فيروز

The father put aside some of his meager income for his children's education, so Fayrouz was able to attend school, where her voice was immediately recognized as having a unique quality that could transmute ordinary national hymns into something beguiling. At a school party one day in 1947, a teacher from the Lebanese Conservatory heard her and was struck by a certain intimation that he had just made a discovery. This man, Muhammad Fleifel, was looking for new talents at that time among school children to sing national hymns for airing on the newly established Lebanese Radio Station. Heanng the golden reverberations latent within the young singer's throat, Fleifel tended to her voice with fatherly care. He instructed her not to eat spicy food, citrus, or anything else that might hurt her vocal cords. He also cautioned her about singing in high register, or parts that required a shrill delivery. Later on, he was instrumental in helping her enter the National Conservatory. Perhaps his most outstanding contribution is that he taught her how to chant verses from the Koran according to what is known as tajwid, the high style of Koranic
intonation in classic Arabic

Nouhad Haddad (Fayrouz) - 1946


Nouhad singing in a school performance - 1947


One day, when Fleifel was presenting a group of songs sung by Fayrouz among others, the head of the music department at the Lebanese Radio Station, Halim alRumi, happened to hear Fayrouz at the recording room and asked to see the girl. After the program was over, a shy, thin girl came to his office. When he asked her if she wanted to sing on the radio, she said that she did. He asked her to sing something for him other than hymns. She thereupon sang Ya Zahratan Fi Khayali by Farid al-Atrash, and Mawwal by Asmahan. Al-Rumi was deeply impressed by her voice, which was typically Eastern and at the same time flexible enough to render a Western mode admirably. She was appointed as a chorus singer at the radio station in Beirut.



"My wish was to sing on the radio," Fayrouz reminisces. "I was told then that I'd be paid 100 pounds ($21.00) a month. To me, this was overwhelming. But at the end of the month I wasn't fortunate enough to fill my eyes with a 100-pound note, because of the tax deductions. It took me a long time to get hold of a 100-pound note intact."
Her father objected to her going to the radio station at first. It took a lot of coaxing and some heavyhanded interference by close acquaintances to convince him. He stipulated that Fayrouz was to be accompanied by her mother, her brother Joseph, or the neighbor's boy when she went to the station.

Nouhad in the forefront singing at the Lebanese Radio Station - 1950

This was a period of practice and observation for Fayrouz. She closely studied the style of delivery of each singer in the chorus, and it often happened that she substituted for another singer who was delayed or failed to appear. She had a keen artistic sensibility and a memory so sharp that she was able to learn by heart in two hours four pages of poetry or five of notation.
Her first song was composed by Halim al-Rumi, with words by Michael Awadh, and went: I left my heart to follow you/but ended up burning/far away from your love. The second one, In an Atmosphere of Magic and Beauty, was in the Egyptian dialect. Al-Rumi, so excited about the talent he had discovered, introduced Fayrouz to 'Assi Rahbani, a policeman by profession and an aspiring composer who was already aware of the talented new voice and anxious to meet Fayrouz.

(عدل بواسطة ناجى الزبير الملك on 10-09-2004, 03:34 PM)
(عدل بواسطة ناجى الزبير الملك on 10-10-2004, 03:24 AM)