so i hear the national anthem's music is stolen. so i hear NewTV has made an enlightening
reportage on the scam that is our national pride. so i hear Ghassan Al Rahbani wants morocco to sue us and then us to have to pay someone new for the privilege of composing the new national anthem.
pretty depressing.
so according to NewTV, the music was actually composed by Mohammad Fleyfel.
hmmm... before running to the closest embassy and trying to change my nationality in shame, maybe i could
google that dude...
*google is god*
oh... so the guy also composed the Syrian national anthem...
what? the Yemeni too? the Palestinian? the Iraqi? ok i think it's clear the guy's job is to sell anthems, and it must have been a profitable time too, as he lived and worked between 1899 and 1985.
oh... and he is Lebanese?
even more he was threatened by the french who told him they would send him to exile if he published more anthems?
on top of that he is credited with discovering Feyruz?!
apparently a Lebanese composed the music to most Arab national anthems (including the Lebanese) and yet we have some sense of shame looming over us... why?
i mean the NewTV reporter worked very hard to set a neutral and "non-la2im" mood in her reportage... and Ghassan was oh so objective (he could have been wearing a tshirt that said "i can steal the next national anthem music for less than the previous dude", but he did not, and we should respect him for that)... plus they showed us the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth...
my own theory is Muhammad, as a true Lebanese, was a good salesman. he sold the music to the Moroccans first. but when the Moroccan Rif republic fell apart very few years later, he thought he might as well resell it to someone else.; after all, it was barely used and still in good condition... here comes another Lebanese,with the Lebanese eye for good deals, who made a bargain on the refurbished anthem and used it as his entry to the national competition. everybody wins, Muhammad Fleyfel's anthem lives on and Sabra makes a name for himself.
the judges panel, the other competitors, NewTV, and the rest of us did not have google back then to do double checks. we do now...
*** the above claim is my own interpretation of things, unlike the respected reporters at the NewTV, i am just coming up with a theory based on some research i did ***
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EDIT on 14 april:
google ktir btshouf ktir:
found out some more info
1- fleyfel was wadih sabra's student, and possibly related to him, as his grandpa from his mother's side was dib sabra. (thanks charles for the research!)
2-the rif version of it might have been made initially as a poem with no music, and then later, after the dissolution of the rif republic, it was picked up as a folk song and they used the lebanese national anthem's melody since they both have the same "ba7er" (you might remember that from secondary school arabic courses, if you weren't asleep like the rest of us... nerd) (check out
blog-baladi's research)
3-we know so little about lebanese artists (and lebanese heritage) that any passerby can shake our faith in their authenticity. (we should do more research)
oh one more thing: "stolen" is a strong and extremely negative word. and it happens to be inappropriate as the copyright laws for music at that time weren't exactly applicable for folk songs and anthems, and anyway, it is usually acceptable to adapt folk songs as they are in the public domain.
well... i don't know how all this affects my theory, but it sure should get the newtv to revise theirs...
