Fayrouz during a concert at the “Beiteddine Festival”, Lebanon, summer 2001 (Getty)
Fayrouz is progressing in the eighties, everyone knows that, she is getting old, like everyone else. The average person can now think that she is getting old, like me. Like me, you will never be another. This may mean that I am like Fayrouz, Fayrouz at her age belongs to me, that I have Fayrouz, but I may be another Fayrouz. Everyone recovers TurquoiseEveryone turns into turquoise.
Her very form changes like ours; Didn’t you post a picture of her looking elderly? Fame and a resounding name could not hide it. The publication of this photo caused a sensation. The daughter, the publisher of the photo, was accused of insulting her, and no one understood why the photo was published. Some found an opportunity to defend Fayrouz’s old age, to defend old age in general, human luck and destiny. We didn’t know what Fayrouz felt, she’s avoiding revelation And don’t give up on him.
But another thing happened: Macron’s visit and his picture in her home, her picture in her home, in her abaya. This was new, and there was an hour when Fayrouz would be public personThere is an hour when you are out of age, out of name, out of fame, and you are beyond that. Then no one will stare at her face, no one will look for signs of age, for at this moment she will not be a body and she will not be a body; It is, in contrast to the French President, the legend that has emerged from its lair. Then we see it and do not see it, rather we do not know what we saw. Was the name, then, the one who went out to receive the president, was that the name of all of us, were we all there? Everyone has a turquoise, but all may be turquoise.
Fayrouz continues to be alone, it is what her voice suggests, but rather the second life that emerges from her voice. With this voice, she was able to create a kind of parallel life, rather a unique life, with which everyone feels that she is gifted to them. It is, in a way, their interior and their other life. Fayrouz’s song is not just a prayer for a moment, it is a kind of memory, but rather this promised memory, a memory that has no time and no existence. It is the inherent memory, the memory that, in a way, is there before us. It is a kind of creating life, of recovering a life that alone is entrusted to us, without it really being our life. It is all life before us, life as life is, and as we remember it, in a way, in the sound that makes its space, but rather gives us this space. We love Fayrouz’s song like this, but this song gives us heaven, time, reality, and more real, not as much as we did not live it, but as much as we receive it and ascend to it.
A song that stays above and beyond what people ask and expect
This is how Fayrouz, and the Rahbana in general, had their song, which was their special model in the Arabic song, their model that presents the song as another level of reality and life, as a connected space and a second memory. Fayrouz was like this another song, elevating singing to what poetry is and what music is, what they are in ascending and what seems to be a private biography. It was this harmonization between singing, and between remembering and dreaming, that made Fayrouz her song and the Rahbana their art, which was not far from his era and his world.
Ziad Al-Rahbani, the second Rahbani, made Fayrouz her second pioneer in the Arabic song. This time, the song was a return to remembering, and to reality, from a second theme, this time a material and monetary evocation of them. It is the remembrance, but of a life made of its paradoxes, of its brilliance, its futility and its nihilism.
Twice it was Fayrouz, her song and her uniqueness, and the Rahbana of the two generations had their song and their model, but the strange thing is that the song remained unique and even one. It is strange that Fayrouz’s song, which was part of a modernization process that included both culture and art, remained private and did not turn into a current. We did not find a real heir to the Rahbani legacy, so that the second renewal process was also for another Rahbani, and for Fayrouz herself.
Today’s song, as it is everywhere, does not continue Fairouz’s first or second song, as if what this song carries, despite everything, did not make it popular, nor did it give it a path and context in time. As if what the turquoise song carries remains, in a way, above and outside what the audience demands, but rather what singing means to the street and the public. The Rahbani song has been like this, since it was, above the demand of the year that sometimes recedes backwards, like everything that is happening to us now, and what has always happened to us.
* My Lebanese poet
