It was the summer of 1992. While my father drove on Route 5 from Santiago, heading north to Chile’s wine country through La Serena on a beautiful summer morning, my mother pressed play to Fairuz’s latest album into the cassette player. We had received the cassette a couple of weeks earlier, along with others that included recorded letters from relatives, and other compilations of the latest music from Beirut. For a Lebanese family then living in the so-called end of the world, when phones were unreliable and the internet was still the stuff of science fiction, this was as interactive and coveted as the communication and connection to the homeland could ever be.
As a child raised far from home, Fairuz wasn’t a stranger to my ears, from the rhymes for children to the classics the adults listened on repeat to remind them of home. That Kifak Enta? (How are you?) was Fairuz’s first album fully composed, arranged and produced by her son Ziad Rahbani, and the song itself inspired by a real-life conversation between mother and son after years of separation, was something I would learn later on. What is certain is that it transitioned Lebanon’s one and only diva from one representing the Rahbani Brothers’ idealism and bygone golden era (if there ever was one) into a voice of Ziad’s realism people could relate to. What was certain, however, was that it didn’t sound like anything I had heard from Fairuz before. The lyrics spoke to me – through the indescribable and enchanting voice of Fairuz no less – the music was comforting and familiar, and I enjoyed it out of my own volition, not because anyone told me to.
On this road trip, we enjoyed listening to her latest album for the first time, sometimes I paid attention, other times slightly restless in the backseat, sometimes lying down, sometimes with my head resting on one of the window panes contemplating the endless road ahead. As Kifak Enta started playing, its piano prelude bought me to a complete halt. I stopped goofing around and sat in the middle of the backseat. Suddenly, Fairuz felt different and sounded softer, without becoming too earthly, accessible and more loving without losing her magic and impenetrable mystique. This is how I met Ziad.
Nashid Al Thawra
It has already been one year since Ziad Rahbani passed away. One year since he gave up on a life he believed he had given enough to, with nothing more left to scream about or sing for. The feeling of him gone is as heavy as it was on that dreadful Saturday morning. His long absence from the public eye had somehow started preparing us for the longest absence of them all. Yet, no matter how silent and secluded he was, the fact that he was around, breathing the same air as we did, was everything we needed to know that someone was still left to talk, write and sing to our darkest fears and eternal disillusionments, to make us laugh about what we were made to believe was sacred and cry out of joy and sadness at the treasures he gave us.
We all have our stories of how we met Ziad, how we adopted him as our own, and learned to love our land a little bit more – or perhaps a little bit less – because of him. That he meant something to everyone, and everyone had something different to say about him, was probably also part of what made him different from the rest, and only like his mother, with no need for introductions.
When I first moved back to Lebanon in the early 2000s, I slowly began discovering Ziad the playwright. Written between 1973 and 1996, his eight musical plays embodied everything that defined Ziad as an artist: his satirical humor, his irreverent wit, his political sensibility, his ability to relay socioeconomic realities in a way that nobody could deny, his foresight of what awaited the country, and the certainty that very little was bound to change, a truth that still holds. The futility and obstinacy of our reality make it so that the words he wrote as far back as 55 years ago remain as relevant today as they once were. Ziad is reported to have said that he wasn’t trying to change anything, but that he only hoped the country wouldn’t change him. It’s safe to say that neither one did.
Along the footsteps of the family legacy he was born into, he knew that art was political, and his art was the unfiltered version of that, raw but with an implicit theoretical depth based on his leftist political convictions. From inequality, socioeconomic hardships faced by the common man, and the inevitability of migration in Bennesbeh Labokra Chou? (What About Tomorrow? – 1978), to laying bare the country’s sectarian fault lines and the absurdity of the civil war in Film Ameriki Tawil (A Long American Movie – 1980) as it unfolded and from a mental institution no less. I wonder whether those who watched Lawla Foshat Amal (Were it not for a Glimmer of Hope – 1992) and Bi Khousous Al Karameh wel Chaab el Anid (Regarding Dignity and Stubborn People – 1993) upon their release, in the immediate aftermath of the civil war, realized this was Ziad telling them and anyone who would listen that the guns may have gone silent but the war, in all its multiple and intersecting layers, was far from over, and an entire country had learned little, if anything, from it. People woke up, Ziad once said, but confessionalism keeps creeping back in. Ten years earlier, he had warned us, that Lebanon wasn’t a country, but a “bunch of people brought together” (from the song Oum fout Nam or Go to Sleep).
In the 1974 tragicomedy Nazl el Sourour (The Happiness Inn), Ziad addresses Lebanon’s then – but always contemporary – struggle with socioeconomic failures, corruption, injustice and class inequality, through the eyes of an addict to horserace betting. We should have known Lebanon’s inability to stage a genuine revolution from this piece. We should have learned from disgruntled insurgents Abbas and Fahed’s failed attempts to burn everything down and build it all back again from a clean slate, that deep-rooted change and social justice weren’t made for these shores. Perhaps that’s why every time I listen to the Nashid Al Thawra, the revolutionary anthem Abbas and Fahed forced their hostages to write in preparation for the struggle ahead, it brings an aching to my heart, a lump in my throat, and a trickle of tears down my eyes that never fails to surprise me.
“I come with the poor people, I come to find out who my land belongs to, for whom are my children dying, starving on the land of my country. Years have passed without sleep, we decided to wake up today. Oh dear homeland, do not blame us, for we are beyond the point of blame. To the thousands of oppressed people, our blood has been waiting for years.” The more I listen to it, the more the tears lessen and the pain feels heavier, at the thought of the hopelessness of our fate in this land, which Ziad so often pointed out to.
Bala Wala Shi
What Ziad tried to convey with his singular style in his plays mattered as much as the music that accompanied it. The music he composed – instrumental or songs – was more than just background music. They set the tone and drew the scene in musical notes, all the more significant given that many of us never watched the plays until after we had heard them as recordings over a dozen times, memorizing lines and lyrics, which ultimately became classics. The music was straightforward and blended seamlessly into the scene, but never went unnoticed. How could one not imagine sitting in the front row in a smoky jazz bar in New Orleans when listening to the overture of Bennesbeh Labokra Chou? or be one of a thousand marching comrades, being rallied for the struggle at the outset of the Bolshevik Revolution when listening to the anthem of the revolution in Nazl el Sourour?
People who do not understand Arabic undeniably miss a lot of Ziad’s mastery of lyricism, through his sarcasm, irony, foresight, humor, wit and intellect, expressed in the most simple and mundane kind of ways. Albums like Ana Moush Kafer (I am not an Infidel – 1985) and Bema Enno (Given that – 1995) can attest to that. But Ziad was a musician after all, who was dedicated, passionate, albeit obsessive, about his craft. His lyrics were an important part of what he presented, but ultimately, it was about the music, which transcends any language, most notably through musical masterpieces Houdou Nisbi (Relative Calm – 1985) and Abou Ali (1979).
Ziad understood the implications of the artistic legacy he was born into, a legacy that was a reflection of his own roots that he embraced. But he went beyond, forging his own path with influences and inspirations that only he knew how to make something of…until he made them into his own. His style was Oriental and Western, jazz and funk, bossa nova and a little bit of soul, Arabic scales and African percussion, and the grandeur of classical orchestral music, all of which he drew his inspiration from.
The specialists and musicologists are left to interpret, analyze, define and categorize his music and style, but to my senses – because it targets most of them – his music was the creation of something much bigger than the summation of its different parts. The music could range from the instrumentalization of an eternal Mediterranean lunch, a conversation between two long lost friends, a sultry stroll on the Copacabana, the end of a relationship that had no future, a call for struggle, or an evening in Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Concert Hall, the last which is best exemplified in pieces like Traces in the Sand, Tal el Zaatar, or Eh Fi Amal.
Nobody other than Ziad had the ability to create something so beautiful, no matter how short it was, into a masterpiece. Many of his preludes, such as the 1.15 min to Shou Hal Ayyam (What are these days?), are a story in and of themselves, creating a well of emotions and sensations, something that pulls you up high, and pounds you all the way down, a seemingly fantastical musical journey that in reality is deeply anchored and grounded in the life he led until his last days. And then, there’s the overture to his father and uncle’s play Mais el Reem (1975), composed when he was only 19 years old. The groundbreaking sounds notwithstanding, relative to what the Rahbani brothers were known for – mixing traditional Arabic oud, qanun, and violins with jazz piano, guitar, bass, and saxophone, Arabic scales with disco and funk – Mais el Reem is probably the most beautiful and captivating story he composed. The enchantment of the composition was made so, that every time Ziad played it live, it turned into something new, with a different twist and turn; a musical story line that never grew old, always rendering it a piece of magic whenever he played it. A story that was always a bit different, but it was always his story, the way he wanted it to be.
Little is said about Ziad’s deep, slow and baritone voice, which he gave to many of his pieces, making it impossible to hear them without it. Ana Moush Kafer isn’t the same without his voice, just as pieces like Oum Fout Nem or Hale Taabane ya Layla (Things are looking difficult, oh Layla) were made unforgettable with the voice of Joseph Sakr. And then there is Bala Wala Shi (Without Anything), initially sung by Sami Hawat, the ultimate song of unconditional love, written to his long-time love Carmen Lebbos. In a way, it embodied much of what he believed and stood for, a life far from fanfare, away from materialism, nor any regard for what anyone else said.
Shou Hal Iyyem
Politics was part and parcel of Ziad’s art and persona. What he sung about in 1985 in Shou Hal Iyyam, on wealth inequality, social disparities, and workers’ exploitation further cemented his Marxist ideology into mainstream Lebanese music culture. “They tell you that this person made money from his own hard work, but how can you explain his millions without ever having seen him sweat!” as one line goes. But embracing Ziad wasn’t always synonymous with agreeing with his politics and the unequivocal sociopolitical stances he was known for during his lifetime. He went from an adolescent desire to join the Lebanese Kataeb, the Christian right-wing nationalist party to a fervent leftist pro-Palestinian Lebanese National Movement supporter in the midst of the civil war. Closely in-line with his beliefs, he had no other choice as an Orthodox Christian from predominantly Christian East Beirut, to live in the predominantly Muslim side of the city in West Beirut, treading through the confessional fault lines imposed on the city until the early 1990s. To know and appreciate Ziad was to know what he stood for, and regardless of one’s politics, still uphold him in the highest regard, perhaps because everyone knew he was nothing but true to himself and never budged. That earns respect, especially in a country where politics and ideology are so fickle.
In Ziad’s first musical and satirical play Sahriye (Evening Gathering – 1973), an aspiring singer vows to win over the crowds in a village cafe with a song that roughly translates to “Oh sword that reaches the enemies.” The track, sung by the late Marwan Mahfouz, was composed as an old school patriotic and folkloric anthem filled with chivalry, honor, and fights against enemies galore. Although Ziad quite certainly meant to put all these values under his spotlight of sarcasm, the anthem turned out to be a huge hit. The fact that the civil war erupted two years later, may have played a role in its success, with its fiery imagery of bravado and the fighting against unnamed enemies easy for anyone to claim as their own. Yet in one of the most ironic episodes of cultural appropriation, none other than the Lebanese Forces, the rightwing Christian Lebanese political party and antithesis of everything Ziad stood for, later coopted this anthem for its own cause. Not even his sworn political adversaries could find someone better than Ziad to help them promote their raison d’être.
Ziad brushed off those who suggested that he should get involved in politics on numerous occasions. But that didn’t mean that he refused to be part of the political discourse. Through his satirical radio broadcasts Baadna Taybeen, (We’re still Alive), with Jean Chamoun during the civil war, their sketches commented on the war’s developments with exquisite satire, all to highlight the absurdity of the conflict, from its ideological underpinnings to the daily hardships people endured. Decades later, in his column for Al Akhbar newspaper between 2008-2014, he didn’t shy away from speaking about political and socioeconomic issues in any way, shape or form, criticizing the political establishment, the sectarian system, social inequality, the repercussions of regional conflicts in local dynamics and the role of mainstream media in propagating a wobbly political system.
Today, more than ever, and for what’s it worth, Ziad never forgot about the South. He talked about it, sung for it, and lived in its midst in its darkest hours during the civil war. He was a staunch supporter of the resistance movement to Israel, the liberation of the South, let alone of the liberation of Palestine. Al Mokawama Al Watania Al Lobnania (the Lebanese National Resistance in Ana Moush Kafer) could very well be a localized anthem for the South itself, highlighting with much cynicism, all the national lip service ever given to South Lebanon, which has translated into no genuine support, safety or protection for it whatsoever. One can only imagine Ziad’s pain in seeing what has become of our beloved South…
Eh, Fi Amal
Living in Beirut, it wasn’t very hard to catch Ziad live by surprise, to being graced by the magic of his presence, when he wasn’t otherwise secluded. One of those times was in Hamra, when rumors started circulating that Ziad would give a small concert where my friends and I happened to be, and he did. It was rather dark, but he lightened up the room with his small orange cap, starting with Mais el Reem on the keyboards, a rendition of which remains my all-time favorite and one I haven’t ever heard like again. But it was on a different occasion that his presence was not only by surprised but almost unnoticed. This time in Ain el Mreisseh, while having dinner with a group of foreign expatriates in Lebanon. One of them was taken back by the unassuming man on the keyboards, playing what sounded like fusion, oriental jazz with a pinch of bossa nova. “That’s Ziad Rahbani,” I told him. Since that didn’t ring a bell to him, I tried an alternative introduction. “Fairuz’s son,” I said. You couldn’t blame a foreigner for not knowing Ziad, but not knowing Fairuz was impossible. “Oh wow!” he said quietly, though that didn’t diminish his astonishment. “Fairuz’s son, here, just like that, playing in this small little place, like a private concert just for us?”
Ziad’s wisdom, prescience and musical virtuosity never reflected upon the way he carried himself in public. Despite the impression that some people maintained of him, of the distant, capricious and temperamental artist, Ziad remained mostly the comrade, the one with an infinite reservoir of sarcasm nobody could get enough of, and the one everyone felt “they knew.” It wasn’t until he left us that we realized, that he knew each and every one of us instead, and touched something in us that nobody ever will.
Similar to many of us, Ziad dealt a lot with the subject of hope, and if we’re to deduce anything from what he said about this convoluted feeling, it was a complicated thing for him too. From his play Lawla Foshat Amal to joking about having found someone who possessed hope and reporting him to the police! Through Fairuz, he romanticized the feeling as “something stemming out of boredom or a nostalgia to ease a certain pain” in Eh, Fi Amal. In his song Bi Hal Yawmayn (In these two days), he set the record straight and gave hope a concrete timeline. “What’s left of hope may end in these coming two days,” the lyrics said, to which the chorus responded, “we’ll have to wait until the year 2000.” Needless to say, we’re all still waiting.
Ziad’s preoccupation with hope was nothing out of the ordinary, but somewhat telling. With him, we were caught in a fragile dance whereby he gave us hope through his presence and what he created, but when we read between the lines, Ziad was telling us that hope was nothing but a figment of our imagination, an illusion, and an absurd dream. “Now that Ziad is gone,” a friend confessed upon confirmation of Ziad’s passing, “I don’t know what’s left in this country for us to look up and forward to.”
Finale
Ziad didn’t like to be called a genius. As he once explained, he listened and observed, lived and interacted with the world around him and then conveyed, it was as simple as that. And he had so much he wanted to convey. When asked about his health and sleeping patterns, Ziad said that he slept very little since a very young age, and even more so after the civil war, “to make up for the lost time.”
So how best can Ziad be described? I’ll call him a trailblazer, an avant-gardist and musical visionary versatile enough to convey love and war, struggle and nonchalance as subtlety in a 2-hour musical production or as forthrightly in a two-minute piano prelude to a song. Ziad’s life was his music. He did it for the love of the art, and perhaps deep down, passion for his land, which he criticized in every way possible, not without good reason, but which kept inspiring him in a way he only knew how to make something meaningful out of.
Humble as he was, he resented those who blew his bad temperament and ego out of proportions, though he didn’t appreciate that his impact be overestimated either. In one of his last recorded appearances, when asked about his legacy, he said that he hoped to leave something “good” and something that would last “for a while.” And that “good” certainly united us, though he was the one who kept reminding us that the Lebanese weren’t a nation, but just “a bunch of people brought together.”
What we know for sure is that Ziad died because he had been refusing to undergo the treatment that could have saved his life. Once he agreed to it, it was too late. Speculations abounded on what was genuinely behind his capitulation, or what may have led to this refusal, what explained this heartbreak towards life, and how someone who had given hope and laughter to generations failed to find a sliver of hope to sustain himself. “He left us too soon,” as one of Ziad’s close relatives told me only hours after his passing. “But then again, Ziad wanted to leave.”
In Houdou Nisbi, Ziad provided a soundtrack to the so-called relative calm or the temporary respites observed during the then civil war. But the album’s last track, Finale, is slower and more sober that most of the album, cryptic and conveying a relative degree of unease, auguring an end to the calm. The track is shorter than the rest and ends abruptly. Listening to it now, there could have been no better soundtrack to Ziad’s earthly finale, soulful in a deeply melancholic kind of way, abrupt because we didn’t want to believe it, and incomplete, because whatever Ziad gave us was never enough, though what he left will always keep on giving.
Eye on the East 