A special edition of “Ofuq” on her 88th birthday
Tuesday – 13 Ramadan 1444 AH – 04 April 2023 CE Issue Number [16198]
Beirut: Sawsan Al-Abtah
More than 35 Arab intellectuals gather on the pages of one volume, each of them writing about Fayrouz from the angle of his specialization, from his geographical location, and according to his personal or academic vision. The volume is titled “A Homeland Named Fairouz,” and it is a special edition of “Ofuq,” and a new achievement for the “Arab Thought Foundation,” on the occasion of Fairouz’s 88th birthday.
Moroccan scholar Abd al-Ilah Belkaziz writes in the editorial that Fayrouz “represented the biggest turning point in the history of modern Arab music and singing.”
In her study, Dr. Rafif Sidawi traces the sociology of the turquoise song, as it is the “estrangement entrusted to the earth,” which sows the seeds of the revolution against injustice, aspiring for freedom, in the “Sawan Mountain.”
As for the Saudi researcher, Dr. Saad Al-Bazei, he goes to explore what is behind the names, doors, windows, bridges and birds, in a group of songs centered around these regulators.
The turquoise vocabulary and its connotations occupied space in the book, including “the moon”, which Issam Al-Jowder from Bahrain says is a porter of aspects, whether with regard to meaning or the diversity of musical scales, even at the level of sound.
In turn, Palestinian writers do not look at Fayrouz only in terms of her poetry; Her name has been associated with the bereaved mothers of Palestine, Jerusalem, the catastrophe, and the Bridge of Return. According to historian Johnny Mansour, she sang what she saw with her own eyes when she visited Jerusalem.
The volume clearly shows the credibility of a phrase by the Lebanese writer Muhammad Ali Farhat: “Fayrouz is the soft power of Lebanon, but it is also the power of art when it strives to become viable and perpetuate the presence.”
35 Arab intellectuals write about “A Homeland Called Fayrouz”