When free improvised music (FIM) first emerged in Europe in the 1960s, its ideals of aesthetic freedom and inter-cultural communication between improvising musicians were accompanied by significant socio-political aspirations. Since then, FIM has spread to different parts of the world, allowing a truly transnational scene to materialize. In his study of FIM, Stanyek argues that “listening is the way identities are narrated and negotiated and the way differences are articulated or […] ‘woven together’” (Jason Stanyek 1999). Utilizing this premise and the perspectives of my informants, this paper will examine the role of Lebanese FIM in stimulating social transformation in post-war Beirut. Lebanon has been a site of political instability and violent conflict throughout much of its modern history due to sectarianism and foreign intervention; this has hindered the creation of a unified national identity. As Burkhalter has shown, contemporary musicians in Beirut exhibit a complex relationship with violence and war, and this is apparent in their artistic work as well as the discourse around it (Thomas Burkhalter 2011). Based on my recent fieldwork in Beirut, I argue that in its appropriated form, this music has taken on meanings unique to the Lebanese post-war context, as evident in the works of FIM musicians such as Mazen Kerbaj and Raed Yassin. I also problematize the extent to which this genre-neutral musical practice may have facilitated post-war transcendence of sectarian and cultural-linguistic barriers, particularly among musicians of the “war generation” who had grown up separated by the Green Line in Beirut during the civil war (1975-1991). Furthermore, I propose that a Lebanese FIM ensemble mirrors Lebanese society in its individualism, anarchism, and lawlessness. However, I argue that the former additionally offers a modified model for social interaction in a post-war context; in fact, Lebanese FIM musicians believe that their musical ideals of listening, inter-cultural communication, and co-existence represent the tools needed in the Lebanese political realm in order to overcome difference, achieve dialogue, and finally move forward as a single political entity.