Ziad Rahbani: Houdou Nisbi (1984)

First, a huge thanks to Kyle for sharing this wonderful album with me. Too smooth for a Disco Tehran party he dj’ed, I can understand why he thought its sound might be appreciated elsewhere. From the first moment you put on Ziad Rahbani’s Houdou Nisbi (زياد الرحباني) you feel an instant pull that just floors you. Playwright, actor, pianist, composer, and activist, Ziad calls the music on this album “oriental jazz” but that itself is a gross oversimplification. What you hear on Houdou Nisbi are all sorts of styles touched by the movement of Lebanon’s own cultural/historical place, all swerving into a meditation of that unique time.

One song might veer into Gallic chanson, while another takes the ideas of spiritual jazz — only to turn and create something that shows the influence of samba and MPB (all music heard on terrestrial radio or brought from vacationing tourists), but, somehow, end up closing on something that sounds distinctly Lebanese and distinctly Ziad’s own. Houdou Nisbi translates to “relative calm”, but if we can surmise from the story of its creator and the album cover, it was anything but that. No other album quite throws you into the depths of some deep, deep saudade only to pick you up and trampolene you up to some of the most joyful feelings you’ll ever hear laid on tape. Such is the power of this album and Ziad.

Ziad Rahbani, or Ziad Rahbany as it was “westernized” on the original album release, could be rightfully seen in the same light as other notable composers like Kurt Weill, Bertolt Brecht, and Franco Battiato who saw no distance between music, literature, and theater. A frequent polemic, this self-describe communist atheist, has both tormented conservative, Lebanese audiences and written some of their most deeply loved masterpieces for as long as he has been living. As brilliant as Ziad is, he can equally put his fit in his mouth or (rightfully) in other’s behinds, depending on the spirit of the times, and the spirit of his own heart. Which is most surprising when one actually takes the time and listen to his music.

Born in 1956 to Fairuz and Assi Rahbani, both equally famous singers in their own right, could have inculcated Ziad with a life free from turmoil but, thankfully, he followed his own muse. As a teenager, when his father fell ill, Ziad stepped up, and contributed compositions and arrangements to his mother’s music. That conviction would carry him to do other things. Whether writing plays and musicals, at that moment, he gravitated to creating things in the vein of popular Lebanese culture.

In the mid ‘70s, after a period relative calm in Lebanon, Ziad witnessed the aftermath from Tel al-Zaatar massacre, a major point in the Lebanese Civil War, and the effects of the Lebanese Front decision to expel Palestinian Muslims, and in turn increasingly turned disaffected against the rightist Christian regime. Once Ziad moved to West Beirut, to the center of leftist and communist thought, his whole creative thought process changed. Writing of real drama, through music, plays, film, and radio shows, Ziad turned into not just a needling artist but a polemic political activist speaking truth to power.

On stage, plays like Film Ameriki Tawil,  Sahriye, of Shi Fashel that purposefully took on the ill effects of the Lebanese Civil War, as interesting as their spoken dialog was, equally as interesting was the soundtrack and musical accompaniment Ziad wrote for them. It was in music he showed his love of jazz, soul, bossa nova, Lebanese folk and Arabic song, and sought to blend all these branches into his own fusion.

Collaborating with singer Sami Hawat, Ziad would go on to release a prolific amount of albums — most of his plays, some of his jazz music, and a few of his panoramic musical albums (just for at home listening). If you can find them, there are some like Abu Ali, Kyrie Eleison, Ana Mouch Kafer, Bil Afrah, and Maarefti Fik (with his mom, Fairouz), amongs so many others that are worthy of your time. The question is: why choose Houdou Nisbi out of all the others? I believe, it’s the one that can most speak to anyone.

Everywhere you read, especially nowadays, you hear of Ziad spoken as someone that is purposefully abrasive, obtuse, and worse: disrespectful of his audience, navigating the world on his own whims. Lost in that notoriety is how drop-dead gorgeous and well-intentioned his own music is. No better, album makes this clearly than Houdou Nisbi.

Reissued in the UAE, of all places, just a few years ago, Houdou Nisbi was Ziad’s first foray into the influential world of Lebanese Pop music, under his own name. Recorded in 1984 in Greece and Lebanon, as much that could be expensed to create Houdou Nisbi, was. Entirely self-produced and self-released, Ziad felt record companies in Lebanon weren’t ready for what he wanted to do and believed he had to take full control of its production and release. At times funky. At times lovelorn and hopelessly romantic. At times searching and downcast. Houdou Nisbi was impossibly varied and had no pigeon to hole and releasing it with a major who would slice it to bits was not his intention. 

“Bala Wala Shi” kicks off the album with, quite possibly, one of the most gorgeous love songs I’ve ever heard. Justly a classic in Lebanon, lyrics speaking of something as simple as finding some space, to sit down together, in the shade, stripped of all pretense, with the one you love, come in with the power of something far more romantic. With the wonderful mid-tempo music lighting into that sublime ground where the melismatic orchestration swells into, you hear the just-cracking, floating falsetto that Sami Hawat would grace further tracks here — it’s such a stunning track. Moonlit oriental jazz would never sound as good the standard set here and if you don’t feel a pang in your heart after it, perhaps you need to find something else in your life to get you there. Somewhere, there are cig lighters raised in the air, just for it.

Following that stunner, the title track takes its turn, carrying you through a shape-shifting jazz fusion. Sounding like a not-so-distant cousin of Joe Sample’s work with the Crusaders, “Houdou Nisbi” is (like the best of jazz tracks) improvising on feel, not on technique — and the feel is yearning here. “Nafs El Shaghli” then pitches for an impressionistic samba that makes you do a half-take, reminding you of Lebanon’s place right on the Mediterranean. Wayward west coast jazz funk makes a grand entrance on “Yalla Kichou Barra”. “Ma Tfil” transforms Mozart’s Symphony 40, in G minor, into a wicked clavi-chorded jazz improvisation where all things Balearic rear their lovely head. “Bil Nisbi La Boukra Shou?” places some João Gilberto meditation into a fully fleshed out, languid something that merits its peaceful (and long) take, and makes it a great piece to hear Ziad’s prodigious piano playing.

We’ll close out this share by sharing my favorite track, the one harkens back to the original intent of this album, “Bisaraha”. “Bisaraha”, roughly translating to honesty, is one of those party joints that doesn’t hit you initially. In the beginning, it sounds like a decidedly gnarly mid-tempo funk ballad. As Sami gets joined by Ziad and the rest of the crew, the song shape-shifts into an epically orchestrated call-and-response willing Sami into some positive area. That positive area reminds me of Curtis Mayfield’s similar musical call to arms, those calls to feel pride even when one’s luck looks all out of sorts. That final minute of the song simply hits the peak feeling of joy Ziad was never afraid to tap into. A life lived honestly should make you feel good. And on this album, there’s so much truth just waiting to come out into the light.

FIND/DOWNLOAD(REISSUED)

p.s. For those with the time. I highly recommend this making of VHS doc by, I believe, Ziad’s sister, Layale, depicting the painstaking creation of this album and its reception, way back when. Every cut gets its own unique music video treatment and Monica Asly (the other unheralded star of this album) gets her just due. It’s a real treat for those who love this album and like to get a bird’s eye glimpse of Lebanon, during that delicate time: