(C) Global Voices
This story was originally published by Global Voices and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Lebanese composer, playwright, and political satirist Ziad Rahbani dies: The voice of a generation gone silent [1]
['Walid El Houri']
Date: 2025-07-28
Ziad Rahbani, the iconic Lebanese composer, playwright, and political satirist, passed away on Saturday, July 26, in Beirut, leaving behind a region in ruin and a generation in mourning. More than a cultural figure, Ziad was a symbol of rebellion, wit, and critique — an artist whose music, theatre, and persona inspired millions across borders.
Born in 1956, the son of the legendary Lebanese singer Fairuz and composer Assi Rahbani, Ziad carved out a singular space for himself both musically and politically. From a young age, he defied convention, becoming a voice for the Arab Left and for those who wanted to question authority, religion, sectarianism, and the absurdities of power.
Rahbani’s plays, songs, and radio sketches did not simply entertain; they taught, provoked, and challenged. For so many, he was the first taste of politics in a country and region plagued by wars, occupations, and sectarian violence. Through sarcasm and sincerity, through piano chords and word plays, Rahbani introduced generations to leftist ideals of rebellion, critique, and collective imagination.
Millions across the Arabic-speaking world can still recite entire dialogues from Rahbani’s plays, the lyrics of his songs, or quote lines from his radio programs, often passed along as self-recorded tapes, and still relevant as commentary to this day.
His artistic archive, both in music and theatre, is rich, powerful, and ahead of its time, combining jazz, bossa nova, and funk with traditional Arabic music styles, along with sharp lyrics, to create a unique style — often dubbed “Oriental Jazz” — that influenced many after him.
Rahbani’s legacy remains a living testament to the political, social, and emotional upheavals of the last five decades in all its contradictions.
Today, he leaves us in a time when the region is more colonized, repressed, and fragmented than ever, and furthest from his dreams as a young communist in the 1970s devoted to Palestinian liberation and proletarian revolutions.
His loss cuts deep for a generation that has lived through endless cycles of political transformations and defeats, violence and alienation, often with Rahbani’s music and plays as the soundtrack to both its hopes and disillusionments.
On Monday, mourners accompanied his coffin and marched in his honor in Beirut’s Hamra district, the neighborhood where he lived, worked and spent his last moment, and that once embodied the spirit of resistance and the left:
This homage is to a simple man who carried the weight of a generation’s dreams, defeats, and contradictions with wit, cynicism, and innovation.
As mourners across the region remember this towering figure of Arab music, theatre, and politics, their hearts inevitably turn to his mother, the incomparable Fairuz. Her voice — perhaps the most recognizable in the Arabic-speaking world — in the songs composed by her son, will remain among the most beautiful sounds in the history of Arabic music:
Goodbye, Ziad. Thank you for the music, the words, the laughter, and for giving voice to our youth.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://globalvoices.org/2025/07/28/lebanese-composer-playwright-and-political-satirist-ziad-rahbani-dies-the-voice-of-a-generation-gone-silent/
Published and (C) by Global Voices
Content appears here under this condition or license:
https://globalvoices.org/about/global-voices-attribution-policy/.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/globalvoices/
