Lebanon Mourns Music & Theater Giant Ziad Rahbani, The Voice Of A Nation’s Anger

-Essay-

BEIRUT — Ziad Rahbani, the legendary Lebanese composer, playwright, musician and political provocateur, died on Saturday, July 26, at the age of 69. When I learned of his death, I was overwhelmed with grief. I felt as if a part of my memory had vanished with the vanishing of his musical fingers and his sharp, often sarcastic words and his spirit that departed without warning.

Born in 1956 to the iconic singer Fairuz and composer Assi Rahbani, Ziad Rahbani carved his own path from a young age in music and theater — blending jazz, classical Arabic melodies, and biting social satire to critique Lebanon’s political dysfunction and societal contradictions. His plays, including Nazl el-Surour and Bennesbeh La Boukra Shou?, became generational landmarks, while his music — often performed by Fairuz — captured the bitterness, humor and resilience of life in Lebanon. Rahbani’s work made him not only an artist but also cultural and political voice whose influence extended far beyond the stage.

For these reasons, he was not just a passing artist in the lives of many Lebanese, including myself; he was a living echo of Lebanon’s pulse of his people’s repeated disappointments of its recurring tragedies for many long years not only in songs but in the small details that live deep inside us. I could not accept his unexpected departure, which with it a sense of emptiness and disappointment.

But the memory of Rahbani, with his rebellious voice and words that pierce minds and hearts, will remain immortal an indelible part of both our personal and collective memory.

An echo for generations

There are not many artists who became part of both individual and collective memory. But Rahbani was not just a genius artist; he was a memory walking among us, engraved in the details of our upbringing in the tape of songs we memorized unintentionally in the voice of Fairuz, which often accompanies our uneasy mornings. His sarcasm expresses a deep bitterness we feel every day in the theatrical dialogues that resemble us to a shameful extent in his hoarse voice, resounding with punchlines that summarize the winding path of our lives, shifting according to events and circumstances.

We grew up laughing at the sarcasm of his 1974 play Nazl el-Sourour (“Happiness Hotel”), spelling out the tragedies of the Lebanese civil war in Film Ameriki Tawil (“The American Motion Picture”), and being astonished by his blunt clarity in Bennesbeh Labokra Chou (“What About Tomorrow”). We grew up, as he taught us, that comedy can be a stab in the heart of power, that music is not always for love but also for anger, and that an artist should not be neutral but a screaming voice whose echo is heard by generations.

His bitterness resembles us.

I never met Rahbani. And I only saw him once, as a light shadow wandering the streets of Achrafieh without companions and without the noise that accompanies today’s artists. I feel that he once passed through my living room, sat on the couch and mocked everything happening outside the window.

He resembled us and resembled what we aspired to be: free, sarcastic, not fully belonging, but deeply immersed in Lebanese details to the core. Who said nostalgia must always be beautiful? We miss Rahbani even in his bitterness — because his bitterness resembles us. We return to his songs not to relax but to remember how angry we were and how elegant that anger was in his voice.

What about tomorrow?

Did Rahbani disappear with his death? Did the echo of his words fade? Certainly not. He just withdrew or maybe got tired and felt bored or fell silent to make us miss him more. But he will remain immortal in our memory, every time we listen to “Sho Hal Ayam Elli Wasallnala,” “Bima Inno,” “Awdek Rannan,” “Eh Fi Amal,” or “Kan Gheir Shakl El Zeitouneh”… and in every line of his plays, the words of which we grew up with and which accompanied generation after generation.

We loved him even more because he was not an angel.

Rahbani departed without fanfare or farewell. He did not tell us “What About Tomorrow” and he did not say anything “About Dignity and the Stubborn People,” the translation of his play Bi Khsous Al Karameh Wal Shaab Al Anid. He left behind a betrayed people crushed by crises and a collapsed country ravaged by the corrupt whose creators and giants are left to their fate, only honored after their death.

Rahbani is not an icon because icons do not change. He changed, shifted, shocked and, at times, disappointed us. And we loved him even more because he was not an angel. He was chaotic, emotional, moody, transparent to the point of embarrassment.

With his sudden departure, Rahbani will no longer say something like “What About Tomorrow?” But he taught us to ask that question every day — even if we do not find an answer.