The Legendary Fairuz

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Customer reviews

review by: date: 2008-07-24 rating:
Execellent - but I want more!
I have always loved the sound of Arabic music but didn't know what to buy to extend my already eclectic collection of CDs. I bought this on the strength of other reviews here and now I'm really into it. The music is somehow magical - put the 'phones on, close your eyes and sit back and relax - suddenly you are taken across the seas to Cairo (or somewhere like it) - it really is that good. Don't know the language and never been to Egypt; nearest I got was the UAE, briefly in the 60s with the forces but this is how I would have imagined the local people celebrate their music and culture.

Only thing is I want more! I've already wasted money on those Arabic (beat) dance CDs which all sound the same to me - so can anyone recommend something like this album please?

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review by: date: 2008-07-17 rating:
FAIRUZ - she is # 2 and the last living legend of the all-time big 5 in traditional-classic Arab music !

The all-time big 5 in traditional Arab music are OUM KHALTOUM, FAIRUZ, HALEEM HAFEZ, MOHAMMAD Abdel WAHAB, FARID Al ATRACH.


More than just a singer's name, Fayrouz is a concept whose connotations are ethnic and nationalistic as well as musical and poetic.

Born and educated in Beirut, she began her musical career as a chorus member at the Lebanese Radio Station. In the late 1950s her talent as a singer became fully acknowledged. Met with unprecedented enthusiasm, Fayrouz's early songs featured the singer's distinct vocal timbre and lyrics expressing romantic love and nostalgia for village life. They meshed with a delicate orchestral blend in which certain Arab instruments figured prominently but which also subtly incorporated European instruments and European popular dance rythms.

She also sometimes sang adaptations Arab folk tunes. By the early 1960s Fayrouz was already one of the main attractions of the annual Baalbeck Festivals and a celebrety not only in Lebanon but throughout the Arab world. The dissemination of hundreds of songs, many musical plays and several films had widened her audience to include Arabs living in Europe and the Americas.

During most of her singing career, Fayrouz was part of a three-member team which included the two Rahbani brothers. Generally, her lyrics were written by Mansour Rahbani, and the tunes were composed and arranged by his brother 'Assi, Fayrouz's former husband. Fayrouz's songs owe a great deal to the musical and poetic genius of these two Lebanese artists. In recent years they have also reflected the composing talent of Ziad Rahbani, Fayrouz's son. In addition, they testify to Fayrouz's broad musical background, which encompasses Christian liturgical forms as well as the secular traditions of Arab music.

The Fayrouz-Rahbani legacy is a peculiarly twentieth-century cultural phenomenon. During the early postwar decades, most urban communities in the Arab world underwent rapid expansion, partly because of an influx of population from the rural areas. The city of Beirut in particular had absorbed a substantial number of people whose ethnic and social roots went back to various Lebanese villages, especially those in the mountainous regions of central and northern Lebanon. Politically and socially influential, this segment provided fertile ground for the rise of a new artistic tradition - music, dance, poetry, fashions, handicrafts - whose context was unmistakably urban but whose ration was folk and rural.

Beirut was also experiencing the growing impact of modernizatior Westernization. These changes rendered indigenous artistic expressions less accessible and less appealing to many Lebanese. Furthermore, Beirut was becoming a highly cosmopolitan community. A significant number of the city residents had non-village and even non-Lebanese and non-Arab backgrounds. These developments and the extensive role of the modern entertainment media - radio, television, concert halls, public theatres - were conducive to the rise of an urban mass audience. They were also prerequisites for the development of the kind of modern musical language of wide appeal that is superbly manifested in Fayrouz's songs.

One further influence upon the Fayrouz-Rahbani legacy was the nationalistic sentiment that followed Lebanon's independence. Although not always articulated in specific ideological terms, this sentiment was shared by government officials and a number of influential writers, poets, and artists. This feeling, which profoundly affected Lebanon's music and arts, was based on a number of fundamental premises. One was that Lebanon was culturally and historically distinct from its Near Eastern neighbors and was in many ways compatible with the West. Furthermore, an important aim of the Lebanese government was to develop the country's cultural image and to increase its international recognition and prestige. On the artistic level, a conviction not unique to Lebanon was that (a) folk art of the rural communities conveys the true character of the nation and (b) as it exists in its natural setting, folk art is in a "primitive" and "unscientific" state. Therefore it has to be developed as a respectable national expression by skilled experts and advisors.

Such aspirations prompted the government to generate and sponsor a new folk-inspired artistic idiom generally known by the name "Lebanese folkloric." In addition to examining similar developments in several other Third World countries, the folklore movement in Lebanon studied the model of the Soviet national ensemble. In May 1965, the Russian choreographer Igor Moiseyev was officially invited to examine the dabkahs, or line dances, of the various Lebanese villages and to create modern interpretations based on these dances. Before leaving the country, the Russian visitor reportedly created new dabkahs and taught them to a number of local individuals who later became dance teachers and choreographers - professions relatively new to Near Eastern culture.

In the ensuing years several folkloric ensembles were established in Lebanon. Among them was the Lebanese Folk Troupe, which presented newly created songs and dances and featured celebrated singers such as Fayrouz, Sabah, and Wadi' al-Safi. Government-sponsored, this particular troupe performed at the Baalbeck Festivals, which incorporated Western symphonic music, ballet, and drama and presented artists such as Joan Baez, Rudolph Nureyev, and Herbert von Karajan. During its height in the 1960s and early 1970s, the folklore movement in Lebanon attracted the talents of a significant group of composers, performers, playwrights, choreographers, dancers, costume designers, and producers, all from a variety of ethnic backgrounds and nationalities.

Ihe principal vehicle for the new idiom was the masrahiyyah, or musicalplay. In such a play the main plot focuses upon village events and in s ome cases upon notable incidents in Lebanon's political history. The costumes of the dancers and singers are based largely on the traditional dress of peasant communities in central and northern Lebanon. Spoken dialogue in colloquial Lebanese Arabic is combined with orchestral programmatic music and songs by a celebrated singer or singers are featured. Many of the feature-songs appear as accompaniment for folkloric dabkah dances.

Fayrouz's songs, many of which were originally sung in folkloric musical plays, were compatible with the political, social, and demographic trends in Lebanon, especially as they existed before the civil war. They represent a unique synthesis of elements derived from local folk songs, traditional Arab music, popular European forms, and, to a lesser extent, the musics of Soviet Russia, Armenia, and the Balkans. This synthesis, however, has not occurred in isolation from broader Arab issues and legacies. Fayrouz's songs have often expressed widely-shared Arab sentiments and used texts in classical Arabic by well-known poets such as Kahlil Gibran. Some songs have been based on the traditional muwashshah vocal form, whose roots go back to Moorish Spain. Others present modern adaptations of older classics by the early twentiethcentury Egyptian composer Shayk Sayyid Darwish and the contemporary Muhammed Abd al-Wahab.

In Fayrouz's repertoire as a whole, both text and music are marked by innovation. The lyrics generally focus less narrowly on the theme of unrequited love than do most Arab songs. Instead, they may range from mildly rebuking a forgetful lover or reminiscing about village life, to voicing passionate love for Lebanon and commemorating the city of Jerusalem. In all instances the subject matter is presented with an air of poetic tenderness to a degree seldom encountered in other Arab forms. Her special combination of lyrics, music, and vocal quality accounts Fayrouz's ethereal and widely accepted Arabic titles as "Neighbor of the Moon" and "Our Ambassador to the Stars." The vocal timbre of many traditional Arab singers tends to be slight ly nasal and gutteral. In contrast, Fayrouz's voice - commonly described as muk hmali, or "velvet-like" - is smooth and clear. She utilizes head resonance and her vocal style is relatively free of the ornamentation that characterizes much Arab singing.

Melodically, Fayrouz's songs are in the common idiom of traditional Arab music. Like other songs from Cairo, Beirut, and Damascus, they use various maqams or melodic modes. Moreover, they employ the Westem major and minor tonalities extensively. When folk songs are adapted and sung, the folk intonation of village singers is replaced with the common intonation of the cities. However, unlike a large proportion of traditional Arab music, Fayrouz's songs are essentially non-improvisatory. The highly informal ambience and the profusion of melodic and rhythmic nuances by the performer are usually abandoned in favor of all-precomposed tunes and well-rehearsed presentations.

The instrumentation for Fayrouz's songs and Rahbani's compositions con tributes greatly to the distinct flavor of the music. Rarely employed are the folk instruments of village music (such as the minjayrah, an open-ended small reed flute; and the mijwiz, a type of double clarinet played through circular breathing). Similarly excluded as a rule are the qanun, a type of zither; the 'ud, a shortnecked lute; and the nay, an open ended reed flute - instruments that give traditional Arab music much of its special character. However, extensive use is made of traditional percussion instruments, specifically the tablah, a small hand-drum, and the riqq, a small tambourine, both of which have close counterparts in the folk music of the region.

Three melodic instruments are essential to the Rahbani ensemble One instrument is the accordion, which in this case is specially prepared to produce the "neutral" intervals found in Arab music. Another instrument is the buzuq, a long-necked fretted lute furnished with metal strings and associated with itinerant gypsy musicians of Lebanon and Syria. The third instrument is a small fipple flute or record er made from wood and comparable in construction and sonority to the kaval of Turkey. Playing in unison and at the octave with occasional drone effects, this combination provides a bright cluster of timbres and a lively, rustically zestful tempo typical of Rahbani's music in general. The part played by these melodic instruments is usually reinforced by several violins. Less conspicuously, the piano outlines the melody and fills the spaces between the melodic phrases with arpeggios and melodic and rhythmic ostinatos. In Fayrouz's songs, polyphony is not uncommon, especially in her more Westemized songs of the early and middle 1970s. In these songs the accompanying instruments often include the electronic organ and the trap drums of the Westem dance orchestra.

The literary-musical legacy of the Rahbanis and Fayrouz has been accepted by many Lebanese as a nationalistic, cultural, and political symbol. At the same time, it possesses artistic qualities that extend its appeal to listeners from a diversity of social, national, and even ideological backgrounds. Fayrouz has been regarded by many educated Arabs as an emblem of modemity and an exemplar of the self-respecting, dignified Arab artist. During the past quarter century Fayrouz's music has not remained static. This artist's versatility and insight have enabled her to respond to various social and musical trends. In the last few years the dwindling mystique of village lore, the revived interest among young Arabs in traditional Arab music, and the expansion of the pan-Arab mass audience have all had noticeable effects upon her repertoire. In tum, Fayrouz's arti stic legacy has profoundly influenced contemporary Arab music and culture.

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review by: date: 2007-10-17 rating:
A cracking CD
I bought this CD as a follow up to a recent holiday in Lebanon and just love it!

I am not familiar with her other music, but will certainly be buying more - what better recommendation can there be?

Lovely voice and fine songs. Don't be put off by the fact that there are only 7 tracks - they are not short and you get over 50 minutes.

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review by: who likes reading date: 2006-10-07 rating:
the sound of lebanon
all i can do in this review is say words that to me describe these songs and this wonderful lady, i'll stop when i run out of steam; smooth, lush, comfortable, loungey, gorgeous, deep, insightful, sweet, wonderfully accompanied, caring, almost mother-goddess like, understated, passionate, perfect!

Fairuz is the only vocalist who to me is able to rival Karen Carpenter in terms of tone quality, breath control (sorry, don't mean to sound so technical, but it is breath control), and delivery. In fact you know what, I think she might even beat KC! From me that's saying something (sorry Karen).


review by: date: 2001-11-11 rating:
The second-greatest Arabic singer in the world...ever!
A great retrospective of a great great singer - for this reviewer she is easier on the ear than the arguably greater Omm Kaltoum, a amoother and sweeter, and some might say, blander voice. A good selection of tracks, songs in honour of the great Arabic cities, all composed and arranged by the Rhabbani Brothers, recorded live in the last 15 years which proves she is still in fine voice in her old age. Highly recommended.

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