Forward Artists

Charbel Rouhana
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Lebanese composer, singer and musician, Charbel Rouhana is one of the few masters who shaped the Arab lute and its techniques. In 1990 he won the first prize of the Hirayama Competition in Japan for Best Composition entitled "Hymn of Peace", in the year 2000 he won the “Murex d’Or” as the Musician of the year, in 2007 he conducted and arranged the BBC3 World Music Awards winning Album of 2007 “ Al Muwashahat” and in 2011 he has been selected to participate in the Babel Med musical forum.

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Fareeq El Atrash
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FAREEQ EL ATRASH is a live hip hop band from Beirut, Lebanon. The band is spearheaded by the region's finest and most lyrical emcees, Edd and Cappuchyno, along with Lebanon’s foremost beatboxer and live vocal effects man, FZ. Fareeq El Atrash has been on the local music scene since 2006 backed by multi instrumentalist Ghassan “Goo” Khayat and bass player John Imad Nasr.

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Ghazi Abdel Baki
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Musician/composer/ producer. Ghazi Abdel Baki began his music career in 1985 as a musician and played with many bands in Lebanon and in the USA namely: Amnesia (Lebanon 1985 - 1987), Munir Khawli Group (Lebanon, 1988 and 1995), Nobody's Fault (New York, 1988-1991), Forcado (Lebanon, 1992), Bare Necessity (New York, 1993-1995), Ziad Rahbani (Lebanon, 1995-1996), Virus (Lebanon, 1997-1999), Grand Prix with Ziad Rahbani (2007).

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Issa Ghandour
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Issa Ghandour’s interest in music was inspired by his father, the late Hassan Ghandour, a well-known Arabic-music composer/singer, who rubbed shoulders with Mohammad Abdulwahab and Faiza Ahmad among others. Issa undertook studies of Arabic music history and theory which led him to discover the Andalusian and classical Arabic music. He studied the violin and the oud at the National Conservatory.

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Mustafa Said
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Mustapha Said is an Egyptian singer, musicologist, composer and a virtuoso Oud player. He currently lives in Beirut and is one of the few young talents to devote his career to the renaissance of the classical Arabic repertoire. Mustafa is a former professor at the House of Oud (Cairo) and now teaches musicology at the Antonin University in Lebanon.

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Rayess Bek
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Wael Kodeih was born in 1979 in Nabatieh, a small village in the south of Lebanon, to a Lebanese father and Palestinian mother. In 1982 the family fled Lebanon upon the Israeli invasion campaign known as "Peace of Galilee". The tragic war sent them to Paris where Wael lived until the age of 13. In 1992, two years after the Lebanese Civil War ended, the family moved back to Lebanon.

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Soumaya Baalbaki
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Soumaya Baalbaki is a Lebanese singer born in Beirut. She holds a bachelors degree in Oriental Singing techniques from the Lebanese National Conservatory where she taught for years. She is one of the few authentic singers that have not gone commercial in the music circuit. Instead she focuses on genuine “Tarab” (the art of transcendence in Middle Eastern singing) whereby the listener reaches a state of euphoria and emotional climax.

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Tania Saleh
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Tania Saleh is a Lebanese singer/songwriter who has been paving her own path in the Arabic underground musical scene since 1990. Her voice is wise and true, a soft mix between the traditional Arabic music she was raised on and the western sounds she chose to follow. She writes about the daily worries of a troubled society, of love and hate and what’s in between. Her music follows the rhythm of her daily life and mirrors her changing mood, creating a boiling pot of tunes, feelings and love for innovation. 

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Toufic Farroukh
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The saxophone player and composer Toufic Farroukh has chosen jazz as his favourite idiom - a jazz with the colours of the Orient, to reflect his career as an artist with his roots in two cultures, and one who is open to all the different forms of artistic expression in contemporary society, particularly dance, theatre and the cinema.

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Ziyad Sahhab
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Author, composer and oud player, Ziyad Sahhab is perhaps one of the most emblematic singers /Oud player of the 20 something generation in Lebanon. He started playing the oud when he was 7 years old in Lebanon. At the age of 13, he performed solo at the Cairo Opera House at the memorial of Mohamad Abdel Wahab.

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