Fairouz and the Arab Diaspora: Music and Identity in the Uk and Qatar

With a discography of over 1000 songs, 20 musicals and three motion pictures, the Lebanese singer and performer, Fairouz, is an artist of pan-Arab appeal, who has connected with listeners from diverse backgrounds and geographies for over four often tumultuous decades. In this book, Dima Issa explores the role of Fairouz's music in creating a sense of Arab identity amidst changing political, economic context. Based on two years of research including 60 interviews, it takes an ethnographic approach, focussing on audience reception of Fairouz's music among the Arab diasporas of London and Doha. It shows that for discussants, talking about Fairouz meant discussing diasporic life, bringing to the surface notions of Arabness and authenticity, presence and absence, naturalization and citizenship, and the issue of gender. Conversations with the research respondents shed light on the idea of iltizam (commitment), or how members of the Arab diaspora hold on to attributes that they feel define and differentiate them from others.

Table of Contents:
Chapter One: The Individual, the Social, the Diasporic and the Music of Fairouz – An introduction Chapter Two: The Arab Diaspora in London and Doha Chapter Three: Affective Identities: 'Arabness', Hybridity, and 'Intercontextual' Iltizam Chapter Four: Fairouz, Affective Space and the Displaced Chapter Five: Music, Migrancy, Presence and Absence Chapter Six: Visualising an Arab Homeland, Naturalization, Mobility and 'Power Geometries' Chapter Seven: Fairouz, Time, Generational Lineage and the Mnemonic Imagination Chapter Eight: Understanding Diasporic Existence Through the Songs of Fairouz

About the Author :
Dima Issa is Senior Lecturer of Mass Media and Communication at the University of Balamand, Lebanon. Her research focuses on the relationship between popular media and diasporic audiences.

Review :
Fairouz is a household name in the Arab world. Alongside Umm Kulthum of Egypt, she has been indispensable to the modern construction of the cultural and musical heritage of Arab societies. Dima Issa's study illuminates Fairouz's wide reach among the Arab diaspora, astutely analyzing her beginnings and her rise as a gifted woman amidst fraught political conditions in Lebanon. It is hard to imagine a more remarkable study than Issa's on this topic. In this singular and sophisticated study examining the legendary Lebanese singer Fairouz and the role her music plays in the lives of her listeners, Dima Issa shows us how central Fairouz is to Arabs in the diaspora and how, paradoxically, the further away you are from Fairouz, the closer she is to you. In 'Fairouz and the Arab Diaspora,' Dima Issa has penned an original contribution to our understanding of the connections between music, identity, and location. Lyrically evoking a family life 'filled with love, food, and Fairouz,' Issa demonstrates the centrality of the Lebanese icon to Arab identity from Doha to London. In this theoretically rich text, Fairouz emerges as an effective portal for a dizzying multitude of aesthetic predispositions and identity postures. A rich, evocative work deserving of a wide readership. In one of the contemporary world's greatest voices, Dima Issa finds histories of home, movement, displacement, and sanctuary-- an entire philosophy of the Arab diaspora. By studying how, and why, people listen to Fairouz, whether in cars, hair salons, or cafes, Issa reminds us that music's most lasting meanings are made in the lives of its listeners. This perceptive book beautifully illustrates how Fairouz's music shapes diasporic imaginaries across generations and spaces. As the significance of music unravels through the experiences and voices of audiences, we hear and see how diasporic identities are individual and collective, contradictory and stubborn.