That Fairuz has a new album out at all might come as a surprise to many. Apart from 1988's Kifak Inta (How are you?), all she produced in the last decade was a re-rendition of songs by her deceased husband, Assi, titled simply Ila Assi (To Assi). When she appeared at the Baalbeck Song Festival last year, with star billing, fans were disappointed that she mimed to a backing tape. Too much dance and movement, critics said. She's been written off, though in the subtlest of ways--today's stars of Arab satellite TV and their producers talk of her as some sort of goddess of modern Arabic music, a legend that is no longer with us.

If the received wisdom has been that Fairuz is over the hill, she could have made no better response to critics than her new album Mish Kayn Hayk Tikuun (That's no way to be). It mixes the various musical styles that have characterized Fairuz's long career: the traditional Arabic ensemble pieces that she used to perform with her late husband, Lebanese folk tunes, and the unique Arabic jazz compositions of her son, Ziad Rahbani. The result is an album that is outselling everyone else, without the benefit of the video clips that have made huge stars of people such as Nawal Al Zoghby, Samira Said and others.

Take "Uhibbu Min Al Asmaa" (The names that I love), based on a piece of poetry attributed to Qais Ibn Al Mulawwah, as in Qais of Qais and Laila, the Romeo and Juliet of early Arabic poetry. With music composed by Mohammed Mohsen, the song features an absolutely authentic range of classical instruments such as you rarely hear these days from major singers.

These same instruments meander through Ziad Rahbani's compositions. Jazz is the usual epithet applied to his music, but, in fact, it's hard to categorize the songs of Ziad and Fairuz at all. Each piece is so non-dramatic and understated that it seems to melt into the next. Sometimes Fairuz sounds like she's speaking more than singing, so effortlessly does she pull off the melodies. She's going against the trend of the moment for the bombastic and melodramatic, the dominant style these days even for respected singers like Kazem Al Saher and Majida El Roumi. The cliché "timeless" seems as appropriate a description as any for this album.

Mish Kayen Hayk Tikuun isn't only a clever exercise in playing around with musical genres. "My patience is running out, young boy, from this nervous atmosphere/Don't you understand Arabic? I'm at the end of my patience," sings Fairuz in "Daq Khilqi" (End of my patience), written by Ziad. "You find it easy to lie in front of everyone/You promise that you will change, but the hope is still slim/Yesterday I found out that you'd been looking in my things and opening them." Ziad Rahbani spouting off at a young child? Perhaps not. Apparently he's talking about the state of the Arab world today and the breach between its ruling elite and the ordinary citizen.

Traditionalists worried about the future of Arabic music in the face of the satellite TV nymphets will be cheered that the torchbearer of the Arab musical heritage has made this album. You might wonder why this matters. Surely there's enough room for everyone.

But it is video clips that have made a number of today's stars who they are. Yet even so, the tastes of the masses in music can be remarkably impervious to the offerings of the officially-sanctioned mainstream. And every so often, someone like Fairuz comes along with an indisputable slice of "authenticity" and outsells all. She is the antithesis of the West's MTV-driven pop-rock music culture that most of the Arabic pop industry is emulating.

Source:
Cairo Times