The Lebanese singer, composer and playwright Ahmad Kaabour has died at the age of 70 after an illness, his family announced on Thursday, bringing to a close a career that helped define a generation of politically engaged Arab music .
His family said funeral prayers would be held on Friday in Beirut , with his body transferred from Al-Makassed Hospital in Tariq al-Jadideh to the Al-Khashoggi Mosque, before burial in the Lebanese capital.
Born in Beirut in 1955, Kaabour came of age during Lebanese Civil War, a period that would shape both his artistic voice and political outlook. He rose to prominence with songs that fused poetic lyricism with a stark sense of urgency, capturing the emotional landscape of war, exile and resistance.
His best-known work, “Ounadikom” (“I Call on You”) , written in tribute to resistance against Israel based on a 1966 poem by Palestinian poet Tawfiq Ziad, became one of the most enduring anthems of the Arab world. Quiet and unadorned, the song’s power lay in its restraint, its sparse arrangement allowing its message of grief and defiance to resonate across generations.
Kaabour’s musical style stood apart from many of his contemporaries. He favoured simplicity over spectacle, often relying on minimal instrumentation to foreground the emotional weight of his lyrics. His work consistently engaged with themes of displacement, identity and loss.
He was also a playwright and a prominent cultural figure in Lebanon, contributing to theatre and public life with works that interrogated memory and the human cost of conflict. His output reflected both personal experience and the wider traumas of Lebanese and Palestinian histories.
Tributes poured in following news of his death. Former Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri described Kaabour as “a shining mark in the journey of committed and refined art”, adding that Beirut’s streets would continue to echo with his songs. He singled out “Ounadikom” as an anthem of “pure commitment” that had endured across generations, alongside other works such as “Alou al-bayariq”.
He passed away as Israel wages a brutal war against his country once again, killing over 1,000 since March 2, mostly civilians. The legacy of 'Ounadikom' -- by Haitham Abozaid When the Palestinian poet Tawfiq Ziad (1929–1994) wrote his poem “Ounadikom/Ashudd ‘ala Aydikum” (“I Call On You/ I Clasp Your Hands”) in 1966, as part of a collection bearing the same title, neither he nor readers of his work could have imagined the scale of its future popularity. For nearly a decade, the collection remained confined to a limited literary audience. But artistic fate had reserved the poem for a young Lebanese man, Ahmad Kaabour, then barely in his twenties, who would rediscover it in 1975, set it to music as his first composition, and record it with a chorus that had never sung before.
Kaabour composed and performed the piece, releasing it into the world where it would resonate across every corner of Palestine. It spread in a way no Palestinian song had before, becoming a defining expression of Palestinian tragedy, wound, and enduring resilience.
The poem marked an important milestone in Ziad’s literary life. Through it, he became part of what Ghassan Kanafani described as the “poets of refusal” triangle, alongside Mahmoud Darwish’s “Identity Card” (1964) and Samih al-Qasim’s “I Shall Not Compromise” (1965). It formed part of a broader, multifaceted struggle that Ziad lived and embodied.
Ziad’s activism spanned poetry, journalism, protest, and political engagement. He joined the Communist Party, endured imprisonment, and experienced the harsh conditions of Israeli jails in Tiberias, Damon, Jalameh and Ramla. He was also placed under house arrest, ran in municipal elections, served as mayor of Nazareth, and was elected to the Knesset for six consecutive terms.
He was among the organisers of Land Day on 30 March 1976. His writings, including “Bury Your Dead and Rise”, were censored by Israel, while others such as “Prisoners of Freedom” led to arrests of those distributing them. According to Kanafani, Israeli authorities pressured Ziad’s employer to dismiss him because of his poetry and political activity.
Yet the weight of this struggle seems to dissolve in the tenderness of his most famous lines: “I call on you… I clasp your hands… I kiss the ground beneath your feet… I say I sacrifice myself for you… I give you the light of my eyes… the warmth of my heart… for my tragedy that I live is my share of your tragedies.”
On 5 July 1994, Ziad was killed in a car accident while on his way to welcoming Yasser Arafat, who had just returned to Jericho following the Oslo Accords. But his words endured: “I was not humiliated in my homeland… nor did my shoulders bow… I stood in the face of my darkness… alone, barefoot and exposed…”
As a boy in Beirut, Ahmad Kaabour loved listening to famous singers and took pride in watching his father, a violinist, perform alongside leading artists. Yet music remained a hobby. His true passion lay in acting and theatre. That changed as he came of age, when political awareness grew amid the suffering of Palestinians in refugee camps.
In 1975, the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War left a deep imprint on him. Amid shelling, power cuts and gunfire, Kaabour turned to Ziad’s poem “Ounadikom” , setting it to music and performing it. It was both his first composition and his first vocal test, born out of a desire to offer moral support to those fighting across various fronts.
He had no formal musical training or experience. Yet he produced a melody that blended fervour with sorrow, strength with tenderness. Shared between his voice and the chorus, his youthful delivery gave the song a raw authenticity. It quickly spread — across Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, throughout the territories occupied in 1948, and among Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. Palestinians in the diaspora sang it across the world.
The song became ubiquitous — present at rallies, cultural events, and as a soundtrack to countless films documenting Palestinian struggle, particularly scenes of confrontation with Israeli forces. Over five decades, its reach only grew. Its fame surpassed that of its author, despite Ziad’s stature, and far exceeded that of Kaabour himself.
Kaabour dedicated much of his artistic life to Palestine, composing and performing songs such as “They Called Me a Refugee”, “Pulse of the West Bank”, and “O Lovers of the Land, Come Forth”, which he wrote himself. His work belongs to the tradition of committed art , addressing human causes, the poor, victims of war and displacement.
His lyrics stood apart from conventional revolutionary anthems. In “That Is Why I Resign”, he wrote: “When the applause fades in the hall… and the shadow leans toward my chest… the make-up falls from my solemn face… and that is why I resign…” His style often led listeners to assume he was Palestinian. When he once met Mahmoud Darwish, the latter asked him which Palestinian city he came from — only to be surprised that he was Lebanese.
In the mid-1980s, the Egyptian singer Sheikh Imam reinterpreted the poem with a new composition, reportedly after meeting Ziad in Lille in 1984. His version carried the hallmarks of a seasoned performer and corrected some metrical and linguistic errors in Kaabour’s original rendition.
Yet Imam’s version never rivalled the reach or enduring impact of Kaabour’s. Where Imam’s performance reflected technical mastery, Kaabour’s drew its strength from what might be called artistic sincerity — a moment where the melody transcended its maker, and the song eclipsed the singer.
Millions across the Arab world came to know “Ounadikom” , many memorising it without knowing who composed or performed it. Kaabour himself once captured this paradox succinctly: “I composed it and sang it… and it overtook me.”
In truth, it overtook not only him, but much of the revolutionary song tradition — carried forward on the voices and tears of listeners who still hear him sing: “For my tragedy that I live… is my share of your tragedies.”