Meet The Luthier Of Lebanon

The Luthier Bench Knowledge Base

A film commissioned for Audio Kultur magazine previews the work of a young Lebanese guitar maker, Nicolai Gerebtzoff, as he is set to reveal his instruments for the first time in a make or break moment.

Transcript

00:00This is a make or break moment because I don't really know, I mean the same way that I don't

00:27know what the guitar sounds like until I put the strings on or plug it in. I don't know if I'm gonna

00:33find buyers for the instruments once they're on display. That's how I feel man, that's how I

00:38fucking feel. Amen to that. This one I bought I think in in in 2010, 2010 I bought.

00:56Oh neck is so nice, cool man let's sit down and mess around with this. First when you have a

01:02scene you have only the musicians but you cannot you you cannot have a scene with only musicians

01:08you need the musicians and you need the people that work around them so the it's necessary to

01:14have people like Nick in today's scene. Building with my hands I mean we've got we've got our

01:29senses you know and apart from the five you know main senses of being able to interpret the world

01:35around us we have other ones we have balance and security and you know but making things with your

01:43hands man you're touching on all those senses all of them but it's like this kind of magical thing

01:54man it's got a kind of alchemy to it man when you're manipulating the material around you and

02:02the tools that you have to be able to create something that's greater than the sum of all parts.

02:11This is my bread and butter. I don't have a job. I still live with my parents but I won't go back

02:19to a bar and I won't work some some job where some guy's gonna tell me you know your apron's

02:28folded wrong. I'm not gonna do that. I had an opportunity to have a workshop I put in some money

02:35and I'm sticking sticking this all the way through.

02:44I had two choices and my two choices coming out of my last job were Canada or Lebanon

02:53and Canada there is you know endless tools machinery wood quality I could have easily

03:02done it there but there's a thousand other luthiers over there. Lebanon I could be here

03:09and I could bend some rules.

03:14To truly be able to call myself a luthier there's a there's a big difference between

03:19having a luthier business which is what I'm trying to do and being able to call yourself a luthier

03:25because you don't technically call yourself a luthier until other luthiers are like wow you

03:32know and that's after having built you know minimum 500 instruments and I'm just starting

03:38out with my first few here in Beirut.

03:50I've got two electric guitars right now in the works but guitars you there's so much finesse

03:58behind them you've got to really treat it like it's it's something delicate and you really do

04:03fight with it I mean it's not a it's not exactly a play-doh you know it's not a forgiving material.

04:10I don't follow any specific tradition I don't you know I have my own school of thought and that's

04:17kind of what I what I saw in you know everyone who does something something great is they've

04:22got their own kind of philosophy that keeps me away from limitations I would say.

04:38Go ahead man.

04:41Jesus.

04:46Jesus.

05:08That's cool man I like the sound of it. I collect old guitars and mostly cheap old

05:15guitars yeah and rare guitars and not a lot of people are actually ready to touch them.

05:22The way that I see my shop is probably similar that you see your bar eventually you know my

05:27shop eventually is you go into a like a 1950s barber shop to get your your shit done properly.

05:34What I like is the fact that like people like you are getting their instruments fixed tweaked up

05:42customized whatever it is so that you can be comfortable on that stage and in the studio to

05:48be able to do what you do at the end of the day if we're talking about community and you know making

05:52this whole thing a communal thing and and that we're all working together to kind of make something

05:58bigger it's the musicians that are putting a thousand people in stadiums and stuff it's not me.

06:03The willpower is fine a lot of people are excited and enthusiastic when it comes to starting

06:08things a lot of starting things but what takes it it takes much more than uh

06:15than the first willpower and excitement there it takes a lot of fucking breath man.

06:34This is the kind of shit I put myself in man.

06:38Just getting rid of all the ugly bits gotta make it pretty again.

06:46All this because it didn't work out the paint before man.

06:50Fucking bullshit. I lose my confidence and I regain my confidence whether it's in

06:57my work or it's like I get inspired by seeing something actually happen correctly or to my

07:05standards it's a circular process and I know it's an up and down that I have to ride

07:09same such as with life you know. At the present moment my fear is that I can't do this like I

07:16invested time and money into this and I reached to a point where I'm having doubts about my ability

07:24my skill the outcome of my whole situation like I'm feeling like I'm wasting my time sometimes.

07:30I got the cuts and scars all over my hands uh from from the process and I just keep on going man.

07:43It's a constant letting go you know you spend so much time building an instrument one by one

07:49two by two and then you say goodbye and then someone else loves them for however long.

07:54I've been

08:02in this shop

08:05almost every day except for Sundays since

08:11May 2013.

08:15And this is the first instrument to come out of it.

08:18Guitars you know it's given them a new life I mean before it's the the wind that used to

08:24rustle their leaves and now it's the wood itself rustling the wind to make sound.

08:33It's kind of like reversing the whole process again.

08:47So

09:17do

09:35you

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