[LCM Articles] [Leb4ever] Fairuz's shimmering visions of Lebanon (after Greece concert)

[Loai Naamani]

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-ca-fairuz15jul15,0,7017083.story?col
l=la-headlines-calendar

>From the Los Angeles Times


WORLD MUSIC


Fairuz's shimmering visions of Lebanon


No matter where she performs, this singer brings home a message of hope.

By Raed Rafei
Special to The Times

July 15, 2007

Athens — MY memories are impregnated with sounds. First comes the noise of
my childhood nights punctuated with the rumble of generators. And then there
are the serene melodies of my mornings marked by the voice of one diva,
Fairuz, singing from my mother's radio.

It was a time of civil war. There were frequent power blackouts at home.
Outside, the country was fractured. The news was often of assassinations and
car bombs. Yet one singer brought us all together with her quaint songs of
love and peace. Her words were as pure as her voice, always provoking an
angelic smile on my mother's anxious face. 

Today, 17 years after the end of the war, we are sadly watching our country
lie at the precipices of chaos. And for many of us, the music of Fairuz is
again the haven that preserves our idealistic vision of Lebanon. 

It seemed utterly strange that I had to run away from Beirut and come to
Athens for the first time to relish another moment with Fairuz on stage.
Last weekend, beneath the Acropolis, at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, the
lights were suddenly all projected on the red carpet where the tail of her
glittering white dress slid. 

The rattle of guns echoing in my head was silenced. Fairuz's voice embraced
the full ancient Greek theater. She sang the nostalgia for the innocent
past: "Children Are Playing," "I Miss You," "Oh Moon, Me and You" 
. In one
song, "Tell Me, Tell Me About My Country," she asked a breeze for stories of
the picturesque villages of Lebanon. In another, "These Were the Days," she
recalled a shadowy neighborhood where on feast nights a drunken man once
sang and made wall drawings of a girl next door. 

Many Arab nationals had made the trip from places like Lebanon, Egypt,
Kuwait and Jerusalem to see "the Lady" perform. Fairuz was invited to Greece
by the Athens Epidaurus Festival, an international event that every summer
hosts music, plays, dance performances and operas from around the world. 

I was pleasantly surprised to see that there was a majority of Greeks in the
crowd. Although most of them were not familiar with Arabic, many seemed
simply moved by the intensity of emotions emanating from her voice. They had
come to see the Lebanese myth who embodies the torments and exaltations of a
whole country. 

During the civil war, with every faction struggling to impose its different
vision of Lebanon's future and identity, the idea of a united country seemed
preposterous. But we all believed her, especially during the mornings when
sleep had refreshed our hopes. Her distinct vocal timbre, filled with a
powerful motherly affection, could soften the cruelest of hearts. 

She boasted about a beautiful Lebanon, a green Lebanon, a country made of
rivers and fruit trees, filled with rosy love stories. It was an invented
nation that only existed in the oft-refined accounts of our parents and
grandparents.

When the fighting began in 1975, Fairuz, a stage name meaning turquoise in
Arabic, was already one of the Arab world's most popular singers. With her
husband and his brother, Assi and Mansour Rahbani, who composed and wrote
for her, she performed all over the world, enriching Arab music with a new
type of rhythmically elaborate but simple songs. Her mysterious, Callas-like
aura captured the hearts of audiences across the Middle East. She was known
for being discreet and shy, rarely giving interviews. 

Fairuz continues today to be an iconoclastic artist, producing distinctive
music in an Arab world way too invaded by cheap locally produced pop songs.
With her son, Ziad, who now writes her music and lyrics, she has performed
in recent years several innovative songs mixing jazz and Oriental rhythms. 

She was born as Nouha Haddad in 1935 and raised in a humble Christian
household in Beirut. She started her career as a chorus girl at the Lebanese
radio station before meeting the Rahbani brothers. Fairuz and the Rahbani
brothers were setting the way for modern-day Arabic pop songs, parting from
the tradition of long songs with interminable classical-Oriental musical
interludes. Her prodigious musical repertoire included melancholic songs,
folk tunes, patriotic hymns and religious chants. She sold millions of
records around the world.

Fairuz also played in a dozen musicals and in three motion pictures. Written
by the Rahbani brothers, the musicals had underlying political messages. But
all through the 15 years of bloodshed, as Lebanese, we only had her
recordings and radio voice. She refused to perform while her countrymen
fought each other. During my teenager years, I watched her old concerts on
national TV. I was fascinated by her firm, proud posture in front of the
perennial columns of Baalbek, the ancient Roman city. 

And then, the war was finally over. I remember how exhilarated I was, the
first time I saw her on stage in 1994. It was Fairuz's first public
performance in Lebanon after the war. Thousands of Lebanese had flocked into
Martyr's Square. Fairuz was singing live for a new start along the old
demarcation lines in the ruined heart of Beirut. With tears seemingly
pearling in her eyes, she chanted: "I love you Lebanon. I love your north,
your south, your plains 
. " And we were all spellbound as we fantasized
about rebuilding our country. 

In later years, I carried her voice with me as I left to study abroad. When
nostalgia and homesickness invaded my room, her songs had the power to
transport me home.

"Take me to those lovely hills. Take me to the land that reared us. Forget
me among vineyards and fig trees. Let me lie upon the soil of our village.
Take me, plant me in the land of Lebanon 
. "

Since my return, I have been witnessing with bitterness the descent of
Lebanon into chaos again. I realize how naïve I am, clinging to a primordial
idea of a united and flourishing country. 

This summer, Fairuz and many other artists from all over the world will not
be performing in the festivals of Lebanon because of the instability of the
country. 

But watching Fairuz shine among the Greek gods filled me with pride. She
proved to the world that as a nation we were capable of producing culture
and not only images of bombs and fighting, which have unfortunately become
very popular on TV bulletins everywhere. 

--

  _____  

Rafei is The Times' special correspondent in Lebanon and also writes for
Forbes Arabia.

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