(b Beirut, 1934). Lebanese singer. She was the eldest child of Liza Bustānī and Wadī‘ Haddād, a print-shop technician who had moved to Beirut with his family from Dbayyah, a village in the Shūf area of central Lebanon. While at high school she was reportedly discovered by Muhammad Fulayfil, a local composer who was interested in bringing young talent to Lebanon's newly established radio station. Halīm al-Rūmī (d 1983), director of the music department at the station, was moved by her voice and introduced her to the aspiring young composer ‘Āsī Rahbānī (1923–86). Al-Rūmī is also credited with giving her the professional name Fayrūz (‘turquoise’). In 1954 she married ‘Āsī Rahbānī and thereafter became artistically associated with him and his brother, Mansūr Rahbānī (b 1925), two highly prolific and influential composers and lyricists.
In 1957 she was featured in a Rahbānī musical play presented at the Baalbek International Festivals. Subsequently she starred in about two dozen similar plays with other well-known male counterparts such as Nasrī Shams al-Dīn and, occasionally, Wadī‘ al-Sāfī. Between the late 1950s and the early 1970s she sang hundreds of widely admired songs composed by the Rahbānīs, whose music included numerous adaptations of Lebanese traditional and popular tunes and incorporated elements from both Arab and European musical traditions. She also performed songs by other composers including the Lebanese Philemon (Filimūn) Wihbah, who wrote some of her best known songs, and the Egyptian Muhammed Abdel-Wahab. In addition, she recorded hymns, acted in films and appeared in major theatres in the Arab world, Europe and the Americas. Fayrūz possessed an unusual voice with a veiled, velvety timbre combined with a certain head-voice quality, and this contributed to the distinctive and novel character of her songs. Addressing pan-Arab topics and sentiments in some of her songs, she became a celebrated singer, one of the most highly acclaimed artists of the Arab world.
After her separation from her husband around 1979 and the eventual cessation of collaboration between the Rahbānīs, Fayrūz continued to perform internationally. Many of her more recent songs were composed by her son Ziyād Rahbānī (b 1956), an accomplished pianist and composer whose compositional style combined elements of Lebanese popular music and Western musics, including jazz.
See also Rahbānī.
ALI JIHAD RACY