Oakenfest on July 26, 2025. (Credit: Anya Wickremasinghe/L'Orient Today)
Under the oak trees of Lehfed, in the mountains of the Jbeil district, the alternative music festival Oakenfest asks the question, “What if instead of going home after a concert, you had a massive sleepover with everyone there?”That was founder Elsa Saade’s vision in 2013, at just 21 years old, organically born out of the annual camping trip she used to host for her university friends on her family’s land. “A friend of mine asked me if I could invite a musician, and then one musician became eight and then we added a stage and lighting,” explained Saade, recounting how year after year she and her friends transformed a summer get-together into a must-attend event in the alternative scene’s calendar. The result: Lebanon’s only annual camping music festival, with its original “identity of intimacy,” organized by the same group of close...
Under the oak trees of Lehfed, in the mountains of the Jbeil district, the alternative music festival Oakenfest asks the question, “What if instead of going home after a concert, you had a massive sleepover with everyone there?”That was founder Elsa Saade’s vision in 2013, at just 21 years old, organically born out of the annual camping trip she used to host for her university friends on her family’s land. “A friend of mine asked me if I could invite a musician, and then one musician became eight and then we added a stage and lighting,” explained Saade, recounting how year after year she and her friends transformed a summer get-together into a must-attend event in the alternative scene’s calendar. The result: Lebanon’s only annual camping music festival, with its original “identity of intimacy,” organized by the...
'American sponsorship is a guarantee,' says Lebanese-American coordination committee