Tanburi Muḥyiddīn Ba‘yūn

The Nightingale of Beirut

In the box: 3 CDs, 42 recordings, a 64-page booklet in English, French and Arabic
Price: $35

Great artists of the Nahda · 2019

الطنبوري محيي الدين بعيون

The Nightingale of Beirut

A star who shone in the skies of Beirut, Muḥyiddīn Ba‘yūn (1868–1934) had no equal in the melodic and spoken dialects of the Levant. Singing in Damascene dialect he sounds born in Beirut; in classical Arabic his diction is flawless; his dawrs and mawwāls could come from a pupil of the great Cairene masters, and in a mawwāl baghdādī he sounds like a pure Bedouin. On his ṭanbūr, all these differences melt into one learned tradition that knows no borders.

These three discs gather his records from 1912 to 1927: the qaṣīdas and mawwāls he recorded for Gramophone in Beirut in 1912, then those he made for Baidaphon in Cairo and Beirut, most of them with Sāmī al-Shawwā on the violin and Zākī al-Qānūngī on the qānūn. The third disc is given to his taqsīms on the ṭanbūr baghdādī, the buzuq, up to his last, all-instrumental electrical recordings of 1927.

CD 1 13 recordings 1912–1924
CD 2 16 recordings 1924–1925
CD 3 13 recordings 1921–1927

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The recordings, year by year

CD 1
CD 2
CD 3

One square per recording, coloured by disc. Choose a square to see what it is.

1912Gramophone records in Beirut
1914–18The Great War: no recording in the Levant
1921To Cairo, for Baidaphon
1927Last records, electrical and instrumental

Recordings

42 recordings

CD 1

CD 2

CD 3

The singer and his takht

The booklet prints no photographs; his portrait is the one on its cover.

Portrait of Muḥyiddīn Ba‘yūn, from the booklet cover — Muḥyiddīn Ba‘yūn 1868–1934 Born and died in Beirut, he studied at the Maqāṣid school and learned music from the qānūn player Aḥmad al-Badawī. Illness forced him to stop singing, and his last records are instrumental. On the cover of the booklet

Sāmī al-Shawwā 1885–1965 His violinist on 38 of the 42 recordings, from 1912 to 1927.

Zākī al-Qānūngī Known only as Zakī, “Abū Na‘īm on the qānūn”. His virtuosity shows with Ba‘yūn as with no one else, as in “Anḥaltanī bi-l-hagr” (CD 1, track 8).

The booklet

64 pages in three languages

English, French and Arabic. Abdullatif Fakhoury’s portrait of the singer and Mustafa Said’s study of his life, records and art, in each language, with a glossary and the track lists of the three discs; then, in Arabic, Farah Kaddour’s analytical study and the complete discography, with record companies, catalogue and matrix numbers.

Muḥyiddīn Ba‘yūn: The Sultan of Hearts and Eyes (1868–1934)Abdullatif Fakhoury
Muḥyiddīn Ba‘yūn: The Nightingale of Beirut, and the muṭrib of the LevantMustafa Said
Muḥyiddīn Ba‘yūn: fifteen years of singing and playing, an analytical study (in Arabic)Farah Kaddour
A complete discography of Muḥyiddīn Ba‘yūn (in Arabic)

Booklet cover: a grainy portrait of Ba‘yūn beside the title on a red and blue pattern — Front cover

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Tanburi Muḥyiddīn Ba‘yūn

In the box: 3 CDs, 42 recordings, a 64-page booklet in English, French and Arabic
Price: $35

Write to mail@amar-foundation.org or use the contact page

Supported by the Abu Dhabi Festival.

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