Neighbor
to the Moon, Ambassador to the Stars, the legend of today is yesterday's
shy little village girl. The superstar acclaimed by millions as
magical, brilliant, and angelic is our one and only Fairuz.
Born and raised in Lebanon, Fairuz began her musical career as
a teenager. From chorus girl at the Lebanese radio station in the
late 1940s, to critical and popular acclaim from the 1950's to today,
Fairuz is acknowledged not only for her musical talent and contribution,
but also as a cultural and political icon. A symbol of a people,
a heritage, a quest for peace, and of humanity.
During most of her career, Fairuz reflected two other great artists,
Assi and Mansour Rahbani. They wrote the lyrics and composed her
tunes. Today, many of her songs reflect the composing talent of
Ziad Rahbani who is Fairuz's son. Her songs testify to the Rahbani
musical genius, as well as to Fairuz's broad musical background.
As Dr. J. Racy says, "More than just a singer's name, Fairuz is
a concept whose connotations are ethnic and nationalistic, as well
as musical and poetic." Referred to as "The Soul of Lebanon" in
the 70's, Fairuz became a pre-eminent figure, a superstar of current
music in the Arab world. Together, the Rahbani family is both a
school of music and a cultural phenomenon.
For
the girl who loved to sing to her friends and neighbors in the little
village, it was an overwhelming experience when, in 1957, Lebanon's
President Chamoun presented Fairuz with the "Cavalier", the highest
medal ever conferred on a Lebanese Artist. In 1969 a memorial Lebanese
stamp was issued in her name. Meeting royalty, once an experience
she had expected to encounter only in the fairy tales of her childhood,
has become a reality for her. She is routinely welcomed, greeted,
received, and honored by today's world leaders. In 1963, King Hussein
of Jordan presented her with the Medal of Honor, followed by his
Majesty's Gold Medal in 1975. In Brazil, the crowds attempted to
carry her with her limousine. In 1981, while touring in the U.S.,
Senators, Governors and Mayors of various cities honored her. A
Harvard University scholar, Barry Hoberman, even wrote: "Quite simply,
Fairuz is one of the world's nonpareil musicians and outstanding
Artists, an international treasure of the order of Rostropovich,
Sills, Ravi Shankar, Miles Davis, Sutherland, Pavarotti and Dylan."
Her record-breaking concerts at the Royal Festival Hall in London
made headlines worldwide. The Daily Mail wrote: "The box office
was besieged as never before. Tickets changed hands at more than
1,000 Pounds on the black market. Takings reached a record, breaking
the previous best when Frank Sinatra was in town. And who was the
star that packed them in last night? Madonna? Springsteen? Domingo?
Horowitz? No ... FAIRUZ, the top female singer in the Arab world".
Fairuz has headlined at the most prestigious venues in the world
including the Albert Hall, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and Salle
Pleyel, among many others.
One day in 1935, Wadi Haddad moved his wife and two children into
a new home on the cobblestone alley called Zuqaq al-blat,
an old neighborhood in Beirut where the poor of all denominations
have for generations found company and shelter. The Haddad's new
home consisted of a single room on the street level of a typical
stone house that faced Beirut's Patriarchate school.
Several
other families were also living in the house; the residents shared
the kitchen and other facilities. This was a time of migrations
when a family could suddenly appear from nowhere and seek their
next of kin, relatives, or just acquaintances from their own village
who had already arrived in the big city. Wadi (a name meaning "gentle"),
who worked as a typesetter in a nearby print shop, was quiet and
gentle in manner; he was readily accepted by the folk of the neighborhood
as one of them.
The eldest child in Haddad's family was a girl named Nouhad, who
would later grow up to be Fairuz, one of the most famous singers
of the Middle East and a legend in her own time. From her early
childhood, Fairuz displayed a natural flair for singing. Many a
winter night, in neighborhood gatherings, she would surprise everyone
by suddenly bursting out into song. Her family could not afford
to own a radio, the magical commodity possessed by a fortunate few;
it was a vehicle for dreams that, in the houses of the poor, provided
solace and a vague feeling of belonging to whatever was throbbing
out there beyond their reach. She used to sit on the window ledge
to listen to the songs from the neighbor's radio that fascinated
her. Some of the songs that she loved to sing over and over again
in those early days were those by Laila Murad and Asmahan, two Egyptian
women singers famous at that time. She did that as she stood in
the backyard washing utensils, kneading the dough for marqouq
(the Lebanese mountain bread), or helping her mother in the morning.
At the same time, being the oldest, she had to take care of her
two sisters, Huda and Amal, and her brother Joseph. Sharing
things was an article of faith, as it still is among the poor. Once
a week, a woman neighbor would shout to the mother from the window
to send her children over for their bath. She would bathe the Haddad
children with her own and before they would be tucked in bed, the
Haddad girl, lounging on her mattress, would sing for them a song
or two for a good night's sleep.
The father put aside some of his meager income for his children's
education, so Fairuz was able to attend school, where her voice
was immediately recognized as having a unique quality that could
transmute ordinary national hymns into something beguiling. At a
school party one day in 1947, a teacher from the Lebanese Conservatory
heard her and was struck by certain intimation that he had just
made a discovery. This man, Muhammad Fleifel, was looking for new
talents at that time among school children to sing national hymns
for airing on the newly established Lebanese Radio Station. Hearing
the golden reverberations latent within the young singer's throat,
Fleifel tended to her voice with fatherly care. He instructed her
not to eat spicy food, citrus, or anything else that might hurt
her vocal cords. He also cautioned her about singing in high register,
or parts that required a shrill delivery. Later on, he was instrumental
in helping her enter the National Conservatory. Perhaps his most
outstanding contribution is that he taught her how to chant verses
from the Quran according to what is known as tajweed, the
high style of Quranic intonation in classical Arabic.
One day, when Fleifel was presenting a group of songs sung by Fairuz
among others, the head of the music department at the Lebanese Radio
Station, Halim al-Rumi, happened to hear Fairuz at the recording
room and asked to see the girl. After the program was over, a shy,
thin girl came to his office. When he asked her if she wanted to
sing on the radio, she said that she did. He asked her to sing something
for him other than hymns. She thereupon sang Ya Zahratan Fi Khayali
by Farid al-Atrash, and Mawwal by Asmahan. Al-Rumi was deeply
impressed by her voice, which was typically Eastern and at the same
time flexible enough to render a Western mode admirably. She was
appointed as a chorus singer at the radio station in Beirut. "My
wish was to sing on the radio," Fairuz reminisces. "I was told then
that I'd be paid 100 pounds a month (today about $7). To me, this
was overwhelming. But at the end of the month I wasn't fortunate
enough to fill my eyes with a 100-pound note, because of the tax
deductions. It took me a long time to get hold of a 100-pound note
intact."
Her father objected to her going to the radio station at first.
It took a lot of coaxing and some heavy-handed interference by close
acquaintances to convince him. He stipulated that Fairuz was to
be accompanied by her mother, her brother Joseph, or the neighbor's
boy when she went to the station.
This was a period of practice and observation for Fairuz. She closely
studied the style of delivery of each singer in the chorus, and
it often happened that she substituted for another singer who was
delayed or failed to appear. She had a keen artistic sensibility
and a memory so sharp that she was able to learn by heart in two
hours four pages of poetry or five of notation.
Her
first song was composed by Halim al-Rumi, with words by Michael
Awadh. The second one, In an Atmosphere of Magic and Beauty, was
in the Egyptian dialect. Al-Rumi, so excited about the talent he
had discovered, introduced Fairuz to Assi Rahbani, a policeman by
profession and an aspiring composer who was already aware of the
talented new voice and anxious to meet Fairuz.
The subsequent collaboration between the composer and the singer
eventually resulted in a song that was to launch Fairuz for the
first time as a major talent on a popular scale. At first, however,
their efforts were mainly in the area of light, dance tunes. Beirut
was attracting big bands who came from overseas to play tangos and
rumbas to an expanding Westernized segment in the Lebanese capital.
One of these was the Eduardo Bianco band from Argentina. While recording
at the Near East Broadcasting studios, Sabri Sharif, who directed
the music section there, suggested a new experiment hitherto untried
in Eastern music. Fairuz was to sing, with Bianco's orchestra, tunes
originally composed for dancing, like La Compersita and the tango
La Boheme. This took place on October 1, 1951, a decisive day in
the life of Fairuz and the two Rahbani brothers, Assi and Mansour.
They believed that this was the true beginning of the dance-song
in Arab music; only Midhat Assim, an Egyptian composer, had been
experimenting in this direction before.
The watershed song that launched their career was not a dance-song
but a melancholic song called Itab (expostulation). Overnight,
Itab established Fairuz as a major singer throughout the
Arab world. One of the reasons for the song's success was the excellence
of the equipment at the Damascus radio station where the song was
recorded on November 12, 1952. Later a commercial disc was cut in
Paris.
Al-Rumi suggested that she take the stage name Fairuz (which means
"gem" and "turquoise") because her voice reminded him
of a precious stone. At first she thought he was joking, but later
on she took his advice and history was changed forever.
At that time, radio programs went directly on the air and were
not recorded. While waiting their turn, Fairuz and her composer
Assi, by now her constant companion, used to sit under a tree near
a pond in the backyard of the broadcasting studio. Sometimes she
daydreamed, but often they chatted together to kill time. She did
not anticipate a great future for herself as a singer. Rather, her
real dream was to become a teacher. She had said on many occasions
that she would never get married. Brought up in a devout Melkite
household, almost ascetic in her manners and bearing, Fairuz was
typical of many Lebanese young women of her class and age. Many
of the people who have known her tell how they often found her during
a break kneeling in prayer somewhere in the vicinity of the recording
studio.
One
day Fairuz, in passing, told Assi that she did not like the way
he paid attention to a certain girl at the station. This innocent
remark did not go unnoticed. She still kept to herself and persisted
in her obstinate rejection of the idea of marriage. But on a certain
spring day in 1953, while they were practicing together at the edge
of the same pond, under the same tree, Assi repeated an earlier
offer of marriage. This time Fairuz said yes.
They got married in July 1954. At their wedding, large crowds from
Beirut gathered on the summer Sunday afternoon to witness the ceremonies.
To the Lebanese, Hotel Masabki in Shtura, surrounded by aloe trees,
is a dream place that lies in the heart of Lebanon's mountains;
there, right after the wedding, the bride and groom went to spend
their honeymoon.
When the young couple returned from their honeymoon, they moved
into a modern villa in the village of Antilias in the suburbs of
Beirut. On one side of the house lay orange groves and the Mediterranean;
from the other side, one could see cypress woods and mountains.
This typical Lebanese setting contributed to the atmosphere of her
future songs. The first major success on the scale of the entire
Arab world took place one year later, in the summer of 1955, when
Fairuz and her husband were formally invited to the Egyptian capital
to air their songs from the Egyptian radio station. The couple spent
five months in Cairo, then the center of Arab Theatre Cinema and
Song. Every night Fairuz would be introduced to some star she had
previously seen only on the silver screen. Celebrated Egyptian composers
approached her to sing for them, film makers asked her to star for
them, but Fairuz - by now pregnant - politely declined. In her private
moments she would go out to the streets of Cairo and lose herself
in the crowds. Sometimes she would seek a poor juggler who played
his "pianola" on a street corner; "he was an artist
in his own right" she would think to herself. Other times,
she would sit alone wondering what kind of future her new baby would
have. Back in Lebanon, she gave birth to her son Ziad on January
1, 1956. Even while she was spending much of each day indoors caring
for her baby, Fairuz was preparing to move beyond the limited arena
of the recording studios.
In the summer of 1957, she faced an audience in the open for the
first time, standing at the base of one of the six columns that
comprise the temple of Jupiter in Baalbeck. It was the largest audience
that had ever gathered at the Roman temple. Under a crescent moon,
Fairuz, flooded with blue light, began to sing in a calm, confident
voice, Lubnan Ya Akhdar Hilo (O Green, Beautiful Lebanon).
People were spellbound; it was a magical moment. From that day on,
Fairuz would sing and act, at least once a year, in major musicals
such as al-Baalbakiyya (The Baalbeck Woman), a fantasy in
which gods ordain Voice to come to life among humans; Jisr al-Qamar
(Bridge of the Moon), where a charitable fairy makes peace between
parties hostile to each other; and Ayyam Fakhreddin (The
Days of Fakhreddin), the story of a seventeenth-century prince who
struggles to rebuild his country, having faithfully fought for its
liberation. Affectionately referred to as Baalbeck's seventh column,
Fairuz was on her way.
Whereas before her talent had found expression only through the
lyrics and music of the two Lebanese brothers Assi and Mansour Rahbani,
now the most creative poets of the Arab world rushed to compose
lyrics to be interpreted by her voice. The list of those who have
written lyrics for one or more of her over 800 songs includes Omar
Abu Risha, Qablan Mkarzil, Nizar Qabbani, Michel Trad, Sa'id Aql,
Joseph Harb, As'ad Saba, Badawi al-Jabal, Abu Salma, and other contemporary
poets. She has also sung works by Kahlil Gibran, Mikha'il Nu'aimeh,
Elias Abu Shabaka, Harun H. Rashid, and Boulus Salameh, as well
as by such ancient classical poets as Ibn Dhuraiq al-Baghdadi, Ibn
Jubair, and Ayadmur al-Muhyawi. Fairuz's list of composers has expanded
to include Tawfiq al-Basha, Filmon Wahbe, Zaki Nasif, Khalid Abulnasr,
George Daher, Muhammad Abd al-Wahab, Halim al-Rumi, and now her
own son Ziad.
Since
the first time she appeared live before an audience in 1957, Fairuz
has traveled to places that as a child she seemingly could hope
to know only through her grandparents' tales. She has sung at the
ruins of the Philadelphia Amphitheatre in Amman, as well as in Damascus,
Baghdad, Rabat, Algiers, Cairo, Tunis; she has traveled overseas,
reaching out to Arab emigrants in Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires,
New York, San Francisco, Montreal, Sydney, London, Paris, and many
other cities throughout the world. On these trips, Fairuz has been
offered as a traditional gesture of welcome, the symbolic key to
many cities; perhaps the closest to her heart remains the golden
key she received from the Mayor of Jerusalem, which she received
during a private visit there with her father in 1961. Although Fairuz
did not sing during her one visit to the holy city, Jerusalem is
honored in many of her songs.
Yet to Fairuz, all the official acclaim and recognition that she
has received over the years does not parallel the joy she experiences
as she sings when she spots the absorbed attention of a single anonymous
listener in a crowd. To her, singing is not merely a perfected profession,
but a way of life. The Fairuz of today, like the Fairuz of yesteryear,
continues to attend mass in the village church at Antilias. There,
every year, during Holy Week she sings to the devout villagers with
a dedication that perhaps is equaled only by their simple piety.
It is this dedication that consistently refines her talent and continues
to set Fairuz apart in a category all her own amid the chaotic trends
of Middle Eastern music.
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