Legendary Composer and Singer Melhem Barakat Dies after Battle with Illness

Prominent Lebanese composer and singer Melhem Barakat passed away Friday at the age of 71, state-run National News Agency said.

According to LBCI television, Barakat died at the Hôtel-Dieu de France Hospital in Beirut after a battle with illness.

“He had been admitted to hospital weeks ago amid conflicting reports about his medical condition,” the TV network said.

Barakat started his career in the 1960s. He arguably established a genre of his own in both singing and composing.

Barakat mainly performed in colloquial Lebanese, a direction he had always defended while criticizing fellow Lebanese singers for favoring the Egyptian dialect for commercial purposes.

Although his popularity is rather modest in Egypt, where non-Egyptian music material generally receives lukewarm mass appeal, Barakat has achieved huge stardom in most Arab countries, most notably in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.

He participated as an actor and singer in many of the Rahbani Brothers' famous musicals and operettas.

Barakat also appeared in many Lebanese movies back in the 1980s. Some of his hits from the 1980s were “Kboush El Touti” and “Wahdi Ana (I am alone).”

During the 1990s, Barakat acted with Lebanese dancer Dani Boustros in a Lebanese theater play titled Wemsheet Bee Tariki (I walked my way).