I found Oghneya (which means “song” in Arabic) by accident, late at night, while wandering through YouTube following one Lebanese song into another.
This one stayed with me. A riff from the title track caught in my head and wouldn’t leave: a faintly Japanese-inflected riff, clean and bright like it had been cut out of diamonds.
It sounded like music inspired by a 1990s fantasy novel or video game. There were chanted Arabic vocals, improvisational jazz phrasing, folksy mediaeval European melodies.
This eclecticism and whimsy make it seem like the song could have been written by a group of space colonists living among the rings of Saturn in the 2370s.
Ferkat Al Ard (which means “the band of the Earth” in Arabic) consisted of Issam Hajali on guitar & vocals, Toufic Farroukh on flute & saxophone, and Elia Saba on bouzouki & oud. Ziad Rahbani handled the arrangements, bringing in strings and backing vocals. The album was recorded in Beirut in 1977, issued on cassette in 1978, then pressed in a small vinyl run in 1979.
Before the Lebanese civil war, Beirut was one of the main commercial and cultural cities of the Arab world. It was a port city. But it was also all at once a banking city, a university city, a publishing city, and a nightlife city. In the same few neighbourhoods, you had students, poets, journalists, foreign visitors, political activists and working musicians moving through cafés, cinemas, bars, bookshops, hotels and clubs.
Before the Lebanese civil war, Beirut was one of the main commercial and cultural cities of the Arab world.
Brazilian music—particularly Bossa Nova (“new wave” in Portuguese), with its jazz-inflected and lilting style—had gained a foothold in Beirut. Since the late nineteenth century, large numbers of Lebanese had emigrated to Brazil. Those ties carried music back to the motherland, in the way that American jazz or country might have found its way back to England. There might have been records stowed away in suitcases, songs heard on return visits, tastes picked up from relatives abroad. By the early 1970s, Brazilian musicians were playing occasional gigs in Beirut bars and hotels. Some Lebanese musicians absorbed the style.
Oghneya, as Patrick Clark has written, belongs to that history. Its beat often walks in small, even steps. Its chords keep changing the shade of a line as Hajali sings. Farroukh’s flute and saxophone can answer a phrase, peel away and return, because Rahbani’s arrangements leave gaps for them.
You can hear that method straightaway on “Matar Al Sabah” (“Morning Rain”), the album’s opening track. The song enters on a gentle swing. Wordless backing vocals hover behind the lead. The strings pulse in short, light strokes. Hajali keeps the melody close to the center of the song. Farroukh’s flute circles it in brief, airy phrases, like the wing-flaps of a little bird. The whole arrangement is carefully spaced: voice in the middle; reeds passing across it; rhythm moving underneath in small, even steps.
“Entazerni” (“Wait For Me”) pulls the album inward. The tempo settles. Hajali sings in a narrower line. The song’s force comes from pacing. Each line has time to land before the next instrument enters. That patience also runs through the whole record. It is one of the reasons the album stays lucid even when several parts are moving at once.
Then comes “Oghneya”, the album’s strangest and most magnetic piece. The opening riff gives it an immediate noticeability, but the song’s real shape comes from the way the band layers around it. Saba’s oud keeps a dry, plucked grain in the middle of the arrangement. Farroukh’s reeds loosen the edges. Hajali’s singing stays woven into all of it. The track runs for six and a half minutes, with the hook recurring and the arrangement changing around it.
The group used poetry by Mahmoud Darwish, Samih al-Qasim, and Tawfiq Ziad as lyrics for the songs. These poets were closely associated in Arab political culture with the Palestinian national cause, which had become a significant factor in 1970s Beirut.
By 1977, the Cairo Agreement had created an armed Palestinian presence inside Lebanon. After the PLO’s expulsion from Jordan, Beirut had become the center of its military and political life. Lebanese leftists and many Muslim factions had associated themselves with it, and Christians had armed against it. The record’s choices to use PLO-aligned poets for its lyrical material align the band with the PLO and with the Lebanese left that had joined it.
Indeed Hajali was a radical anti-American leftist. During his career as a musician in Beirut, he went so far as to refuse to set foot in Beirut’s Holiday Inn, which was one of the city’s key music venues. The hotel had opened in 1974, at the height of Beirut’s boom. It was an American-branded high-rise with 400 rooms, a nightclub and a revolving restaurant at the top. For Hajali, the building represented American capitalism in concrete form.
Hajali was a radical anti-American leftist. During his career as a musician in Beirut, he went so far as to refuse to set foot in Beirut’s Holiday Inn, which was one of the city’s key music venues.
A year later, the war moved into the same tower. Rival militias fought over the Holiday Inn in the Battle of the Hotels. The building became one of the best-known ruins of the civil war.
Oghneya carries the sound of prewar Beirut. It’s a set of beautifully made songs. Arabic melody, Palestinian verse, jazz reeds, Brazilian pulse, oud, bouzouki, strings and choral voices are arranged with care and calm.
Yet the album never stands free of its moment. It was recorded in 1977 and released in 1978. The Lebanese civil war was already underway. It’s an album of graceful music, yet it arrived under a gathering shadow. That tension—and the resultant tragedy of the civil war, and the many more tragedies of further decades—hangs like a storm cloud over it all.
It’s an album of graceful music, yet it arrived under a gathering shadow. The resultant tragedy of the civil war hangs like a storm cloud over it all.
As for Ferkat Al-Ard themselves, the group stayed small and left a scattered trail. Issam Hajali remained in Beirut and worked in a jewellery shop. Toufic Farroukh went on to a long career in France as a saxophonist, composer, teacher and film scorer. And Elia Saba? He disappeared from public view altogether.
- Ferkat Al-Ard — Oghneya (“Song”)
Start with the title track. It is the hook that opens this whole world. - Ferkat Al-Ard — Matar Al Sabah (“Morning Rain”)
The opener, and the clearest introduction to the album’s light gait and open arrangement. - Ferkat Al-Ard — Entazerni (“Wait For Me”)
Narrower, more inward, and very good at showing how the band handles pacing. - Ferkat Al-Ard — Matar Naem (“Gentle Rain”)
A quieter cut, and one of the best ways to hear the spacing in the arrangements. - Issam Hajali — Ana Damir El Motakallim (“I, The Speaker”)
Hajali outside the band, with the same poetic seriousness and a barer frame around the voice. - Ziad Rahbani — Abu Ali (1978)
For Rahbani’s own side of the story: sharper, jazzier, more urban. - Fairuz — Al Bostah (“The Bus”)
Another track with Rahbani’s involvement, this time in a brighter, more theatrical pop mode. - Rainbow Bridge — 𝐖𝐀𝐑 𝐎𝐅 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐍𝐆𝐄𝐒
Pre-Oghneya Hajali and Toufic Farroukh, and a useful glimpse of where some of this sensibility came from. - Rogér Fakhr — Gone Away Again
Different in language and surface, but very close in period and Beirut atmosphere.
