in Dohuk, it almost burned Joe’s head after the flames got too hot, and there was no time to build a new one, but it’s fun. People reacted very lively and very they liked it. Overall, this was the last concert in Iraq, which include these can be successful.

It looked like this:

After the concert we all went to bed tired. Our long trip to Diyarbakir in Turkey was mainly dependent on how much time it will take us crossing the border. But this is already in the post about Turkey:)

More images from Iraq are here: