The Chinese sage and philosopher Confucius says, “If you want to know the status of a nation of sophistication, look for its music.” Music and fine arts in general are a direct and indirect reflection of the extent of civilized peoples. The observer can simply discern from them the features of the future and the path to which human interaction in general is going.
If we search in the history of our Arab music, and browse through history books written by historians and academic researchers in this field, we will find a wide appreciation and praise for the common local and regional musical heritage. The beautiful, uniting millions of people around their songs, and passing on their love for them to their children and grandchildren.
Umm Kulthum, Fayrouz, Sabah, Wadih Al-Safi, Abdel Halim Hafez, Farid Shawqi, Al-Hadi Al-Juwayni, Nima, Alia and other dozens of Arab artists. More than it and its impact on peoples will extend for many decades.
Even with the wave of “Westernization” and renewal, Arab singers did not abandon the general musical character, nor the expressive poetic language. He should not intrude on “tarab” and classical Arabic music.
◙ Fairuz has been absent from the art scene for years, but her children are not shy about going out on social media and denouncing everyone who sings her songs at his concerts.
In our present time, we are talking about beautiful time singers, singers, singers and performing artists. The first list has most of them gone from our world, while the second are those with good voices and those who started their artistic career by performing tarab songs and gained wide fame, and the rest are those who have been denounced by the profession for decades. But they cannot put an end to them.
The strange thing is that the singers have become unable to confront the “vulgarity” prevalent in art, and instead of presenting good songs that suit the general artistic taste, they are changing their methods and gradually approaching the show and “artistic trade” that makes them market artists whose only concern is profit. The materialistic, their names, not even their songs, do not live long.
Among the features of this is that the songs of the beautiful time singers have become a “registered mark” and an Arab archive, and a collective heritage, which is still studied, analyzed and criticized, and doctoral dissertations, academic research and even analytical press reports are completed around it. “Capsule” or “dwelling” gives its effectiveness now and here, and it may not live for the next year or until its owner accepts taking it with study and analysis, let alone technical criticism.
Wael Jassar, the Lebanese artist, is considered a model of the present-day singers, who succeeded in performing the songs of the singers of the past, but soon sided with the wave of renewal in music and presented songs of a fast style, which gained widespread and wide fame, but in his concerts he insists on returning to the immortal songs, It leads to Abdel Halim, Fairuz and others more than he sings from his production.
His last concerts were in Tunisia in 2017, but his relationship with the Tunisian audience is very old. Since Wael Jassar became famous, that young Lebanese man with a melodious voice, he went up on the Tunisian theaters, he was entertained, entertained, persuaded and gained another trump card that proved his name as one of the most important singers of his generation in the Arab world. However, after a few years’ absence, he returned to Tunisia on a singing tour, which he started with a lackluster concert.
Wael Jassar, who was called the child prodigy in his childhood, has been singing since 1986 and officially became a professional singer ten years later when he released the album “Mashi”, which gained wide fame, followed by albums and singles, most of which succeeded and “teach”, as the Lebanese say, in the memory of his fans. This musical success gave him many awards, the most important of which are the Arab Music Award, the Murex D’or Award, and the Best Arab Singer Award.
Rare are the evenings attended by a large audience who memorize all the artist’s songs, and the Lebanese artist’s evening at the Tunisian Hammamet Festival was one of them.
But this artist, who is classified under the category of “singers”, not “performers”, did not give his entire concert, as he sang only five of his own songs, while he insisted on presenting songs for Arab singers such as Fairuz, Abdel Halim, Al-Hadi Al-Juwayni and others.
What is remarkable here is not the Lebanese artist’s singing of the songs of the ancients, as they are almost present in the concerts of most artists, except for those who respect the audience and work to create an artistic balance for them, and refuse to perform the songs of others. Infringement” on the original songs, if you will, unlike the fact that he did not preserve the general character of the songs and the way they were performed, he turned them into dancing songs, provoking the audience by jumping and whistling, actions that he did not issue in most stages of his artistic career.
Singers have become unable to confront the “vulgarity” prevalent in art, and are gradually approaching the show and the “artistic trade.”
Here, an important question arises, how can classical musical works be protected from such behaviour?
Fairuz, for example, has been absent from the art scene for years, but her children are not ashamed to go out on social media and denounce everyone who sings her songs at his concerts, so they filed a case against the Lebanese singer Maya Diab and won her and forced her to pay a large financial compensation, and they say frankly ” No one has the right to sing for Fairuz and earn from her songs while she is alive, and if someone sings, let him adhere to the song as it came.”
In Tunisia, too, we see from time to time calls to guarantee intellectual and literary rights, including protecting the rights of musical compositions, and preventing modification or re-performance in it under the pretext of “cultivating heritage”, which has become adopted by most artists who find it easy to re-record the songs of artists who left our world or retired and disappeared from the field. The art scene, while not making an effort and money to present new works.
Although he is artistically active, Wael Jassar chose to be at a lower level in his concerts in Tunisia. He did not sing in his new production, and he did not accompany a “respectable” orchestra with him, but was satisfied with four percussionists, guitarists, flute player, violinist, and organ players. , that strange instrument that has become “spoils” most concerts with its projected presence, with one performer in the choir whose voice can hardly be heard or understood.
Such behaviors were not issued by singers who immortalized their names within Arab music, and we do not see in their concerts the disdain and singing of a band that does not rise to their artistic style and history, nor to their quest for “artistic immortality,” which it does not seem that many singers of this time will enjoy.