Fairuz
Authors: Habib Kenneth S. 
Published: April 2021

The Lebanese singer Fairuz is one of the most popular and critically acclaimed performers in the history of Arab musical arts. Born Nuhad Haddad in 1935, Fairuz attained extraordinary success, in great part, through her cultivation of an exceptional command of the voice, her development of a deep individual artistry, and her solid rooting in the performance practices of Lebanese and Arab art and popular song. From early in her career, this achievement was in collaboration with the Rahbani family of composer-poets. Assi Rahbani (b. 1923–d. 1986) and Mansour Rahbani (b. 1925–d. 2009) were siblings who worked together as the duo known as the Rahbani Brothers. Fairuz and the Rahbani Brothers met at the Lebanese Radio Station, where she took her professional name, and they began a collaboration there that gave rise to their first international hit in 1952. Occasionally, younger brother Elias Rahbani (b. 1938–d. 2021) joined in the composing as well. Following the marriage of Fairuz and Assi in 1954, Fairuz gave birth to their first child, Ziad Rahbani (b. 1956), who was raised in the presence of some of the most accomplished artists from across Arab society and who similarly showed a remarkable aptitude for musical arts early in life. Following the death of Assi in 1986, Ziad became the primary composer for Fairuz, after which her lyrical and musical style to some extent began increasingly to reflect more of the sensibilities of a younger generation. Since their beginnings, the Fairuz-Rahbani team has changed with the times and given rise to a prodigious artistic output that has included the production of operettas, musical theater sketches, musical films, and over a hundred record albums. Thematically, the wide-ranging repertoire has sometimes addressed universalistic spiritual matters with references to God, eternity, prayer, and other mystical subjects. The artists also have presented material of more expressly religious character that mentions churches, mosques, and houses of worship; that covers esteemed geographical locales, such as Jerusalem and Mecca; and that presents traditional repertoire like Good Friday chanting and Christmas carols. While Fairuz and the Rahbani composers are Christians, their repertoire has appealed across society irrespective of religious and sectarian affiliation. In the process, Fairuz has become a multifaceted icon to listeners from diverse backgrounds in Lebanon, throughout the eastern Mediterranean, across Arab society, and in the diaspora. As for transliteration of the names from Arabic into Latin script, “Rahbani” is fairly consistent, but “Rahbany” also occurs. The plural (i.e., three or more) is “Rahabina” and also is found in the forms “Rahbaniyun” and “Rahbaniyin” while in English it appears as “Rahbanis” as well. While the duo of the Rahbani Brothers has been consistently translated into English in this way, the Arabic form is either “al-Akhawan Rahbani” or “al-Akhawayn Rahbani” (i.e., the two Rahbani Brothers). “Fairuz,” which means “turquoise” in Arabic, has numerous variants in transliteration stemming, in part, from the various possibilities for each syllable of the name (e.g., Fairouz, Fayruz, etc.), but some degree of standardization has come, in part, from the use of this spelling by Voix de l’Orient, the record label that has produced the bulk of her recordings.