Ziad Rahbani was much loved across Lebanon, and his words remained relevant across generations, from those who grew up with him during the 1975-90 Civil War to the post-war generation who have struggled to shake the war’s legacy.
He passed away at a hospital in Beirut on Saturday morning after a long illness, the hospital said.
The son of living legend Fairuz, widely seen as one of the Arab world’s greatest singers, and the innovative composer Assi Rahbani, Ziad Rahbani’s talents ran from piano to playwriting and acting.
Known for pioneering oriental jazz that blended Western standards with Arabic quarter-notes, a style exemplified in his 1978 Arabic funk album Abu Ali, Rahbani once described Lebanon, a tiny nation on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean between Europe and the Arab World, as ‘Falafel mixed with Hamburger’.
Composers who knew him dubbed him a musical genius. He was also a giant of cultural criticism for people in the Arabic-speaking world for his satire of Lebanese society.
“You feel that you are simply unable to understand some of the things Ziad did, or to ever write anything like them,” said Lubnan Baalbaki, conductor of Lebanon’s national orchestra.
Among Rahbani’s best-known works was the 1985 song ‘I am not an infidel’, re-released in 2008, whose lyrics urge ‘those who pray on Fridays and those who pray on Sundays’ – Muslim and Christian leaders – to attend to the plight of the destitute.
Another song references Lebanese people resorting to selling gold and diamond jewellery to afford food during the war, while his ‘O, the Era of Sectarianism’ notes how easily money passes between the military barricades that keep people apart.
Lebanese filmmaker Jad Ghosn, who produced a 2021 documentary on Rahbani’s life, said Rahbani ‘is a middle finger raised in the face of this system, reminding it of its true worth and reminding us of our potential’.
‘THE WILDERNESS’
Born in 1956, Ziad Rahbani grew up listening to his father composing songs on the piano. A collection of his poetry was published by age 12, and he put on his first play, Nazel Surour, aged 18.
The music of Rahbani’s parents drew on Lebanese folklore – traditional stone arches, mountain villages, the return of emigrants from overseas.
It became the backing track to the so-called ‘golden age’ of the 1960s, when Beirut was dubbed the Paris of the Middle East.
But before Rahbani turned 20, Lebanon plunged into a 15-year civil war that ran from 1975-90. His music reflected that fall from grace, taking on a critical tone filled with ridicule and lament.
Rahbani grew reclusive and depressed in his later years, according to people who knew him.
He described Lebanon, with its perennial power cuts that destroyed musical equipment, as ‘the wilderness’.
A Greek Orthodox Christian from the coastal town of Antelias, north of Beirut, Rahbani was a lifelong leftist and self-declared communist.
He tied his political awakening to the 1976 siege and massacre of Palestinians by right-wing Christian militiamen at the Tal el-Zaatar camp, and was a staunch supporter of the Palestinian struggle for statehood until his death.
Rahbani’s political alignment with groups such as Hezbollah and the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad during the Syrian Civil War pushed away some fans. But many continued to appreciate his bitter, comedic musings on life.
In an interview on Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV in his later years, he suggested that Lebanese corruption had cut so deep it even tainted Seven Spice, a mixture that forms a staple of Levantine cooking.
“There are no seven spices,” he says. “There are three, and no one knows what the rest is.”
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