Beirut · بيروت

For half a century Beirut has punched far above its size in Arabic music. The Rahbani brothers and Fairuz built the modern Lebanese songbook here and on the Baalbeck festival stage, a repertoire so central that the region still starts its mornings inside it. The city doubled as the Arab world’s pop factory: its studios and television networks made and exported stars like Elissa, Nancy Ajram, Wael Kfoury and Ragheb Alama, while Marcel Khalife’s political song and Ziad Rahbani’s oriental jazz gave Lebanese music its conscience and its irony.