Rahbani Brothers

The Rahbani Brothers (Arabic: الأخوان رحباني), Assi Rahbani (Arabic: عاصي الرحباني; May 4, 1923 – June 21, 1986), and Mansour Rahbani (Arabic: منصور الرحباني; born 1925 – January 13, 2009) were Lebanese composers, musicians, songwriters, authors, playwrights/dramatists, philosophers, and poets. They are best known for their work with Lebanese singer Fairuz.

Coming from a simple town in Beirut's northern suburbs, the Rahbani Brothers were not involved in music besides the extensive reading that their parents made sure they had. Though Assi and Mansour occasionally helped the local priest in arranging the vocals and instrumentation of their Antiochian Orthodox liturgies, their musical career began when Assi obtained a job at the Near East Radio channel.

While working as police officers in Beirut, Mansour and Assi started at the radio channel as paperboys, dealing with the music sheets and lyrical editing. They eventually composed their own jingle and suggested it to the supervisor at the channel, Halim El Roumi, the father of singer Majida El Roumi. He was impressed with their effort and further encouraged them by paying them for their work and broadcasting it on the channel airwaves. The jingles or pieces were usually broadcast live and the brothers' perfectionism became one of their trademarks as they demanded a lot of time in rehearsal and preparation and efforts from the singers to yield the maximal results.

In 1951, Nouhad Haddad (later known as Fairuz), one of the singers in the channel's chorus, came to the attention of Halim El Roumi. Assi composed her very first song, "Itab" ("Blame").

Halim el-Roumi attended the recording session and asked Assi to compose additional songs for her. Assi and Mansour Rahbani and Fairuz soon became one of the most prominent groups on the Lebanese music scene. The trio released about 50 songs in the following three years and found it more convenient to split from the channel and work on their own without the employment restrictions. The Rahbani Brothers and Fairuz became a musical team. Both of the Rahbani Brothers composed and both of them wrote lyrics as they always clarified in interviews and as attested by their family members as well as by artists who collaborated and worked with them.

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