レバノンのベイルート出身の歌い手にファイルーズがいます。彼女の音楽は「世界音楽」として認知されていますが、その音楽の一部が "The Legendary Fairuz" というアルバムとなって紹介されています。そのアルバムの「解説文」の英語がシンプルで美しかったので、その一部をここに載せたいと思います。
After the great Omme Kolsoum, no singer in the Arab world is as beloved as Lebanon's Fairuz. Born in Beirut, her adopted name means 'turquoise' in Arabic, after the pitch, warmth, polish and sensuality of her voice.
It was in 1947, while Fairuz was still a young girl, that she took the first steps on a path that would lead her to world renown. She was singing at a school party before an invited quest, the respected teacher Muhammad Fleifel from the Conservatoire National du Liban. He was there to find voices to fill out a choir he was mounting to sing national hymns for the newly created Lebanese radio. Even so early in her life he could hear that Fairuz's was never a voice to blend among many in a chorus. He quickly noticed the early bloom of a spectacular flower in their midst.
He invited her to join the choir and later championed her admission to the 'Conservatoire National,' where she studied music and singing. Soon after the completion of her studies in the 1950s, Fleifel was presetting a recital of singers to the head of music for Lebanese Radio, Halim al-Rumi. He too noted the flower now in bloom and and immediately invited her to sing solo on radio.
Put before her own group Fairuz first began with romantic songs, others that expressed a certain nostalgia for the ways of country life and even adaptations of Arabic folk songs. Such was the subject matter - and moreover, the voice - that all Lebanon quickly acknowledged that a major new star had arrived.
Al-Rumi was so taken with his new singer that he introduced her to 'Assi Rahbani, a young composer he thought would perfectly compliment Fairuz's vocal mastery of Arabic and Western singing styles. So fortuitous was the meeting with 'Assi, whom she married in 1954, and his lyricist brother, that the linking was indispensable to her rise to prominence.
As composers and arrangers the Rahbani brother's work presented a wholly unique and innovative blend of traditional Arab instrumentation with modern European ones like those of a traditional orchestra with its abundance of violins. This blend of the ancient and the modern was a perfect compliment of life in Lebanon at the time. As A. Jihad Racy remarks, "During the early postwar decades, most urban communities in the Arab world underwent rapid expansion, partly because of an influx of population from the rural areas. The city of Beirut in particular had absorbed a substantial number of people whose ethnic and social roots went back to various Lebanese villages, especially those in the mountainous regions of central and northern Lebanon. Politically and socially influential, this segment provided fertile ground for the rise of new artistic tradition - music, dance, poetry, fashions, handicrafts - whose context was unmistakably urban but whose ration was folk and rural."
So, with the creation of the Rahbani brother's Troupe Populaire Libanaise, founded in 1959, Fairuz' star rose to shine over all the Arab world within a creative partnership that lasted over three decades. The poet Sai'd Aql has even dubbed her 'Lenanon's Ambassador to the stars'.
...
(By Gerald Seligman)
After the great Omme Kolsoum, no singer in the Arab world is as beloved as Lebanon's Fairuz. Born in Beirut, her adopted name means 'turquoise' in Arabic, after the pitch, warmth, polish and sensuality of her voice.
It was in 1947, while Fairuz was still a young girl, that she took the first steps on a path that would lead her to world renown. She was singing at a school party before an invited quest, the respected teacher Muhammad Fleifel from the Conservatoire National du Liban. He was there to find voices to fill out a choir he was mounting to sing national hymns for the newly created Lebanese radio. Even so early in her life he could hear that Fairuz's was never a voice to blend among many in a chorus. He quickly noticed the early bloom of a spectacular flower in their midst.
He invited her to join the choir and later championed her admission to the 'Conservatoire National,' where she studied music and singing. Soon after the completion of her studies in the 1950s, Fleifel was presetting a recital of singers to the head of music for Lebanese Radio, Halim al-Rumi. He too noted the flower now in bloom and and immediately invited her to sing solo on radio.
Put before her own group Fairuz first began with romantic songs, others that expressed a certain nostalgia for the ways of country life and even adaptations of Arabic folk songs. Such was the subject matter - and moreover, the voice - that all Lebanon quickly acknowledged that a major new star had arrived.
Al-Rumi was so taken with his new singer that he introduced her to 'Assi Rahbani, a young composer he thought would perfectly compliment Fairuz's vocal mastery of Arabic and Western singing styles. So fortuitous was the meeting with 'Assi, whom she married in 1954, and his lyricist brother, that the linking was indispensable to her rise to prominence.
As composers and arrangers the Rahbani brother's work presented a wholly unique and innovative blend of traditional Arab instrumentation with modern European ones like those of a traditional orchestra with its abundance of violins. This blend of the ancient and the modern was a perfect compliment of life in Lebanon at the time. As A. Jihad Racy remarks, "During the early postwar decades, most urban communities in the Arab world underwent rapid expansion, partly because of an influx of population from the rural areas. The city of Beirut in particular had absorbed a substantial number of people whose ethnic and social roots went back to various Lebanese villages, especially those in the mountainous regions of central and northern Lebanon. Politically and socially influential, this segment provided fertile ground for the rise of new artistic tradition - music, dance, poetry, fashions, handicrafts - whose context was unmistakably urban but whose ration was folk and rural."
So, with the creation of the Rahbani brother's Troupe Populaire Libanaise, founded in 1959, Fairuz' star rose to shine over all the Arab world within a creative partnership that lasted over three decades. The poet Sai'd Aql has even dubbed her 'Lenanon's Ambassador to the stars'.
...
(By Gerald Seligman)