At 75 years old, Elias Rahbani is charming as ever. In the lead-up to his first performance in the city at the Dubai World Trade Centre on April 25, he appeared at a press conference on Thursday with his musician son, Gassan Rahbani, and had everyone in the palm of his hand.
The legendary Lebanese composer was chock full of hilarious anecdotes that kept his audience in splits — even when his son jabbed him in the side to get him back on track.
“Let me make them laugh!” Rahbani exclaimed, eying Gassan with mirthful features. “It doesn’t all have to be boring and formal.”
For a classical composer whose repertoire often demands a certain level of gravity — from Italian-style opera to Egyptian ‘shaabi’ music (the genre of the working class) — Rahbani’s presence was anything but formal and boring.
First there was a tale from the musician’s early 20s, back when he wrote jingles for a living that helped sell everything from cheese to batteries. A German big-shot who knew him only by his work visited to thank him for the jingle he wrote, but he virtually hopped off the balcony when he saw how young and boyish Rahbani was.
Then there was the story of Rahbani’s Egyptian pal who went up to the mountains to record “special” music inspired by the wilderness and came back with nothing but a snakebite. (The moral of the story, according to Rahbani, is that you don’t need to go somewhere fancy to find your muse. The ability to create something special hits you when you least expect it — like when you’re sitting in the middle of boisterous traffic. As proof, he has more than 90 bits and pieces of music saved on his phone from random moments of inspiration.)
But music wasn’t the only thing that impassioned him.
“I love others to an unnatural degree,” he admitted. “Even those who have wronged me.”
His overflow of love even manifested itself into a song about the UAE named Dubai, You Are My Love, that he plans to debut during his performance in the city. Other highlights will include some of his most popular melodies, famously sung by the likes of Fairuz, Majida Al Roumi and the late Wadih Al Safi.
Speaking to tabloid!, Rahbani shared the secret behind his light-hearted spirit and why he didn’t want his sons to follow in his footsteps.
How did this all begin for you?
My brother Assi raised me, because my father died when I was only five years old. So my brothers Assi and Mansour [who are both musicians] raised me, and at nine years old, I was already on the stage and I was singing. I understood that there was life, war and poverty. My bothers started to take me around country clubs to perform and I learned piano the right way. I was about to fly to Russia to add onto my education, but I had bad pains in my right hand. The diagnosis, basically, was I’d have to stop for a year, but I wouldn’t even stop for an hour. So they gave me lessons on my left hand. From there, I began composition and haven’t looked back.
How do you keep such a young, humorous spirit?
I have a goal in life to make others happy. Gassan, like you saw during the press conference, kept telling me, “Baba, don’t,” but I told him, “I’m not here to bury someone. I’m here to laugh with others.” Because laughter gives me happiness. That’s God’s secret that people aren’t in on. Because the more you make others happy, the more you start to feel a certain lightness. Some say believing in God brings with it that lightness, but there are those who believe in God and do bad deeds. They pray and then they shoot. I take the path of making others happy.
Your two sons, Gassan and Jad, are both musicians — but not by your choice. Why did you discourage them?
Because we’re really struggling in this field today. I made myself by myself. Back in the days when I was a judge on Superstar, I used to always say: my Arab brothers and sisters, stand by me and I will return the East to its glory, even better than Europe, but no one stands by you. I have an inner strength that brings me back when I’m down. But they ruined the youth. I’ve created CDs 40 years ago that people still haven’t been able to recreate.
Tickets for Elias Rahbani’s performance, including an appearance by his son Gassan, range between Dh250-Dh1,200 and are available through platinumlist.net.
