Rahbani brothers
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The Rahbani Brothers (Arabic: الأخوان رحباني) were Lebanese composers, musicians, songwriters, authors, playwrights/dramatists, philosophers and poets.
Assi Rahbani (Arabic: عاصي الرحباني) was born on May 4, 1923 (died on 21st June 1986), and Mansour Rahbani (Arabic: منصور الرحباني) in 1925.
They are known for their huge repertoire of works with the Lebanese diva Fairuz.
Assi was Fairuz's husband from 1955 until his death. They are Ziad Rahbani's parents, a prominent contemporary musician.
Assi was also an orchestra conductor.
Assi also co-starred with Fairuz in notable Lebanese movies from his own scenario and music along with Mansour: Safar Barlek (The Exile, 1967) and Bint El-Hares (The Guardian's Daughter, 1968)
Biyya' el Khawatem (The Ring Seller, 1965) film didn't include Assi in the cast (though he and Mansour are credited for the scenario and music). Fairuz and Nasri Shamseddine were among the main cast.
[edit] The Beginning: The Mid-East Radio Channel
Coming from a simple town in Beirut's northern suburbs, the Rahbani Brothers were not involved in music besides the extensive reading that their parents made sure they had. Though Assi and Mansour occasionally helped the local priest in arranging the vocals and instrumentation of their Greek Orthodox church masses, the actual involvement in music came with Assi getting a small role in the Lower East Radio channel.
Mansour and Assi started at the radio channel as simple paperboys, dealing with the music sheets and lyrical editing until they composed their own jingle and suggested it to the supervisor at the channel, Halim el-Roumi, Majida's father.
He was impressed with the amateur effort and further encouraged them by paying them for further work and broadcasting it on the channel airwaves. The jingles or pieces were usually broadcast live and the brothers' perfectionism became one of their trademarks as they demanded a lot of time in rehearsal and preparation and efforts from the singers to yield the maximal results.
At the same time, a certain Nouhad Haddad was one of the rising singing voice in the channel's chorus. Her voice caught the ears of Halim el-Roumi to the degree that he composed her very first song called Itab (Blame).
Assi attended the recording session and the rest was history. He asked Halim el-Roumi to compose songs for her. And the trio was born. Assi and Mansour Rahbani and Fairouz became one of the most prominent names on the Lebanese music scene.
The trio released about 50 songs in the following 3 years and found it more convenient to split from the channel and work on their own without the employment restrictions.
By 1957, Assi and Fairouz got married and with that, their working relationship had tightened and the Rahbani Bros took over the extensive process of preparing Fairouz to become the most famous and prominent voice in the Middle East and even around the world.
[edit] The First Stage: The 60's
Fairouz and the Rahbani Bros started building their career basis on the numerous songs they recorded and released. Radio and TV became an important medium in their process of spreading their music. Assi and Mansour also started writing musicals, plays with musical dialogs and interpretations of patriotic themes that captured the ears of the Lebanese public by shock with Fairouz's pure vocals and the brothers' pioneering musical arrangements.
A select 'elite' of the most talented and genius composers and poets were selected by the Rahbanies to compose some work Fairouz, those productions were all considered to be the best ever yielded by those composers and writers through their careers. Zaki Naseef, Philemon Wehbi, Gibran Khalil Gibran, Najeeb Hankash, Michel Trad, Sa'eed Akl, and Abdel Wahab all composed and wrote her songs. Of them, only Philemon Wehbi remained as the most prominent and extensive composer who'd continued acting and composing for Fairouz into the 70's, 80's, and several unreleased works kept for later releases in the 90's and beyond.
"Ayyam al Hassad" ('Days of Harvest' - 1957), "Al 'Urs fi l’Qarya" ('The Wedding in the Village' - 1959), "Al Ba'albakiya" ('The Girl from Baalbek' - 1961), "Jisr el Amar" ('Bridge of the Moon' - 1962), "'Awdet el 'Askar" ('The Return of the Soldiers' - 1962), "Al Layl wal Qandil" ('The Night and the Lantern' - 1963), "Biyya'el Khawatem" ('Rings for Sale' - 1964), "Ayyam Fakhreddine" ('The Days of Fakhreddine' - 1966), "Hala wal Malik" ('Hala and the King' - 1967), "Ach Chakhs" ('The Person' - 1968-1969), "Jibal Al Sawwan" ('Sawwan Mountains' - 1969).
The musicals mostly focused on the village life, the innocence of growing up, the problems of love, parental care, and the mischief of the youth. One of them was made into a feature movie, "Biyya'el Khawatem" ('Rings for Sale) directed by world-famous director Youssef Chahine.
By 1965, the Rahbani Bros have become one of the most famous music composers/producers in the Arab World and they were sought after by the most famous of singers such as Najat al'Saghira and Sabah. They have also written and directed hundreds of theatrical and TV productions besides the ones that featured Fairouz, since those included songs from her repertoire or featured new singles that they promoted through the musicals and sketches.
Parallel to their gradual growth and between their almost non-stop recording, theatrical and TV shooting work, the Rahbani Bros and Fairouz toured the Arab world extensively since 1960, thus spreading Fairouz's name and their work beyond the borders of their Lebanese and Syrian audience. For the first time since the inception of cinema and recorded music, Egypt felt the rising competition from the Mediterranean small country called Lebanon.
[edit] The Second Stage: The 70's
Several changes have taken place as the decade of the 60's ended. Fairouz started feeling the controlling grip of the Rahbani Bros and valued it, as they were the perfect managers, composers, and producers to fully understand her vocal range and could create unparalleled melodies, lyrics, and philosophical musicals to further add allure and cultural respect to the journey that was the Rahbani Bros and Fairouz.
They have also perfectly crafted her goddess-like image theatrically and on screen along with a very controlled media presence and exposure which has strongly elevated her status as one of the most sought after names in the media and one of the most mysterious.
Nonetheless, Fairouz had several insecurities concerning her physical appearance. After insisting for a long time, and with Mansour's defense, she had her nose job operation in 1967, which drastically improved her facial features and elevated her breathing.
This stage also saw the Rahbani Bros launch the careers of so many other artists who first worked as backup singers for Fairouz or acted in their musicals, they later became major forces in the Arab music industry. Georgette Sayegh, further work with Najat al Saghira, Sabah, Wadi al'Safi, Ronsa/Fadia/Amal al Hajj, and of course the angelic voice of Huda, Fairouz’s younger sister, who’s been a fixture in their musicals and had her share of Rahbani compositions and TV shows to star in.
Fairouz had become the leading voice in the Arab World, as acknowledged by the "Planet of Singing" Egypt's Umm Kulthoum and the Arab World could only wait for Fairouz's star to explode only further onto the international arena, which happened with their 1971 tour of the USA.
The tour had a rocky start as some of the managers and event-organizers in the US doubted their popularity and drawing power. But it all became history on the night of June 06, 1971 at the Carnegie Hall in New York, the venue was all sold out… Americans, Lebanese immigrants, and Arabs of other nationalities filled up the place to listen to the voice coming from the distant East. And from that night, hundreds of raving reviews were written as the American media got swamped with news and acclaim for the voice coming from the Middle East, accompanied by the two Rahbani geniuses.
After 4 months of extensively touring the USA, Canada, and Mexico, the trio returned to Beirut where more work awaited them as Assi and Mansour started working on the Musical Al Mahatta (The Station), and a TV show called Al Mawasem (Seasons) starring Huda.
It was an early evening on Sept 22, 1972 when Assi felt a severe pain in the head before falling to the floor unconscious. He was rushed to the hospital and by night time, the newspapers, radio stations, and TV channels all over the Arab world and Europe were broadcasting the horrible news: The Genius Assi Rahbani, Composer and Husband of Lady Fairouz, Has Suffered a Severe Brain Hemorrhage.
Thousands crowded outside the hospital praying for him and lighting candles as military units worked on drawing a path for the traumatized Fairouz to get into the hospital. 16 hours and 3 surgeries later, Assi Rahbani's brain hemorrhage has been stopped and the brain damage minimized. Ironically, the hemorrhage has happened in the musical creation part of the brain.
More irony lay in the songs... The last song he'd composed at that time was "Sad Nights of the North" that go like "Sad nights of the north, keep remembering me, and when my love asks about me, in the sad nights of the north..."
Ziad Rahbani, their eldest son, at age 16, decided to take over composition after his father and composed his first song for his mother for that same musical that was Saaloui n'Nass (The People Asked Me) and its refrain was "The people asked me about you my love, they wrote letters and let the wind fly them by, it's so hard for me to be here my love, for the first time singing and you're not by my side"
The song was about Assi's absence. Amazingly, only 3 months after the hemorrhage operation, Assi Rahbani attended the premiere performance of the musical in Piccadelly Theater in Hamra Street. Though several doctors feared a relapse from emotional excitement, one famous doctor and a close friend of the family told them it's totally OK and actually positive therapy. Dr. Dagher accompanied Assi and Mansour that night as their youngest brother, Elias Rahbani, took over orchestration and musical arrangement for the performance.
The audience didn't know he was among them until the end, when they were giving Fairouz the standing ovation and screaming her name non-stop, when to their amazement, she stepped down from the stage and walked among them, pointing to the far end of the hall till she reached where Assi and Ziad and Mansour had been sitting. The audience exploded into further clapping and cheering, most of them moved to tears by the sight of the musical family and its patriarch on a wheelchair smiling at them and waving to them with a heavy hand.
Amazingly, a year after the hemorrhage, Assi Rahbani was 70% healed and back to composing and writing with his brother and the trio was back. The musicals came one after the other, this time growing more and more with political symbolism and subtext.
Ziad Rahbani's genius exploded as he composed hundreds of songs and musical pieces for his own musicals that he'd also written. He also started composing songs for Fairouz, though maintaining the oriental feel and identity, he pioneered the genre known as Oriental Jazz by adding in jazzy instruments and western musical sentences to the genius and emotional Arab lyrics that he'd also written.
Unlike his father's and uncles' lyrics, his were fused with humor and more unconventional Lebanese vocabulary.
