BEIRUT: At Lebanon’s national music conservatory, pianos collect dust and classrooms sit empty, making the institution another casualty of an economic collapse that has crippled the public sector and hampered education.

Toufic Kerbage, 65, watched the value of his pay packet and pension evaporate after the Lebanese economy began melting down in 2019, taking the local currency and people’s savings with it. Without family support “I would have starved,” said the music teacher, who began working at the conservatory in the late 1980s.

“It’s difficult at my age to ask for money”, he said from the silence of the conservatory’s branch in Sin al-Fil, a suburb of the capital Beirut. Once on a comfortable income, Kerbage now earns around $70 a month, in a country the World Bank says suffers the highest food price inflation globally. He has been teaching his classes online, battling Lebanon’s “disastrous” internet and spending more than he earns on a generator subscription to get through hours-long daily power cuts.

The state-run conservatory, with several thousand mostly school-aged students and 17 branches around the country, counts prestigious musicians like the composer and oud player Marcel Khalife among its alumni.

But as the economic crisis grinds on, some teachers have quit. Many others have turned to online classes to save on travel costs or teach private lessons on the side to make ends meet.

Published in Dawn, May 8th, 2023