Reema Rahbany Says No to Ziad Tribute Events: “This Is Not How He Should Be Honored”

Almost a year after Ziad Rahbani’s passing, his sister Reema is drawing a hard line on how the icon should be remembered, and the answer is: not like this.

In a Facebook post shared on her account a couple of days ago, Reema, daughter of Assi Rahbani and sister of the late musician and composer, said plainly that no tribute to Ziad should go ahead. Not because she wants to keep or claim him for herself, she wrote, but because it is simply the right thing to do, invoking a line she attributes to her father Assi: that the only thing worth doing in life is walking the honest path. She added that this is what Ziad himself would have wanted.

Her core objection centered around money. Reema pointed to tribute events charging $60-$100 a ticket, and called that a betrayal of everything Ziad stood for. She described him as a true communist, not in theory but in practice, someone who used to negotiate down producers’ ticket prices himself so that his audience could actually afford to show up, even if it meant cutting into his own fee. Turning his memory into a premium ticket twists the very principles he lived by.

Reema also objected to the way some tribute concerts reinterpret or perform Ziad’s music, arguing that his work should never be altered or distorted. She described him as a meticulous artist who would discard a song or piece of music over the smallest imperfection, saying he would never have accepted others reshaping his compositions in the name of honoring him. She accused some organizers of exploiting his legacy for attention and publicity, rather than respecting the standards and values he lived by.

She also pushed back on people publicly claiming closeness to Ziad now that he is gone, saying many of them never really understood him while he was alive. His real tribute, she wrote, already happened. It happened in the streets of Hamra the day he died, and in the quiet grief of people who loved him without needing cameras around.

As for what an acceptable tribute would look like, Reema was specific. She said the only honoring she would accept is his original work played exactly as he made it, in complete silence from whoever is behind the event, or gestures led by school and university students within their own institutions. Nothing beyond that.

She closed the post with a pointed note to anyone thinking of turning her words against her, saying the people who matter already know the truth.