Sabah

Sabah — Biography

Alongside Fairuz, the Lebanese singer and actress Sabah, born Jeanette Georges Feghali, was regarded as one of the great Arab voices of the twentieth century. Over a career of nearly sixty years she recorded thousands of songs and appeared in close to a hundred films; her exuberant stage manner made her a symbol of the joie de vivre of the Levant. She died in Beirut in 2014 at the age of 87, leaving an enormous legacy in Arab music and cinema.

She grew up in Bdadoun, near Beirut, and released her first song in Lebanon in 1940, aged thirteen. In 1945 she was noticed at her school and the actress and director Assia Dagher invited her to Egypt. In her first film she played a character called Sabah, a name chosen by public poll, and it stayed with her as her stage name. She worked in Egyptian cinema for about twenty years; a 1958 film opposite Abdel Halim Hafez took her into the Arab mainstream. Among her best-known films are The Second Man (1959), Soft Hands (1963) and Paris and Love (1972). In music she worked with Egyptian composers such as Mohammed Abdel Wahab and championed the Lebanese folk form of the mawwal; "Zay el-Assal" and "Akhadou el-Reeh" were among her best-loved songs.

She was among the first Arab singers to perform at the Paris Olympia, Carnegie Hall in New York, the Royal Albert Hall in London and the Sydney Opera House. Known by the nicknames Sabouha and Shahroura (the songbird), she was made a Knight of the National Order of the Cedar, and her life was retraced in a stage tribute at the Beiteddine Festival in 2011.