Fairuz

Nouhad Wadie' Haddad, known as Fairuz ("turquoise" in Arabic), is the greatest living icon of Arabic music at the time of this article's publication, as well as one of the symbols of Lebanon.

Her story and her standing within the local imagination fully reflect the country's ethnic, social and religious stratification. She was born in 1934 into a Christian family, but while her father belonged to the Syriac Church, and was therefore Orthodox, her mother was Maronite, and therefore Catholic. Following her marriage to the musician and composer Assi Rahbani, she converted to the Greek Orthodox faith.

The couple had four children, the most famous of whom, Ziad Rahbani, distanced himself from the Christian faith from a young age, declared himself a communist, and went so far as to publicly support Hezbollah in an anti-Zionist vein, despite it being a Shia Islamist party openly aligned with Iran (the very same Iran where left-wing activists were imprisoned and/or killed by the Ayatollahs' regime throughout the 1980s) — a short circuit of contradictions typical of countries where, given the sheer number of factors at play, the political reading of events is never straightforward.

According to a statement made by Ziad in 2013, his mother too would support Hezbollah: this claim sparked a fierce debate in Lebanon, involving several of the country's most prominent politicians, precisely because of the symbolic role of national unity that Fairuz holds and has always sought to preserve, steering clear of taking sides (indeed, despite being Christian, her popularity is absolute even among Muslims) [note 1].

Consistent with this stance, the singer has never confirmed her son's position and has kept herself out of the controversy.

Fairuz's career is essentially divided into two major periods, of equal importance: from 1953 to 1978, under the direction of the brothers Assi and Mansour Rahbani, the former of whom, as already mentioned, became her husband, and from 1979 to the present day, mainly in collaboration with her son Ziad.

The album under discussion, released in 1979, is precisely the one that inaugurates this second phase and represents a fundamental turning point, as Fairuz frees herself from the artistic hegemony of the Rahbani brothers, which had brought her great fortune and artistic triumphs – think of landmark records such as "Andaloussiyat" (1966) and "Jerusalem in My Heart" (1967) – but which had also tied her to a rigid, tightly defined persona, one she would here begin to break away from, at least in part.

Opening a new chapter, however, doesn't necessarily mean disowning the previous one, and so Ziad structures the tracklist around two radically different styles: the first side of the vinyl features songs still musically connected to Fairuz's previous incarnation, albeit with a substantial thematic shift, while the second side breaks sharply from anything the singer had recorded up to that point.

The entire record is composed and arranged by Ziad, who created two brand-new songs for the occasion and reworked three others he had previously written for other artists. Production is credited to the Lebanese-Armenian Khatchik Mardirian, owner of Chico Records, a historic Beirut record store, and co-founder of Zida, a label launched that very same year, 1979, with the aim of distributing Ziad's work and launching Fairuz's career after her split from the Rahbani brothers.

The tracklist opens with "Habaitak Ta Neseet Al Naoum" ("حبيتك تا نسيت النوم", "I Loved You Until I Forgot Sleep"). The lyrics are by Joseph Harb, one of the most renowned Lebanese poets and a close collaborator of Ziad.

I loved you until I forgot sleep,

my fear is that you'll forget me,

you keep me from sleep and leave me awake,

I loved you, I loved you.

I miss you, but I can't see you and I can't speak to you,

I call out to you behind the streets and behind the windows.

I try to forget, but you stole oblivion,

I thought I had found you, we go back to how it was,

I lost you every time I found you.

My fear is loving you again in the days to come

and fleeing from your forgetting and not looking in the mirror,

you are my prison, you are my prison,

and you are my freedom,

you are the one I hate, and you are the one I love.

I wish I hadn't stayed awake waiting for you to fall asleep

What seems like a simple love song actually introduces a new dimension of Fairuz, more physical and passionate, whereas up to that point the singer had described love stories in a more platonic style, her purity often paired with a virginal, unapproachable image modeled on Mary of Nazareth.

The track follows the maqam Bayati [note 2] and fits within the traditional Arab pop style of the Lebanese school [note 3], with an arrangement entirely built around Arab orchestra, traditional string instruments and local percussion. The rhythm flows fluidly, slowing down and speeding up depending on the moment, but never breaking the underlying structure. After a brief muqaddima (the instrumental introduction typical of Arab music), Fairuz's vocal line unfolds gracefully in her signature style, considered the most refined in contemporary Arab music, often marked by an imperceptible lag behind the rhythm set by the ensemble [note 4]. During the most recurring theme, a choir sometimes enters, supporting and/or replacing Fairuz.

"Baatilak" ("بعتتلك") and "Ana Indi Haneen" ("أنا عندي حنين") are two more love songs, composed respectively following the maqam al-Hijaz and the maqam Bayati. Both tracks are stylistically in line with the opening one, but add to the arrangement an Arabized accordion [note 5], which indulges in remarkable virtuosity.

"Habaitak Ta Neseet Al Naoum" and "Ana Indi Haneen" are the two previously unreleased compositions, while "Baatilak" is a reworking, with a fairly faithful arrangement, of a piece written by Ziad for a 1974 stage musical, "Nazl El Sourour" ("نزل السرور", "The Hotel of Happiness"). In the original version the song was performed by a young Amal Ghulam, whose career never really took off after that.

While all three tracks making up the first side rest on a microtonal framework both vocally and in the arrangements, the two on the second side keep that trait only in the vocal aspect: instrumentally, the framework is instead Western, as shown by piano and electric guitar, tuned to the twelve-tone equal temperament system.

Side B opens with "Al Bostah" ("البوسطة", "The Bus"), a reworking of a piece written for a 1978 stage musical, "Bennesbeh Labokra… Chou?" ("بالنسبة لبكرا … شو؟", "About Tomorrow… What?") and originally performed by the popular folk singer Joseph Sakr.

Composed following the maqam Kurd, the original version keeps to the traditional Arab pop framework, with an arrangement particularly close to folk music, which is however completely overturned in this transposition. Ziad turns to drums, jazz fusion electric bass lines, synthesizer, funk guitars run through a phaser, a Western orchestra with brass and strings in disco music style, building a nine-minute behemoth that sounds like the perfect meeting of two cultures: Fairuz's voice and the choir keep it rooted in the East, while everything else pushes toward the West.

The adaptation was also possible because the maqam Kurd is based on the same intervals as the Phrygian mode, making it one of the most compatible with Western music: even so, the idea that a traditional arrangement could be reimagined so radically was by no means a given.

The lyrics are kept in the male perspective, so that Fairuz too, like Sakr before her, keeps addressing those words of love to a girl named Alia [note 6]:

I have an appointment with your eyes,

if you knew how many villages and desolate lands I crossed for them.

Your eyes are black,

and you don't know what black eyes do to me.

On the rumble of the bus that carried us

from the village of Hamlaya to that of Tannourine,

I remembered you, Alia, and your black eyes,

damn it, Alia, how beautiful your eyes are.

We traveled in stifling heat,

there was one guy eating lettuce, another eating a fig,

another with his wife, how ugly she was!

How lucky the passengers of Tannourine are, their minds are light,

they don't know, Alia, how beautiful your eyes are.

We traveled without paying,

sometimes we'd shut the bus door for the driver,

other times we kept the passengers calm,

and the one traveling with his wife,

she got dizzy and fainted on his shoulders,

I swear, he would've let her go to Tannourine alone

if he had seen, Alia, how beautiful your eyes are.

Driver, could you close the door?

There's too much air, it'll make us sick

While the song was met with great enthusiasm by the public, a segment of the intellectual world proved far more critical. Not because of the bold arrangement, alien to Arab culture, as one might expect, but because of the lyrics: precisely due to the pure, almost ethereal image Fairuz had upheld until then, hearing her sing such a scene, immersed among people of low social standing, on a dirty, run-down bus, sparked a wave of controversy. Journalist Randa Shoufani went so far as to brand her, in a decidedly classist tone, "the singer of the flea markets."

It is commonly believed, though never officially confirmed, that the press had been egged on by Assi and Mansour Rahbani: the end of the collaboration had not, in fact, come about peacefully, but followed the divorce between Assi and Fairuz. The Rahbani brothers would thus have tried to discredit Fairuz's new direction, regardless of the fact that it was being led by Ziad, son of one and nephew of the other.

The two sides never reconciled, and the rift left consequences that dragged on for decades, to the point that in 2010 Mansour's children tried to take the singer to court to stop her from performing songs bearing their father's credit, who had died the year before.

Closing "Wahdon" is the title track, the least Eastern-sounding piece of the set. Its first recording, sung by Lebanese singer Amal Tomb, was never released on record, but appeared in the Algerian film "Nahla" ("نهلة"), directed in 1979 by Farouk Beloufa, who turned to Ziad for the soundtrack. The album version stays faithful to the original, though it boasts superior production quality (notable is the use of echo and the sense of space between instruments) [note 7], not to mention, of course, Fairuz's performance. It's a shadowy, six-minute jazz ballad, dominated by a melancholy string theme, with hushed saxophone solos and crystalline piano flourishes.

The subdued, almost depressed tone perfectly matches the lyrics, written by Talal Haidar, an internationally renowned Lebanese poet. It consists of a nostalgic reflection on the friendships lost over the course of a lifetime, and the emotional void they leave behind once they're gone:

They remain alone, like elderberry flowers,

alone they gather the leaves of time,

they close off the way into the forest,

like rain they knock steadily at my door,

Oh, time, oh, grasses growing on these walls,

light up the night rose resting on my book.

The dovecote tower is tall and fenced in,

the doves have left without returning and now I am alone.

You who have waited so long for the snow to fall, will you return?

Howl for them, oh wolf, perhaps you'll bring them back.

They remain alone, like this old cloud,

alone, their faces and the dark road,

they are felling the forest with their hands, like rain,

they knock and weep at my door.

Oh time, as old as the shadow of the grass growing on these walls

since before the trees grew tall,

I light lanterns and wait for my friends,

they passed by and left, I remained alone at the door.

You who left with the snowfall, will you return?

The album achieves immediate popularity and over time becomes a classic, particularly in Lebanon, Egypt and Syria. Every track on it ranks among the singer's best-known songs, and from then on she would often return to explore the shores of jazz she first set foot on here, always blending it, of course, with her own musical background.

Fairuz is still active to this day, and in 2023 she celebrates seventy years of career. Her star still shines like a beacon for Arab and Middle Eastern culture.

[note 1] Adding weight to this belief is the fact that the singer never left Lebanon during the civil war that raged there between 1975 and 1990. Despite her Christian faith, she never declared herself in favor of Christian factions, nor hostile to Muslim ones, always striving to remain equidistant.

[note 2] The maqamat (plural of maqam) represent the system of scales typical of Arabic music. They were explored in depth on OndaRock in the feature "L'altro Mediterraneo".

[note 3] Known in the West as traditional Arab pop, or also classic Arab pop, while in Arab countries it is simply referred to as "the golden age of Arabic music", this is the most popular style of Arabic music throughout the twentieth century, influenced equally by folk and local classical music, but with a growing input from Western music, first classical and later popular as well. The most developed schools, thanks to the urbanization and modernization of these two nations relative to the rest of the Arab world, are the Egyptian and Lebanese ones. They differ in the use of their respective dialects and in the fact that, while the Egyptian school specialized in the Sixties and Seventies in a particular form of long song called ughniya, the Lebanese one has always kept to shorter durations.

[note 4] Sami Asmar, writing on Al Jadid, reports that her style was influenced by a training method typical of Egyptian music, namely the chanting of Quranic verses, which was prescribed for her by Mohammed Fleifel, a teacher at the Lebanese National Conservatory who had her as a student. This is said to have given her an absolute mastery of the various maqamat of Arabic music.

[note 5] Compared to the original Western version of the instrument, it has undergone mechanical modifications that allow it to play the quarter tones typical of the main maqamat of Arabic music.

[note 6] It was common to both the Arab and Western traditions (think also of Italian folk music) for women to sing in the male register, without this provoking any adverse reaction.

[note 7] The vocals for the album were recorded entirely at Uniart Studios in Beirut, while the instrumental tracks were split between two locations: the songs on the first side at Uniart Studios, and those on the second at Emi's studio in Athens. It is no coincidence that, needing to immerse himself in Western sonorities, Rahbani sought out a studio equipped with the technology best suited to capture them.

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10/09/2023