Ziad Rahbani, who has died aged 69 of a heart attack, was a national hero in Lebanon. A composer, pianist, playwright, actor and political commentator, he shook up the Beirut theatre scene with his controversial musical plays and transformed his country’s popular music with his bravely original fusion of Middle Eastern and western styles. In the process he also transformed the career of his mother, Nouhad Haddad, better known as Fairuz, the most beloved singer in the Arab world.
Fairuz had a vast following across the Middle East and North Africa, sold more than 150m records and performed in musical plays and films. Ziad’s father, Assi Rahbani, was a pioneering composer who, working with his brother, Mansour, as “the Rahbani Brothers” had written many of the songs made famous by Fairuz. She was initially best known for stories of Lebanese pastoral life, love and loss.
Ziad proved that his mother could broaden her musical range and tackle wider, more adventurous themes. In 1979, at the age of 22, he produced her album Wahdon, hailed as a turning point in her career. It included Ziad’s funky composition Al Bostah (The Bus) in which a woman remembers a bus journey with her lover. It shocked some of his mother’s more conservative followers, but became a dancefloor hit.
After his father’s death in 1986 he became her main songwriter, responsible for other successful albums including Maarifti Feek (1987), which showcased Ziad’s jazz and funk influences. A musician with widely eclectic tastes, he was a fan of American jazz stars including Charlie Parker, Stan Getz and Dizzy Gillespie, and though he used western influences in many of his songs, his music remained distinctively Lebanese. He once described his style as “oriental jazz – or something like a hamburger that tastes of falafel”.
Kifak Inta (1991) took the eclectic mix even further, blending jazz and funk with Brazilian influences. The title track tells of a woman confessing to her love of a married childhood sweetheart – and it again startled some Fairuz fans.
As well as composing and producing albums for his mother, Ziad performed with her. So when she played at the Royal Festival Hall, London, in 1986 (later released as a live album), Ziad was in the band, accompanying her on the piano. He also enjoyed a wildly adventurous solo career, much of it based around political satire and musical theatre.
His first play, Sahriyya (1993), was much in the folklore style of the Rahbani Brothers, but with Nazl el-Sourour (1974) he branched out, telling the story of an unemployed betting addict. Ziad appeared in the play, which was praised for its music, humour and use of Beirut street slang.
Much of his work during the long years of the Lebanese civil war (1975-90) reflected Beirut life in this era. Bennesbeh Labokra Chou? (1978) was set in a bar and included the celebrated line: “They say tomorrow will be better, but what about today?” Film Ameriki Tawil (1980) also reflected the anxiety and confusion of the era with a story set in a psychiatric hospital – with Ziad playing a militiaman. The play ends with him screaming.
The war also influenced one of his best-known albums, Ana Moush Kafer (1985). The British musician and global music exponent Lu Edmonds describes the slinky, oud-backed title track as “a masterpiece – it should be on everyone’s playlist, and the lyrics should be translated into 100 languages…” It starts with the line: “I am not the infidel, but hunger is the infidel.”
Edmonds remembers meeting Ziad in 1993 and that he was “very funny, with a very dry wicked sense of humour”. They started drinking vodka at 10am, and discussed music, technology and their shared love of the Algerian pianist Maurice el Médioni until Ziad had to leave for an afternoon theatre performance.
Fairuz refused to perform in Lebanon during the civil war, to avoid the appearance of taking sides, but her son took a very different approach, performing in Beirut throughout the conflict. A self-declared communist, he was an active supporter of the Palestinian struggle for statehood, and had been influenced by witnessing the 1976 massacre of Palestinians by rightwing Christian militias at the Tel el-Zaatar refugee camp. He moved from Christian-dominated east Beirut to live in a Muslim area of the city.
Ziad was born and grew up in Antelias, a few miles north of Beirut, and was educated at a Jesuit school, Collège Notre-Dame de Jamhour. He was already writing songs by the time he was a teenager, and at 17 made his acting debut, appearing in a play by the Rahbani Brothers in which his mother played the lead. In the same year, he wrote the music for a lyric by his uncle Mansour, when his father was in hospital. Sa’alouni Al Nas was the first of his compositions to be sung by his mother.
He was married to Dalal Karam from 1979 to 2009, but they divorced after it was found that their boy, Assi, was not his biological son.
He is survived by Fairuz, and by his brother, Hali, and sister, Reema.
• Ziad Rahbani, musician and playwright, born 1 January 1956; died 26 July 2025
