Azar Habib invested his handsomeness on the stage and behind the microphone (Facebook)
Register everyone who directed Farid al-Atrash (1917 – 1974) Towards the Near East Radio in Lebanon in the mid-sixties of the last century, following a chronic dispute with the Egyptian Radio, and the shining of a star Abdel Halim Hafez (1929 – 1977) in Egypt, a milestone in the history of Arabic song. This was accompanied, and paved the way for, a change in the artistic taste of the middle class in Egypt and the Levant, with the rise of revolutionary currents with a socialist tendency in the post-colonial era.
At that time, the songs of the Khedive’s court were no longer the stylistic pole in terms of both composition and performance, to which resonant names such asUmm Kulthum (1898 – 1975) andMuhammad Abd-alwahab (1902-1991), but the popular song, which has a rustic flavor, has a future that promises a broader presence and more in line with the prevailing culture and the spirit of the times.
In Egypt, Abdel Halim Hafez combined peasant freshness and poetic delicacy in both singing and performance, expressing a new generation whose tan was radiated by the sun of Upper Egypt, and whose personality shaped the manifestations of Western modernity, so he began searching for himself for a new song. In Lebanon, and after he considered it Cairo’s closing its doors in his face, Farid al-Atrash opened his composing repertoire to Beirut. A unique Lebanese melody composed by KWadih El Safi (1921 – 2013) and Sabah (1927 – 2014). The lack of distance between the countryside and the urban areas, due to the smallness of Lebanon and its geographical specificity represented by the adhesion of the mountain to the sea, made the styles of singing, such as the mawwal and the ataba, and the dancing of the villagers like the dabkeh with its leaping rhythms, formal constants for a mass song in the process of mastery.
Thus, the mid-seventies, especially after a presence was established Rahbani brothers AndTurquoise In the scene, Lebanon has become an Arab incubator for the new artistic stage. From the throes of the rising mass song, the fruit of the fertilization of the rural folk element with the modernist poetic Western passion, a new generation of singers was born, most of them Lebanese. Azar Habib (1945-2007), whose birthday and departure coincided in November, is one of the most an expression of that stage.
Following the approach of Farid al-Atrash, along an artistic career as a composer and singer, Habib relied on rural elements in order to add a popular touch and a Lebanese identity to the song, without compromising the principles of committed performance, in terms of both composing and singing derived from the Egyptian school. Among those elements was the buzuq, which is common in the Lebanese countryside, and which Farid had previously employed in his late melodies. Habib mastered playing it and composing with it, following the example of one of his most prominent mentors, Matar Muhammad (1939-1995).
Like Abdel Halim Hafez, Azar Habib invested in his handsomeness and cast his presence on stage and behind the microphone, in an era when television began to dominate the media and constitute a visual connection, which is no longer limited to the ear. This represented a new relationship between the song and its audience, which exceeded the walls of the theater in its capacity, and the appearance of the artist and his attractiveness became of great importance, especially as the camera lens approached thanks to the “close up”, so that listening to every song at home became like attending a movie in the cinema. . Within this new visual framework, Habib maintained a well-balanced look; Like Abd al-Halim, he reflected to the listener and the spectator an image of masculinity diluted in masculinity, distinguished by the delicacy of features, sensitivity of feelings, harmony with sweetness of voice and poetic performance, conveyed to people, through the lyrics and melodies of the song, a quiet, intimate conversation about love, its conditions and phases. .
While the buzuq in Azar Habib’s song was the voice of the cultural identity of the Lebanese countryside, and the voice speaking for the state of the audience of the new song, from the rising middle class in Lebanon and the Arab world, the electric guitar and the synthesizer represented the sound of modernity in its western guise.
In his song “A’ Jabin al-Lail”, which was filmed on Syrian television in the early eighties, the orchestra sings with its traditional instruments of that period, from stringed and oriental musical and percussion. Eastern farthings.
There is a remarkable modernist approach in this song, where electric instruments are employed as deep sound effects, the purpose of which is to encapsulate the song, rather than to assume exuberant mechanical roles, which were assigned to be heard like the rest of the band’s instruments. This is an approach, albeit in a quiet, lyrical way, to the hybrid pop song style that combines folk, rock and electronics, which was popular in the West between the mid-1960s until the 1980s, and was known as psychedelic rock.
The embrace of the electric guitar and the keyboard in the songs of Azar Habib is a continuation of a trend that had begun in Egypt, by including it in the bands accompanying the ancient singing voices such as Umm Kulthum and Abdel Wahhab. However, these instruments went beyond the representational character in confining themselves to being foreign elements, giving the song a modern look, and began to play an influential and dramatic role in Abdel Halim’s songs.
In Lebanon, which emerged during that period as the Middle Eastern symbol of all that is modern and contemporary, the Western influence, whether through the prevalence of international mass lyrical forms, or the use of electric and electronic musical instruments, was at the core of the artistic and musical scene.
Therefore, it was not surprising for a Lebanese person that Habib began his artistic career by singing in a band that performed foreign songs, in languages such as English and French. It was not surprising, also Lebanese, that he enjoyed all the qualifications that made him a singer, combining the classical origins of Arabic singing with rural folk singing, by virtue of his birth and upbringing in the fertile agricultural plains of the Lebanese Bekaa.
These diverse aspects, harmonious and contradictory at the same time, of a relatively open Arab cultural life, active within a very vibrant and dense geocultural spot, made Lebanon the ideal environment for the birth of the new popular song, with the voice and image of stage stars, such as Azar Habib. A song that expressed a general mood and taste for a new generation with mass features, despite, or perhaps prompted by, all the problems and conflicts that surrounded it. Lebanon, with its civil war, was a bloody theater for it, preferring to listen to the speech of romantic love, and to live in a dream.