Fairuz
Nouhad Wadie Haddad, known as Fairuz, is a Lebanese singer. She is widely considered an iconic vocalist and one of the most celebrated singers in the history of the Arab world. She is popularly known as "The Bird of the East", "The Cedar of Lebanon", "The Moon's Neighbor", "The Voice of Lebanon", and "Our Ambassador to the Stars", among others.
Fairuz began her musical career as a teenager at the national radio station in Lebanon in the late 1940s as a chorus member. Her first major hit, "Itab", was released in 1952 and made her an instant star in the Arab world. In the summer of 1957, Fairuz held her first live performance at the Baalbeck International Festival where she was awarded with the honor of "Cavalier", the highest medal for artistic achievement by Lebanese president Camille Chamoun. Fairuz's fame spread throughout the Arab world in the 1950s and 1960s, leading her to perform outside of Lebanon in various Arab capitals, including Damascus, Amman, Cairo, Rabat, Algiers, and Tunis.
Fairuz has received honors and distinctions in multiple countries, including Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Tunisia, the United States, Egypt, and France. Throughout her career, she headlined at the most important venues in the world, such as Albert Hall and Royal Festival Hall in London, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center and United Nations General Assembly Lobby in New York, the Olympia and Salle Pleyel in Paris, and the Odeon of Herodes Atticus in Athens.
In a career spanning over six decades, Fairuz has recorded nearly 1500 songs, released more than 80 albums, performed in 20 musicals, and sold over 150 million records worldwide, making her one of the highest selling Middle-Eastern artists of all time, and one of the best-selling music artists in the world.
Early life
Nouhad Haddad was born on 20 November, 1934 or 21 November 1935, in Beirut into a Syriac Orthodox and Maronite Christian family. Her father, Wadie, was an Assyrian born in Mardin who moved to Lebanon to flee the Sayfo. He worked as a typesetter in a print shop. Her mother, Lisa al-Boustani, was born in the village of Dibbiyeh, Mount Lebanon. The family later moved to Zuqaq al-Blat, a neighborhood in Beirut, where they lived in a single-room house facing the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate school and shared a kitchen with their neighbors.By the age of ten, Nouhad had become well-known at school for her unusual singing voice. She would regularly sing during school shows and on holidays. This brought her to the attention of Mohammed Flayfel, a well-known musician and a teacher at the Lebanese Conservatory, who happened to attend one of the school's shows in February 1950. Impressed by her voice and performance, he advised her to enroll in the conservatory, which she did. At first, Nouhad's conservative father was reluctant to send her to the conservatory. At the persuasion of his brother, Nouhad's uncle, he eventually agreed to let her go on the condition that her brother accompany her.
Music career
Early career
Flayfel took a close interest in Nouhad's talent. He started training her in control of intonation and poetic form, and in an audition, Nouhad was heard singing by Halim el Roumi, head of the Lebanese radio station established in 1938, one of the oldest stations in the Arab world. Roumi was impressed by her voice and noticed that it was flexible, allowing her to sing in both Arabic and Western modes. At Nouhad's request, El Roumi appointed her as a chorus singer at the radio station in Beirut, where she was paid twenty-one U.S dollars every month, which, adjusted for inflation, in 2020 would amount to one hundred ninety-five dollars. He also went on to compose several songs for her and chose for her the stage name Fairuz, which is the Arabic word for turquoise and had been adopted as a stage name by Syrian singer Fayrouz Al Halabiya.A short while later, Fairuz was introduced to the Rahbani brothers, Assi and Mansour, who also worked at the radio station as musicians. Their chemistry was instant, and soon after, Assi started to compose songs for Fairuz. One of these songs was "Itab", which was an immediate success in the Arab world. It established Fairuz as one of the most prominent Arab singers at that time.
Fairuz rose to fame during the golden era of Arabic music and is one of the last figures and contributors of that time alive today. Her voice represented the 20th century's Lebanese pop culture. Throughout her career, she has established a style of universality and relatability as she made music that tackled issues ranging from adolescence and love to political plight and patriotism, even "snappy Christmas carols", which made her work accessible to all. Fairuz is known for her particularly forlorn style of music, which is a fusion of western and Arab sounds. Her music is set apart by its melancholic and nostalgic humor, along with Fairuz's stoic image as well as yearning voice, that is almost prayer-like, often described by experts as airy, clear, and flexible, different from the common ornamentation style commonly found in Arab music.
1950s: Establishment of a new star
Fairuz's first large-scale concert was in 1957, as part of the Baalbeck International Festival which took place under the patronage of Lebanese President Camille Chamoun. She performed in the Folkloric section of the festival representing "The Lebanese Nights". Fairuz was paid one Lebanese pound for that show, but she and the Rahbani brothers would become staples of the festival and featured most years until the civil war in Lebanon. The trio's performances at first were just small skits, but eventually they became full-blown musical operettas, and concerts followed for many years. Fairuz amassed more fame as she and other contemporaneous Arab artists were vocal about the Palestinian cause in their conflict with Israel and produced a number of militaristic and patriotically somber songs for them.1960s–1970s: Breakthrough and critical acclaim
Fairuz and the Rahbani brothers started to garner more attention with their innovative ventures and went on to revolutionise the blueprint for Lebanese music. It started with incorporating western sounds into their music and eventually shaping the Lebanese style of music, since the music had to fit into a certain mold before. This mold was the dominant Egyptian style of music, in the Egyptian dialect that would typically have a duration of thirty minutes. The trio started working with their own prototype, which was shorter three-minute songs in the Lebanese dialect that would tell a story. This change was received as well as it was due to growing discontent for traditional and indigenous music. Beirut at this time was undergoing rapid modernisation and cultural expansion. Some of those who lived in the city were not of Arab background, making it harder to relate to the musical forms of the time. So when Fairuz and the Rahbani brothers introduced a more modern yet still traditional form of music, they drew in mass appeal. This helped reshape the modern Lebanese identity especially in music and would go on to make significant contributions to the history of oriental music. These songs would also customarily included commentary and themes of local and regional socio-political and historical issues. As the 1960s wore on, Fairuz became known as the "First Lady of Lebanese singing", as Halim Roumi dubbed her. During this period, the Rahbani brothers wrote and composed for her hundreds of famous songs, most of their operettas, and three motion pictures. In those productions, they also chose to abandon the popular improvisatory nature of Arab performances in favour of more well-rehearsed and produced ones.In 1971, Fairuz's fame became international after her major North American tour, which was received with much excitement by the Arab-American and American communities and yielded positive reviews of the concerts. To date, Fairuz has performed in many countries around the globe, including Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, France, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Netherlands, Greece, Canada, United States, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Italy, and her home country, Lebanon.
On 22 September, 1972, Assi suffered a brain hemorrhage and was rushed to the hospital. Fans crowded outside the hospital, praying for him and lighting candles. After three surgeries, Assi's brain hemorrhage was halted. Ziad Rahbani, the eldest son of Fairuz and Assi, at age 17, gave his mother the music of one of his unreleased songs, "Akhadou el Helween". His uncle Mansour Rahbani re-wrote new lyrics for it to be called "Saalouni n'Nass" which talked about Fairuz being on stage for the first time without Assi. Three months after suffering the hemorrhage, Assi attended the premiere performance of that musical, Al Mahatta, in Piccadilly Theatre on Hamra Street. Elias Rahbani, Assi's younger brother, took over the orchestration and musical arrangement for the performance.
In 1978, the trio toured Europe and the Persian Gulf nations, including a concert at the Paris Olympia. As a result of this busy schedule, Assi's medical and mental health began to deteriorate. Assi Rahbani eventually died in 1986, no longer married to Fairuz, but due to the influence his family and Fairuz had in Lebanon, the factions in Beirut had a cease-fire allowing the funeral procession to travel from the Muslim side of the city to where Assi would be buried on the Christian side. Fairuz then began to work almost exclusively with Ziad Rahbani, her son on producing her music.
Amid the Lebanese Civil War, Fairuz's fame catapulted. Unlike many of her famous peers, she never left Lebanon to live abroad. She did not hold any concerts there with the exception of the stage performance of the operetta Petra, which was performed in both the western and eastern parts of the then-divided Beirut in 1978. The war lasted fifteen years, took 150,000 lives, and fostered a divided nation. This was the period where her role as a prominent Lebanese figure would be cemented. She and the Rahbani brothers would frequently express their dissent for the war in their music, and their refusal to take sides and non-partisan stances helped them appeal to all of Lebanon, which then allowed Fairuz to become a voice of reason and unification for the Lebanese people. This was especially important because the war itself was so multifaceted and involved many conflicting opinions between the state and different militias. To the Lebanese, she became a lot more than just an entertainer. She became a representation of Lebanon, as well as stability in a time of insecurity and uncertainty.