Fehras Publishing Practices 'Fayrouz: On musical production in 60s Lebanon'

Fehras Publishing Practices (Nancy Naser Al Deen, Sama Ahmadi and Sami Rustom) present a listening session dedicated to the legendary Lebanese singer Fayrouz (*1934, Beirut), one of the most influential voices in modern Arabic music.

Embedded in a scenography inspired by Fayrouz's musical theater pieces, the two-hour session takes the audience through her repertoire from the 1960s. This is interwoven with stories from the collective's archives, collected from booksellers, street libraries, private collections and fan networks, which trace traces of Afro-Asian cultural production. This form of archival hospitality sheds light on Fayrouz's work and its significance for the political and cultural upheavals of her time.

The session takes up Susan Buck-Morss' (* 1942) idea that "when the present is understood not as the completion of the past but rather as its rescue, a radical pedagogy practices this gesture in its form of historical reappropriation" - a consideration cited at the beginning of Natascha Sadr Haghighian's book What I Do Not Recognize Yet, Now at This Very Moment (2023). Against this backdrop, Fayrouz's voice gathers us in a turbulent present to listen together, allowing her journey to mirror our own experiences.

The listening session will be recorded and streamed on Refuge Radio.