Ghada Shbeir

Ghada Shbeir studied the origin of Arabic Music, graduated from the University of Kaslik, has a PHD in Musical Sciences and a diploma in oriental singing. Today she teaches oriental singing and she is preparing a doctorate in musical science.

In 1997, she was awarded the first prize in Egypt in an Arabic music competition. She was also awarded the BBC World Music Award for both the Middle East and North Africa for her CD entitled “Mouachahat” in 2007 and an international prize for the best album worldwide.

Her second traditional Arabic music CD, for Sayyed Darwish, was entitled “Qawaleb” and this CD was awarded a merit certificate.

She then released a new CD entitled “Al Qasida”. This CD includes new poems, whereby Ghada Shbeir aims to show the classical form of the poem, while composed and distributed in a modern manner.

She also launched a CD under the title “Andalusia”. The reason for producing this CD was to show the difference between the old Muwashah, regarding its poetry, melody, rhythm, and the poem composed similarly to the Muwashah form by maintaining non-stop singing with no musical refrain and preserving the rhythms which are considered as combined rhythms used a lot previously in the Muwashah form. Also, a new style of musical arrangement was applied to the tracks inserted in this CD.

As for her latest releases, “Al Qasida Vol.2” was recently launched including more poems composed in an oriental, classical way.

During her years of study, Shbeir devoted herself to the research of Traditional Oriental Middle Eastern music and religious chants. Moreover, she has been working on a research concerning a version of more than 700 melodies of Maronite Syriac chants. This research has resulted in releasing three Syriac Chants CDs; “Syriac Chants”, “Passion” and “Chants Syriaques; Noel”.

Ghada Shbeir represented Lebanon and participated in several festivals, concerts, master classes and conventions in Europe and many countries all over the world.