The Lebanese singer’s patriotic song has returned repeatedly since 1976 to inspire hope amid catastrophe. But as it resurges during the US-Israeli war, some Lebanese are chafing against its optimism and nostalgia
When Leila Milki first heard Fairuz’s Bahebak Ya Lebnan, she experienced it as the song of Lebanese unity and resilience. Milki, a Lebanese-American singer-songwriter and pianist based in Los Angeles, has partly built her career on covering the catalogue of Fairuz, the 91-year-old Lebanese singer who has become a rare generation-uniting public figure in the small Mediterranean country. “I knew that, in terms of my parents’ generation and even my grandparents’ generation, the song was sort of this really cathartic, hopeful message of unity,” says Milki.
The old adage is that Lebanon and its people remain resilient in the face of tragedy, able to rebuild and be born again into a stronger, more stable nation. That was the message Fairuz conveyed with Bahebak Ya Lebnan, a song released 50 years ago that has since become the country’s de facto national anthem. “I love you Lebanon, my homeland, I love you / Your north, your south, your plains / I absolutely adore,” Fairuz sings in Arabic in the opening lines. When she released the song in 1976, it came against the backdrop of the early stages of a 15-year civil war, which resulted in the deaths of roughly 150,000 people, the mass exodus of nearly 1 million people and foreign occupation by Syria and Israel.
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