A wealth of insight.
Six years ago, an explosion in Beirut reverberated around the world.
Since, Jack Quigley has released a tribute to those who were involved.
Now, Jack sits down with Happy to discuss his influences, sound, and lifestyle.
Keep on reading to find out more about his single ‘Wedding in the Sky’.
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HAPPY: What are you up to today?
JACK QUIGLEY: I’ve worked at the Wilderness Society for 10 years, and right now is a critical time: the Victorian election is just months away. Sadly, nature in Victoria is being systematically f*cked over.
Forests are still logged under the radar. National parks are being defunded. Scientific institutions abolished. Wildlife extinctions loom. Ferals running free. This is a 40 year campaign. It’s messy, but we’re keeping track and pushing back.
HAPPY: Tell us a little bit about where you live, what do you love or not love about it?
QUIGLEY: I live in Naarm/Melbourne, and I love the gum trees. I love walking the streets with our kelpie, Hector, having a chat to folks and finding a tree to admire.
I like to think about how long it has been standing there, doing good for everyone around it. It relaxes me and connects me to my place.
HAPPY: You were living in Beirut when ‘Wedding In The Sky’ started coming together. What stayed with you most from that time?
QUIGLEY: Beirut is one of the world’s most ancient cities, and you can feel it as you walk around. Phoenician, Roman, and Greek ruins sit amid a modern urban cityscape, scarred by war and collapse.
There’s a lot to absorb: the Mediterranean Sea; jasmine gardens growing along the footpaths; the bustle of fruit and vegetable sellers; shisha and coffee steam, and the colourful, expressive Lebanese mix of Arabic, French, and English.
HAPPY: When Naji El Ali first told you about Sahar Fares and Gilbert Karaan, what was your immediate response to their story?
QUIGLEY: “Her DNA doesn’t exist anymore” was what Naji told me.
My response was attentive silence, paying my respects and support to Naji who was there on 4 August 2020 at 6:07 pm when the explosion ripped through his city and his community.
HAPPY: This is such a deeply personal story to step into as a songwriter. How did you make sure you were treating it with the care it deserved?
QUIGLEY: It takes time and trust to consider things deeply and make the right decisions.
It took four years to write this song, and I’ve spent years studying Arabic language, and working in community organisations and charities dedicated to truth and justice. Naji taught me the Lebanese Arabic blessing, “عرسك بالسما أحلى” (ʿersak b-samā aḥla), which literally means, “Your wedding is more beautiful in heaven.”
It became the origin of the song title, Wedding in the Sky because this ordinary phrase takes on an extraordinary meaning. We chose it because it roots the song in a universal human tradition of love and blessing, while also carrying a double meaning relating to injustice.
This allowed us to hold both the catastrophic failure of the state to protect its people and the enduring human aspiration for love and the human need to keep living. To me, this is the unique power of art: its ability to transform horror into beauty, and to “make special.”
HAPPY: The song feels incredibly restrained despite carrying a lot of emotion. Was that something you were conscious of while writing and arranging it?
QUIGLEY: The word “honour” feels most appropriate. After Naji and I mapped out the song’s core narrative, the other artists and I crafted the music and lyrics with respect, to honour the experience of 4 August 2020.
This follows a long tradition of honouring people in Martyrs’ Square, Beirut’s historic central public square.
I feel that the word “martyr” is understood differently in English, even though it comes from the same root meaning “to witness”. English can seem to lack some of the reverence the word holds in Arabic and this is why I highlight it. For me, a martyr is someone innocent or righteous who has witnessed the ultimate transgression: the passage from life to the afterlife.
In Wedding in the Sky, we honour martyrs such as Sahar Fares, and others who, as paramedics, firefighters, and civil-defence workers, put their bodies on the line so that we may live. In every city and every place all around the world they are heroes and we all owe our lives to them.
HAPPY: What did Noha Fekry and Elf Tranzporter bring to the track that changed or expanded your original idea?
QUIGLEY: Noha Fekry and Elf Tranzporter are both exceptional artists who brought decades of skill and experience to the Wedding In The Sky.
They were able to hold these enormous human and moral themes with delicacy and reverence, making my original ideas more brilliant through their contributions.
This is the theme of my entire project and the meaning of Anarcho-Pop: collaboration and beauty. Noha Fekry is a highly celebrated Egyptian singer, considered one of the finest singers in Egypt today.
In her contribution, she transformed my clumsy attempts at Arabic lyrics into powerful poetry about human justice, as heard in the final chorus:
يا بلدنا نحنا النور
O our country, we are the light
نضوي العتمة نضوي قبور
We light the darkness; we light the graves
فينا محبة تبني جسور
With our love, we build bridges
وبأغانينا نداوي كسور
With our songs, we heal what is broken
عايشين قصتنا بالجنة
We live our story in heaven
In contrast, MC Elf Tranzporter’s lyrical style is more detailed, human, political, and time-bound. His poetry gives voice to Gilbert, the widower:
Like a horror movie, barely can describe
Sirens blaring loud, realised I’m still alive, so rise
Helping out the injured, trying to find my lover
Praying she survived this day so we can live another
HAPPY: Upstream Trilogy is a huge undertaking, 52 musicians, eight languages, four continents. Where did the idea for something on that scale begin?
QUIGLEY: In 2020, as COVID-19 began to spread, I was at Warnayaka Art Centre in Lajamanu, on the northern edge of Australia’s Tanami Desert.
It is a remote place, and I was there as a guest of the Warlpiri people, a community I have been fortunate to visit many times over the past 15 years. It is a connection that Elf Tranzporter and I share.
In the afternoons, I made music for fun with local musicians from Wampana Band. The top 3 of those tracks will be released later as part of the Upstream Trilogy.
This collaboration reignited my love for music. COVID was a time of isolation and reflection, and I began thinking about my life and what I wanted to do with it. I was reading the wisdom from those at the end of their lives who say “do not die with regrets.” Taking my life savings I thought I would combine my two loves of music and language.
This work became the Upstream Trilogy, a 27-track, four-continent project created with 52+ musicians across twelve studios and sung in eight languages.
HAPPY: Has working across so many different countries and cultures changed the way you think about songwriting or collaboration?
QUIGLEY: The title Upstream Trilogy comes from the River Story, which I learned from my charity work: “There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.”
For me, artists like journalists or researchers, are the scouts in the story who go upstream: we seek out truths about the world and bring them back, so that people can better understand and act to make the world more beautiful and just.
This is the foundation of what I call Anarcho-Pop: music that fuses the accessibility of pop with collaboration, for a world on fire.
It is human-made collaboration, not chaos. Like, if there is a fire, the person with firefighting expertise takes the lead; once the fire is out, that authority dissolves.
In the same way, each artist leads when the work falls within their domain, whether rhythm, harmony, story, mix, or world-building, and then steps back to allow someone else to serve the song in the way they can best.
These days people ask: Is art dead? No, art is not dead. But it is being extracted by “AI vampire” systems trained on work taken without the consent of the artists who make culture possible.
Campaigns such as Save Our Arts demonstrate how artists are pushing back against exploitation, chronic underfunding, and the growing pressure that AI places on creative labour.
HAPPY: What’s next for you, and what are you most excited to share from Upstream Trilogy?
QUIGLEY: What’s next is Sailing, out on 4 September 2026.
Sailing features a debut from Colombian MC Juan Pablo Ramírez in deep-voiced Spanish raps sitting over an unusual 26/8 time signature, grouped as six pulses of three followed by four pulses of two. This additive structure gives the track a flowing, propulsive feel.
We recorded it at Nacion Funk Studios in Barcelona with an incredible group of musicians: Biel Solsona, Ferran Puertas, Eudald Font, Vernau Mier, and myself, alongside Argentinian vocalist Estefa Silvera.
Sailing was produced by Stefano Pizzolato and mixed and mastered by Grammy-nominated engineer Nick Herrera.
HAPPY: What makes you happy?
QUIGLEY: I am happy when I am outside. Listening to the warble of the magpie and the scent of the eucalypt. There is an outdoor gym in my local park. That is my sanctuary.
