Legendary Syrian singer ‘Sabah Fakhri’ dies at 88

One of the Arab world’s most famous singers, Sabah Fakhri, who has entertained generations with traditional songs and preserved nearly extinct forms of Arabic music, has died, Syria’s government said Tuesday. He was 88.

Born Sabah Abu Qaws in the Syrian city of Aleppo in 1933, Fakhri got his stage name as an adolescent when he started performing.

He soon rose to fame to become one of the Arab world’s legendary tenors and one of its exceptionally charismatic entertainers.

Fakhri was a world class Tarab singer, an Arabic form of music associated with emotional evocation that can last for hours.

Onstage, Fakhri would engage the audience and sway to the music almost in a trance, turning the lyrics of his songs, often in classical Arabic, into refrains they can easily sing back with him.

He once performed for 10 hours straight in 1968, at a concert in Caracas, Venezuela, without a single break, earning an entry in the Guinness World Records.

Throughout his career, Fakhri preserved and popularized traditional forms of Arab singing and music, including Quddud Halabiya, native to his hometown Aleppo.

Fakhri’s voice was so powerful and distinct, he once told his interviewers that his family recognized it when he was a baby.

“I started singing when I was born,” he once told an interviewer for Egyptian TV CBC. A family member used to pinch him to hear him cry because “he liked the sound of my crying.”

He memorized the Quran when young and began reciting in mosques — a common path for a number of musicians and singers in the Arab world. Because of his powerful voice, Fakhri briefly worked as a muezzin — the person who calls for prayers — at a mosque in Aleppo.

“Quran is the great school for performance and good and clear pronunciation,” he said in the interview, aired in 2014.

Fakhri studied music and singing in Aleppo and Damascus, the Syrian capital.

He earned various honors in the Arab world and was head of the Syrian Artists Syndicate.

Fakhri is survived by four sons, including Anas, a singer.