Welcome to a new Episode of the Tarab 3arab Podcast! Episode 19 "Music and Fate in the Jeita Grotto", with an eminent figure in the world of electroacoustic music, french composer François Bayle. What Happened in 1969, in the Jeita Grotto in Lebanon? Something very special indeed. A concert in the Cave. Why? How? Through a very unlikely turn of events, the lives of the great Speleologist Sami Karkabi, and then. director of the Groupe de Recherche Musicale François Bayle coincided, and brought first a one of a kind musical event, a world premiere in that regard: an electronic music concert inside the Jeita Grotto, through a remarkable effort from the National Counsel of Tourism in Lebanon, and more importantly, through the aid of fate. François Bayle's avant-garde music was the main attraction on January 11th and 12th, which then brought Stockhausen in November of the same year to have his Stimmung performed. We can attribute to a “non-Western” childhood, to a more or less nomadic and mainly self-taught musical training, his natural adaptation to the problematic nature of experimental music, especially in the situation of the 60s, a generation in which F.B. takes place in his beginnings as a composer. Head of the GRM (Musical Research Group) in 1966, first with P. Schaeffer (ORTF Research Department), then within the INA (1975-1997), it is through these organisms with an original destiny that F.B brings together and constitutes the elements of his experience, acquires and develops his personal techniques of an acousmatic sound profession. Leaving the GRM in 1997, François Bayle set up his own digital audio and multiphonic workshop: Studio Magison where he now devotes himself completely to research, writing and composition. At this musical premiere of Jeita, President Hélou, whose interest in the realization of Sami Karkabi's project is known, was represented by Mr. Pierre Gemayel, Minister of Tourism. Among the foreign personalities invited by the National Tourism Council Mr. Georges Gorse, former French Minister of Tourism, Prince Thibaut, son of the Count of Paris, Mr. Pierre Lyautey, the Duke and Duchess of Ba- dajoz, the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess Karl Zu Schwarzenberg, Princess Jean de Broglie, Prince Albert Zu Eltz, Countess Cecily Salm, Count Jacques de Ricaumont, etc.