Hearing Cosmopolitan Nationalism in the Work of Fairuz and the Rahbani Brothers

Abstract Today, the trajectory of Lebanese diva Fairuz’s career has become synonymous with the development of a Lebanese national subjectivity. Her performance of musical works by the Rahbani Brothers at Lebanon’s Baalbak International Festival from the 1950s–70s helped to form a Lebanese national musical style. Through close listening and analysis, this article explores the entanglement of Fairuz’s early music with both the Baalbak Festival and early Lebanese nationalist efforts, arguing that this music’s sound and style consciously laboured to articulate an emergent sense of national identity.