ROB SCHMITZ, HOST:
Some songs bring comfort at a time of conflict. Others are evocative of a certain place. The music of Ahmad Kaabour is both. He was a Lebanese singer who wrote anthems for a generation of people across the Middle East. Kaabour died last month at a time of war in his home region when his songs are resonating even more. From Beirut, NPR's Jawad Rizkallah has this remembrance.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SOB BLADI")
AHMAD KAABOUR: (Singing in non-English language).
JAWAD RIZKALLAH, BYLINE: This song is about longing for land in Southern Lebanon that's under Israeli invasion and bombardment.
HUSSEIN FARHAT: (Non-English language spoken).
RIZKALLAH: "Look, I got goosebumps," says Hussein Farhat, lifting up his sleeve to show me what the song does to him. He's just fled the Israeli bombardment, now sheltering in a tent, one of the more than a million Lebanese people displaced by the current Israeli invasion into Southern Lebanon in its war against Iran-backed Hezbollah.
FARHAT: (Non-English language spoken).
RIZKALLAH: He says everyone from Southern Lebanon knows this song, but it's not current. Singer songwriter Ahmad Kaabour first wrote and sang it back in 1982, during the previous Israeli invasion of Lebanon that led to an 18-year occupation of its South. Kaabour was born in 1955 and came of age during Lebanon's civil war. But he didn't only sing about Lebanon. He sang for and about Palestinians, as well.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "YA NABD EL DEFA")
A KAABOUR: (Singing in non-English language).
JALAL ABUKHATER: His voice has been, you know, singing, singing for our struggle.
RIZKALLAH: Jalal Abukhater is a digital rights defender who grew up in East Jerusalem in the early 2000s, during a period of uprising against the Israeli occupation.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "A'DAFFA")
A KAABOUR: (Singing in non-English language).
ABUKHATER: And I would say I was between 6 and 8 years old. The setting was that there were tanks, and there was - like, the streets looked like war. On the radio, I heard the song. The song is called "A'daffa."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "A'DAFFA")
A KAABOUR: (Singing in non-English language).
RIZKALLAH: The song is from way back in 1976 and calls for Palestinians to break free from their shackles and free themselves from Israeli occupation. It calls for revolution.
TALA KHOURY: Almost like an anthem.
RIZKALLAH: For Tala Khoury, a nutritionist from Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the songs still inspire her to this day.
KHOURY: Even until now, and we feel a call to do something to call for our freedom, to our rights, to the life that we deserve to live.
RIZKALLAH: Even in Gaza - or perhaps especially there after more than two years of war - this music provides strength.
SALMA AL KADDOUMI: (Non-English language spoken).
RIZKALLAH: Speaking by phone from Gaza, social worker Salma Al Kaddoumi mentions the song "Ounadikom."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "OUNADIKOM")
A KAABOUR: (Singing in non-English language).
RIZKALLAH: ...Which has been passed down from generation to generation.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "OUNADIKOM")
A KAABOUR: (Singing in non-English language).
MARWAN KAABOUR: (Singing in non-English language).
RIZKALLAH: The man singing there at the end is Marwan Kaabour, Ahmad Kaabour's son. He says his father wrote this song when he was half his age.
M KAABOUR: What it means to me is the ability of a 19-year-old teenager to create a piece of music as his very first musical experiment that has stayed for 50 years. How can that be the first thing you do? That's incredible.
RIZKALLAH: I asked Marwan what it was like to be raised by someone who meant so much to so many people.
M KAABOUR: I think what I loved is getting to grow up with the music that people know him for. The artist and the parent, they were inseparable. The principled values that you saw in his work, those same ones were the values that raised me and my brother.
RIZKALLAH: I first saw Marwan when he was carrying a picture of his father and walking behind his coffin. Ahmad Kaabour died last month at the age of 70 following a long illness.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Non-English language spoken).
RIZKALLAH: Behind Marwan in the funeral procession was a who's-who of Lebanese artistic figures, fans, friends and family, overcome with grief. Kaabour didn't just sing about politics. He also wrote children's songs.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ALLOU EL BAYAREK")
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTISTS: (Singing in non-English language).
RIZKALLAH: He was staunchly secular, but this song about Ramadan he wrote and composed for an Islamic orphanage choir was one of his most popular.
(SOUNDBITE OF AHMAD KAABOUR SONG, "ALLOU EL BAYAREK")
RIZKALLAH: In the funeral procession, I meet poet Ghina Sinno, who grew up in that orphans home in Beirut and sang Kaabour's songs there. She tears up as she tells me what he means to her.
GHINA SINNO: (Non-English language spoken).
RIZKALLAH: She says she was raised with the songs of Ahmad Kaabour and used to dance to them in the home. Her earliest childhood memories were intertwined with him.
M KAABOUR: I have to say that the remarkable outpour of love that I have seen from across Lebanon and the rest of the Arab world - Palestine specifically, as well - makes me know that I will never lose the artist.
RIZKALLAH: But still, Marwan lost his father.
M KAABOUR: I'm incredibly sad. I lost my dad. I lost the person who I would always call to ask about the root of some Arabic word I was trying to make sense of. I lost the king of dad jokes, who would make me cringe. But I would literally kill to hear those terrible jokes again.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
RIZKALLAH: Everyone he touched, though, will still have his music. Jawad Rizkallah, NPR News, Beirut.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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