How old is fairuz lebanese singer

Follow Vogue Arabia. Culture November 21, Photo: Reuters. Vogue Recommends. Vogue Collection. Fairuz was born Nouhad Haddad on 21 November , although according to some sources the date may have been 20 November The woman with the powerful onstage voice is a very private person and has never clarified the exact date.

She and her three siblings grew up in the historic centre of Beirut. In the summer she would visit her grandmother in a small village in the mountains. Those childhood experiences later enabled her to credibly speak to both rural Lebanon and the big-city elite. As a teenager in the late s, she sang in a choir on the radio. The song Itab made her famous overnight in , but it wasn't until that she first appeared live on stage, at the Baalbeck International Festival — and was promptly awarded the prestigious Cavalier Artist Prize by Lebanese President Camille Chamoun.

That was the day that Fairuz, whose stage name means "turquoise" in Arabic, skyrocketed to fame as an iconic Arabic singer. And it wasn't just her unique voice, as Tunisian musicologist and singer Dorsaf Hamdani once told German public radio broadcaster Deutschlandfunk. Fairouz married Assi Rahbani in He and his brother Mansour established a new style of music in s Lebanon, a country that was relatively stable politically and economically after the demise of the Ottoman Empire and the dissolution of the French mandate.

That musical style contributed significantly to the identity of the young state. The brothers composed folk music, but in a classicistic manner, setting poems by famous philosophers like Khalil Gibran to music in a country where folk song and classical Arabic music were once separate genres.

When Fairuz delivered the line "singing is the secret to all existence", she touched the very hearts of her audiences. The fact that she was never active in politics in any way also explains the secret of her success throughout the Arab World for decades, Mohcine Ait Ramdan said — even during the Lebanese Civil War from until She sings for peace, for light-heartedness," added Ramadan, emphasising that there is no trace of politics or religious messages in Fairuz' music.

In Syria, her songs are played on the radio, which is controlled by the Assad government, as well as on media held by the opposition. She was not resented for the release of a song honouring Jerusalem, Ramdan said. In , at age 14, she was discovered by Mohammad Fleifel, one of the founders of the National Conservatory of Music in Beirut, who was in search of talent for a newly formed choral group.

Fleifel was instrumental in Fairuz's admission to the National Conservatory, where she spent five years training. But perhaps his greatest contribution to her development as a singer was the instruction he gave her in the classical tradition of the tajwid, or classical chanting of Koranic verse.

Fairuz began her musical career as a member of the chorus at the Lebanese Radio Station. There Halim Al-Rumi, a composer and musical director at the radio, recognized her unique talent and made her lead soloist. He composed songs especially for her and gave her the stage name of Fairuz turquoise because her voice reminded him of a precious stone.

The young Fairuz met with unprecedented enthusiasm from listeners everywhere in Lebanon. This led to a meeting between her and the Rahbani brothers, Assi and Mansour, themselves rising talents as composer and lyricist, respectively. The collaboration between them at first took the form of adaptation by the Rahbanis of modern Western dance tunes into Arabic songs. This gave the team of three a certain amount of public exposure. However, the song that catapulted them into the limelight on the popular scale was not a Western dance tune but a melancholy love song entitled "Itab" Blame that they had recorded on November 2, , at the Damascus Radio Station.

What followed was a period of experimentation in a variety of musical forms. In all instances Fairuz's songs expressed artistic qualities that extended their appeal to listeners from a wide variety of social and national backgrounds.

Fayrouz on stage - Photo Courtesy: Archive. Egypt Today lists nine interesting facts about the star. One of the last artist from the golden age of Arabic music Fayrouz is a living legend, one of the last singers from her era still alive and performing.