Death of Ziad Rahbani, Lebanese music legend

To say that Lebanon mourns him is an understatement. And yet, despite being iconic, Ziad Rahbani, who died at the age of 69 in Beirut, was not the consensual type, a member of the Communist Party and always quick to point out the clannish excesses of a country subject to arrangements between people of good family. In 1998, interviewed by Libération on the occasion of a Parisian concert, he did not bother with circumlocutions : "This country does not exist. It produces nothing, people are not used to working. It's like a bad photocopy. Like in Taiwan, they copy everything: films, sex. Lebanon is a third-world country." He was born on January 1, 1956, son of the legendary Middle Eastern diva, Fayrouz, and the no less totemic composer Assi Rahbani, who with his brother formed a pair of aces that dominated the musical scene before the civil war. It was therefore quite natural that the kid, not even an adult, would very early on learn his first scales on the piano, signing his first song for his mother in 1973, Sa'alouni Al Nass , while his father was in a coma. It would not be the last: his entire career would be
Libération