Firas Andari Biography

Firas Andari is a Beirut-based singer, multi-instrumentalist, composer, educator, and actor. Born in Lebanon in 1997, he started singing at age 6. At age 12, he began studying the Levantine musical tradition of muwashahat and qudud with Dr. Hayyaf Yassine. Later he joined Antonine University to study oud playing professionally with Mustafa Said.

Andari learned a classical repertoire by ear, which his teachers had learned by ear from the sheikhs and masters across the middle east. This gives Andari access to a music culture that is all but lost: the notation of Arabic music at the beginning of the twentieth century caused it to lose much of the variable microtones that made its richness, simply because western standard notation cannot express the exact intonations in the maqam music.. Andari also learned the traditions carried by each maqam, defining its habitual phrases, melodic development, which had been passed down by oral tradition. For this reason, Andari’s auditory knowledge of this repertoire gives him access to a culture no longer transmitted in conservatories.

Far from being conservative in his approach, his musical creation is resolutely innovative. Firmly rooted in the canonical origins of the Maqam music and sourced from its historical repertoire, Andari’s work forges its own contemporary language. It does so without borrowing from other musical genres Andari performs Traditional maqam music and his Original compositions regularly across Beirut venues and abroad.