The journey from Egypt to Ziad and from Ziad back to Egypt is remembered by three Egyptian artists whose lives intersected with his work in different ways: oud virtuoso Hazem Shaheen, poet and filmmaker Ahmed Haddad, and poet and songwriter Ibrahim Abdel-Fattah.
Ziad’s presence in Egyptian collective memory
For generations of Egyptian television viewers, one melody has quietly become part of the country's collective memory. It first entered Egyptian homes decades ago as the signature tune of the popular television programme Ala Al-Tariq, presented by broadcaster Malak Ismail.
Today, it serves as the theme of Maspero Zaman, the satellite channel dedicated to preserving Egypt's television heritage. Many recognize the melody instantly without knowing its composer. It is the overture to the musical play Mais El-Reem, composed by Ziad Rahbani.
Ziad Rahbani performs the overture to Mais El-Reem musical play.
The irony runs deeper. As Egyptian television quietly absorbed one of Rahbani's own compositions into its collective cultural memory, Rahbani spent a lifetime absorbing Egypt's musical heritage into his own work.
The music of Sayed Darwish and Zakaria Ahmed, the spirit of Egyptian musical theatre, and its social consciousness became part of the artistic language from which he forged something unmistakably his own.
Sometimes the dialogue was explicit. In Shou Hal Ayyam (What times we live in), he quotes Sayed Darwish's famous line, "El Helwa Di Aamet Te'gen fil Fagreyya" (This beauty woke up at dawn to knead) and Zakaria Ahmed’s “Hwa Saheh el Hawa Ghalab?” (Is it true that love conquers all?), weaving one of Egypt's best-known songs into his own reflection on economic hardship.
More often, Egypt appeared not as a quotation but as an artistic instinct.
Watching Rahbani's television interviews, one impression kept returning. Praise rarely seemed to sit comfortably with him. Yet whenever he was placed in the artistic lineage of Sayed Darwish, his face would soften into a quiet smile.
That influence would eventually complete a remarkable circle. The artistic tradition Rahbani inherited from Egypt returned decades later through his own work, inspiring Egyptian musicians, poets, and theatre-makers who were searching for new artistic possibilities.
In the third and final part of this tribute, poet and songwriter Ibrahim Abdel Fattah reflects on the artist who inspired him to write an entire book devoted to his life and work.
Ziad as an artistic project
For Egyptian poet and songwriter Ibrahim Abdel-Fattah, Ziad Rahbani was more than an artistic influence. He became the subject of Kifak Enta… Ziad Al Rahbani, a book Abdel Fattah describes as being written "to Ziad" rather than "about Ziad."
Published a few months after Rahbani's death in July 2025, the book reflects years of engagement with the Lebanese artist's music, theatre, and intellectual world. Yet Abdel- Fattah's fascination with Ziad began long before he ever met him.
The cover of Ibrahim Abdel Fattah's Kifak Enta… Ziad Al Rahbani.
For years, he had a standing request for every friend travelling to Beirut. Unlike most admirers, he never asked them to bring back records, books, or souvenirs. Instead, he asked them to spend a day with Ziad.
"I don't want anything. I just want to meet Ziad Rahbani and spend a day with him. I want to know what a day in the life of this being is like. Because I imagine that from the moment he wakes up, he's simply living his day, going through it, and being completely immersed in it," he said.
It was an unusual request, but it reflected Abdel-Fattah's belief that Rahbani's work could not be separated from the way he thought.
"I wanted them to spend a day with Ziad and find out how he sees the world—what his outlook on life is, what he thinks about life. He's part of the social fabric, and of society's political, economic, and sectarian dynamics—everything. He's an important example of post-Rahbani Beirut, in a form that is more evolved than Rahbani music had been."
That curiosity accompanied Abdel-Fattah when he finally moved to Beirut in 2014. The city itself had occupied his imagination since the 1970s, but among the reasons that drew him there were the Rahbanis and Ziad.
The meeting eventually came through mutual friends after a visual artist noticed how often Abdel-Fattah spoke about Rahbani and how, whenever musicians in Beirut's cafés invited requests, he invariably chose one of Ziad's songs.
Meeting for the first time
When they finally met, Rahbani knew nothing about Abdel-Fattah except that he was Egyptian.
"Once he knew I was from Egypt, he became interested in talking to me. He kept asking, 'What's going on?' and 'What's happening?' He had absolutely no idea that I had any involvement in Egyptian songwriting or poetry. He only found that out at the end of the evening."
Only after Abdel-Fattah spoke about his own work did Rahbani realize who he was.
"He was really upset. He said to me, 'I know Ahmed Fouad Negm's work, so how is it that I didn't know yours? Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you try to come? Why didn't you come earlier? Why didn't we meet sooner? We could have worked together.'"
The most important question
The encounter developed into several more meetings, but Abdel-Fattah remembers one question above all others.
Looking at Rahbani's extraordinary range as a lyricist, composer, arranger, playwright, and theatre director, he wanted to know where all those artistic references had come from.
"I also asked him a question: 'When did you build this body of references that allows you to produce all of these works with the same level of excellence?'"
The answer surprised him.
"He owes that reference point to Egypt. What created that artistic foundation for him? When the time came for him to rebel—and he was rebellious by nature—but when he recognized that he had to step out from under the Rahbanis' mantle, the only thing available to him was the rich Egyptian cultural heritage that had reached him through cinema, theatre, songs, and Egyptian music, with the extraordinary richness we had in every field."
For Abdel-Fattah, that answer unlocked aspects of Rahbani's music that he had admired for years without fully understanding.
"I already knew how highly he regarded Sayed Darwish and Sheikh Imam, but I had no idea about Zakaria Ahmed."
It explained why works such as Shou hal Eyam, Talfan Ayyash, and El Hala Ta'bana ya Laila sounded so different from the jazz-inflected music for which Rahbani was often celebrated.
“It also explains works of his like Talfan Ayyash and El Hala Ta'bana, all the pieces he created with satire and purely Eastern maqamat. You can really feel the takhton stage—five or six instruments playing the melody, without elaborate arrangements or rich harmonic writing, the way it used to be.”
Abdel-Fattah says that the conversation also changed the way he understood Rahbani's artistic project.
"He was in step with his time," he says. "At the very moment when some Egyptian and Arab poets were moving poetry from taf'ila verse to prose poetry, Ziad was doing the same thing with song lyrics. Because his songs weren't written in the same form the Rahbanis used... He was creating something freer, wherever his feelings took him."
For Abdel-Fattah, Rahbani's originality was inseparable from the fact that he wrote, composed, and arranged his own work.
"And then, major shifts in sung music all over the world have always been associated with someone who is simultaneously a writer, a lyricist, and a composer... But if I'm also the composer, then I can shape them exactly the way I want. That's what creates those major shifts in music around the world."
An artistic project
That is why Abdel-Fattah repeatedly describes Ziad not simply as an artist, but as "an artistic project."
"Because Ziad is such an important artistic project, I was always keen to encourage people to meet him, or listen to him, and study him."
His admiration had, in fact, begun through theatre rather than music.
The poster for Ziad Rahbani's play Nazl El-Sourour
"What drew me to Ziad first was his theatre, especially Nazl El-Sourour. I watched it on video... Because there, you see a completely different dimension of Ziad beyond the musician. He's a playwright, a theatre director, and an extraordinary comedian with an Egyptian inspired sense of humour.”
In several interviews, Ziad mentioned that his father used to note that his son’s sense of humour is more Egyptian-style than Lebanese, a fact that Ziad never denied.
Just as striking was Rahbani's refusal to make art according to commercial expectations.
Being present
"I began to realize that he wasn't just an ordinary artist... With Ziad, there was no such thing as 'that's what the audience wants.' What mattered was what he saw, what he was feeling at that moment... He was a son of his moment. He expressed it, never detached himself from it, never turned his back on it, and remained deeply engaged with life."
Abdel-Fattah believes that same honesty transformed the Arabic song.
"Ziad liberated the song from all that ornamentation, the makeup we kept putting on our words, the exaggeration, and the melodrama."
"He gave love many new dimensions—real ones—that we, or poets before us, had tended to overlook."
His influence eventually became personal
Growing up in a popular Egyptian neighbourhood of Al-Imam Al-Shafei, Abdel-Fattah had written amateur plays, composed simple melodies, and treated songs as an extension of theatre rather than as a commercial pursuit.
When he later entered professional songwriting, producers often rejected his lyrics because they did not fit the market.
Finding Rahbani reassured him that there was another way.
"That's what Ziad meant to me. I found someone who validated my existence—someone who supported the way I looked at life. I don't want to say, 'Ya leili, ya eini.' I want to say, 'Ya nahar.' I don't want to keep saying, 'Ya leili.'"
'Like a bee'
When asked to describe Rahbani's artistic method, Abdel-Fattah said, “I see him as being like a bee moving from flower to flower, collecting nectar. He chose the flowers from which he would gather that nectar. He chose Sayed Darwish, he chose Ahmed Fouad Negm to a certain extent, and he chose Zakaria Ahmed. Those became part of who he was—something inseparable from his artistic makeup."
*Read part 1 of A tribute from Egypt to Ziad Rahbani here, and part 2 here.
Short link: