When a writer researches singing with the intention of drawing conclusions, examples, and lessons, he should focus on high-end songs, as talking about low-key singing will undoubtedly be just as low-key. But a particular low-key song, which appeared during the Russian-Ukrainian war, was able to provoke the quarantine, with its triviality and the speed of its spread, as it began to appear to us, wherever we looked, a video of a man whose name we had never heard before, and in front of him a flock of young men dancing enthusiastically like balloons, saying, literally: Harden your heart, Putin, attack and increase the attacks, expel them from Palestine, marry Ukrainian women!
I tend to believe that “classy” singing, if it exists, is primarily for lovers, male and female, to exchange love and longing, and it can be developed to include a description of the beauty of nature, or talk about other human feelings, such as one of the singers singing for the house, the mother, And brother, and son, just like Faiza Ahmed did, so she held the title of family singer. Singing can also assimilate ancient poetry, as Muhammad Abd al-Wahhab did with Ahmed Shawqi’s poem “Madnak is his dryness and resting place,” and Fayrouz with verses from Antara ibn Shaddad, Abu Nawas, and some Andalusian poets, or he presents a poem of modern poetry, with an amazing philosophical formulation, As the Rahbanis say, “You returned in the evening like a migrating moon,” and in it: In the presence of fear, names, elements, and everything that has no name in the universe, I declare my love for you, and my union with the sadness of your eyes..
But the level of singing declines when it enters the world of politics, especially if it goes towards praising presidents, kings and princes. The seriousness of this matter is evident in the fact that some great innovators, such as Abdul Rahman Al-Abnoudi, Salah Jaheen, Ismail Al-Habrouk, Kamal Al-Taweel, Muhammad Al-Muji, and Abdel Halim Hafez, presented a brilliant achievement on the one hand, and harmful on the other hand. They were able, with their exceptional ingenuity, to pass The idea of loving a leader is in the hearts of millions of people. If people looked at him with a cold eye, they would see many of his mistakes, disappointments, and confusions, just as they did in glorifying Gamal Abdel Nasser, or as Safwan Bahlawan did when he composed Al-Jawahiri’s poem in praise of Hafez Al-Assad, and Mayada Al-Hanawi sang it, and the same is true. In songs that do not praise people, but rather show us our great countries, whose soil is occupied with human hearts, as Joseph Harb says in “The Bride’s Bracelet,” which Philemon Wehbe composed for Fairouz, or as Abdel Halim sang from Al-Abnoudi’s poetry, “I swear by her heaven and her soil,” and so did Wadih. It was pure when Lebanon sang A Piece of Heaven, Oh my son, I give it to your country, your soul… And the late Syrian poet Issa Ayoub, Samir Yazbek, wrote and sang: O my country, Khadi Shadi, the firstborn of my children… This allows us to ask, innocently, or intentionally: Why is he sacrificing People sacrifice their children and do not sacrifice themselves? Does a person have the right to sacrifice his children at all? In trying to answer these questions, you find that most people love to sacrifice for the sake of their homelands, but for others, and then they declare that the love of the homeland exceeds the love of the child, as stated in Elie Choueiri’s song: Neither my money nor my children are as important as your love, there is no lover.
I, your count, used to reach the heights of ecstasy when I listened to what was called “national songs,” and my library was full of the songs of Marcel Khalife, Samih Choucair, and Sheikh Imam. What pleases me most are the Levantine poems written by Al-Akhtal Al-Saghir and Saeed Akl in glorification of the Levant, but for a considerable time now, I have no longer allowed my temperament to overpower my mind, and for the first time, I began to wonder about the significance of our chanting Ahmed Fouad Najm’s poem, satirizing American President Richard Nixon, and the Egyptian government that received him, and I thought: When the president of the largest country comes to visit your country, he honors it and gives it weight, so by what right or logic do you mock him and “pity” him?
