Ziad al-Rahbani (1956-2025): The Unyielding Voice of Resistance and Revolution
By Louis Brehony
“If the system isn’t working .. Change the system.” – Ziad al-Rahbani, “al-Nizam” (The System)
It is with shock at the earliness of his departure that Lebanon bids farewell to Ziad al-Rahbani, a pillar of radical musicianship, at the age of 69. A committed communist who aligned himself with the Palestinian cause, Ziad left his indelible musical fingerprints on a wide region. An essential influence to generations of listeners, musicians and activists, Ziad ruffled the feathers of the wealthy, embarrassed conservatives and irritated liberals. Son of Lebanese icons Fairuz and Assi Rahbani, his musical tenacity and critique of a system in crisis demanded that others sing for its downfall.
Born into relative privilege among Maronite Christians and well-known musicians, Ziad understandably trod a creative path from an early age. His composer father Assi and uncle Mansour were the famous Rahbani brothers, writing epochal works for his mother Fairuz, to this day Lebanon’s most renowned vocalist. Ziad grew up sitting in on rehearsals and met huge figures in Arab music, including Egyptian composer Mohammed Abdel Wahab and Palestinian Sabri Sherif, who produced Fairuz’s albums dedicated to Palestine. Ziad eventually inherited the Rahbani mantle and, from the 1980s, became Fairuz’s main songwriter.
As a teenager, Ziad joined Rahbani brothers’ productions and quietly applied his skills as a composer and keyboardist. Though his approach towards his parents’ legacy was not the scorched earth policy some describe, Ziad began to forge his own path. Attracted to leftist politics at a time when the Lebanese Communist Party (LCP) allied itself to Palestinian resistance, Ziad’s empathy with the poor and downtrodden quickly expressed itself through music. He found his raison d’être in musical theatre, and works like Film Amriki Tawil (Long American Film, 1980) and Shi Fashil (Failure, 1983) broke social taboos, sharply attacking class discrimination and spotlighting characters from the working class.
Disgusted by the massacre at Tel al-Zaatar refugee camp in 1976, Ziad moved from the material comfort of West Beirut and chose to reside in majority Muslim areas. Throughout Zionist invasions and a war that would endure over 15 hard years, he refused to leave the country and seek refuge elsewhere. Attesting to the radical atmosphere to which Ziad entered, Ziad composed the film soundtrack to Returning to Haifa (1982), based on the Ghassan Kanafani novel, produced by radical playwright Kassim Hawal and involving support from socialist East Germany.
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In 1985, with conservatism and sectarianism rising from the destruction of invasions and war, Ziad released the album Ana Mish Kafir (I am not an infidel). The title track attacked those in Lebanon’s Christian and Muslim communities who washed their hands of the problems faced by the poor and oppressed:
I am not an infidel, but hunger is
I am not an infidel, but disease is
I am not an infidel, but poverty is
Included in the same album, Ziad’s song “al-Muqawama al-Wataniyya al-Lubnaniyya” (the Lebanese National Resistance) contained revolutionary optimism and prophesied later victories. It was later sung by Fairuz at the 2000 Beiteddine Festival, marking the expulsion of Israeli forces at the hands of the resistance:
If the south remains standing, so too will its children
Many of the political songs Ziad wrote for theatre and albums over this earlier period have found striking relevance to the lives of new generations since. In “Shu Hal Ayyam” (Such times we’ve reached), Ziad’s lyrics were a direct critique of capitalism:
Such times we’ve reached
They say the rich give to the poor
As if money takes off of its own accord
To this one a little, to another a bundleWhat a good one!
Gazan oud player Reem Anbar has played the song and says, “This still resonates with us today, while we see injustice and inequality all around us. Ziad really gave voice to our experiences in Palestine and Gaza in particular.”
Coming amidst the Gaza Genocide, the passing of Ziad on July 26 saw a collective outpouring of musicians and political activists. Egyptian musician Hazem Shaheen performed with Ziad in his later years, including on LCP stages. Saddened by the loss of “a friend and human of the highest order,” Hazem said that he felt Ziad’s political commitments translated into the way he treated others: “On the personal level, he was uniquely selfless, interested in supporting and encouraging younger artists rather than being motivated by his own career.”
Lebanese lyricist Fadi Zaraket sees Ziad’s passing as having importance akin to the loss of Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah: “a huge loss for revolutionary music, culture, media and resistance.” Ziad had appeared in public as a political commentator in recent years, denouncing Western intervention in Syria and critiquing bourgeois corruption in Lebanon. According to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP):
“Ziad Rahbani was more than an artist; he was a living national conscience and an intellectual engaged with the causes of his people, always siding with the poor and marginalized, and rejecting injustice, tyranny, and sectarianism… He was never neutral. Rather, he supported the poor, the people, Palestine, Gaza, and the revolutionaries who asked for nothing but a homeland that is not for sale and a life without humiliation.”
(The Palestine Chronicle)
– Louis Brehony is a musician, activist, researcher and educator. He is author of the book Palestinian Music in Exile: Voices of Resistance (2023), editor of Ghassan Kanafani: Selected Political Writings (2024), and director of the award-winning film Kofia: A Revolution Through Music (2021). He writes regularly on Palestine and political culture and performs internationally as a buzuq player and guitarist. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.