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.
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MusicTranscript
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