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55 albums · 1965–2019

Music of Lebanon, from Fairuz and the Rahbanis to Ziad, Nancy Ajram, Mashrou' Leila and today

· 2 min read · by 1001 Albums

Mashrou' Leila on an open-air stage, the singer at the microphone with violin, bass, drums, keyboard and guitar around him
Marcel Khalife singing at a microphone with his oud, in a black shirt and a striped scarfA dabke troupe in black and in yellow fringed jackets dancing on a lawn before stone arches, with a drummer and a pipe player
Mashrou' Leila on stage in Pildammsparken, Malmö, in July 2017. Photo: Anteger11, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. · Marcel Khalife with his oud on stage in Ottawa in 2014. Photo: عمرو بن كلثوم, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. · The Nasser Makhoul troupe dancing the dabke to a tabl drum and a pipe. Photo: Lebanon Ministry of Tourism, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Lebanon's popular music has a voice at its centre, Fairuz, and around her the Rahbani Brothers' musicals that the Baalbeck festival staged, Sabah, Wadih El Safi and Nasri Shamseddine; then Ziad Rahbani's jazz-tinged songs, the oud of Marcel Khalife and Rabih Abou-Khalil, Majida El Roumi and Julia Boutros, the pop of Ragheb Alama, Najwa Karam, Wael Kfoury, Nancy Ajram, Elissa and Haifa Wehbe, Soap Kills and Yasmine Hamdan from the clubs of Beirut, Mashrou' Leila and the Wanton Bishops, Rayess Bek's rap, Ibrahim Maalouf's trumpet and Mika, both Beirut-born, and Ghada Shbeir and Sister Marie Keyrouz for the muwashah and the chant. The list has 55 records from 1965 to 2019, one or two by each of the names above and only a small part of what they made; Mashrou' Leila's Raasük is missing because it is not on Deezer, and the church and Sufi music, the zajal poets, the dabke of the villages and most of the classical tradition would each need a list of their own. About 41 hours of music, 5 days of a few records each.

By genre

World 21%Folk & Country 7%Electronic 6%Other 66%
  • World 21%
  • Folk & Country 7%
  • Electronic 6%
  • Other 66%

The genres named most: lebanese, arabic pop, folk, jazz, electronic, indie rock.

The colours of the covers

A stripe for each cover, in the colour Tidal picks from it, sorted by hue; the greys at the end.

Where the music comes from

Music from 1 country: Lebanon 55. The deeper the colour, the more albums: one, two to four, five to nine, ten and more.

The 1960s

The 1970s

The 1980s

The 1990s

The 2000s

The 2010s

More lists

Lists of Countries first, then others; all of them on the blog. The blog.