Religions and mystics

In 1957, the members of the committee of the Festival of Baalbeck were sceptical about the participation of Fayrouz in the second year of the festival. They considered that village folk operettas from the mountains did not correspond to the ambitions of the festival, especially given the chosen historic site. According to certain rumours, it was the president and his wife, Camille and Zepha Chamoun, who insisted on the presence of Fayrouz and the Rahbani brothers at the festival in order to promote les nuits libanaises^[1]. It was thus that the pieces composed by the Rahbani brothers in which Fayrouz took the principal role quickly became a craze which propelled the very productive trio (22 musical comedies and around a thousand songs) to the forefront of the national and international scene. The trio used musical theatre to promote Lebanon abroad. Fayrouz assumed her role afs messenger with ease. The success of the Festival of Baalbeck boosted the Rahbani brothers in particular and the Western public discovered Fayrouz, who recalled that what happened at Baalbeck was an experience which increased the power of the song, it was inspiring and one felt surrounded by beauty. Gradually Baalbeck and Fayrouz became inseparable in spirit to the extent that the singer was described as the 'seventh column' (el 'amoud al Sab'a) of the Temple of Jupiter and also as the 'star of Baalbeck' (Najmat Ba'lbak) Little by little, Baalbeck became a national emblem associated with Fayrouz. In fact, from the beginning of the 1960's the Lebanese tourist guides made Baalbeck and its festival an unmissable place to visit. At the same time Baalbeck became, in the Egyptian films seen all over the Arab world, the symbol of Lebanon.

The sung theatre of the Rahbanis inaugurated a new musical style, the style Rahbani, whose secret was the reconciliation of tragedy and comedy. They also overturned the format of the song by making them shorter – four to six minutes on average as opposed to twenty minutes or so in the Egyptian songs of the era: The Rahbani bothers broadcast their message through Fayrouz' artistic genius as messenger: purity, nostalgia, the woman, the wisdom, the mother she had become in 1956 with the birth of her first child...by virtue of her dramatic gift and her interpretations, her songs carried all kinds of messages: patriotism, peace, love...as a mirror to the times. According to Henri Zoghain one finds “in the first works of the Rahbani brothers (especially those presented at the Festival of Baalbeck), an almost utopian vision of an ideal Lebanon, sublime, happy, which evokes in its people an atmosphere of joy and happiness, a powerful feeling of patriotism, whether this is in the theatrical pieces or in the words of the songs.”

Furthermore, the style Rahbani evokes a relationship between faith and love which brings justice, well-being and peace. Through Fayrouz, faith in God, belief in Man and rootedness in the land, here in particular the Lebanese mountains, are evoked through music benefiting from the unique character of the songs of the Diva.