Firas Abou Fakher’s name had crossed my radar more than once. It appeared in music credits, in headlines celebrating his BAFTA win, and most times as part of the indie rock band Mashrou’ Leila. Long before our conversation, I had heard him on two podcasts that left me with a lingering sense of familiarity, as if I already knew him.
Perhaps that familiarity came from the fact that his many roles are ones we all recognize in different people, but rarely see combined in one person.
When we finally spoke, I couldn’t help but ask him: “You’re an artist, a composer, a director, a producer, and an executive. How do you introduce yourself to others?” He laughed and answered with ease. “I always like to introduce myself as an artist first, or at least as a creative,” he says. “It informs everything I do, even the more technical sides, whether I’m producing or sitting in meetings with directors, producers, or executives.”
It was a late Tuesday evening. He sat at home in a black short-sleeve shirt, settled into a tan couch, the calm that follows a long day at work. Firas is now the Vice President at Universal Music MENA. His day is filled with numerous responsibilities, yet at its heart, it comes down to one thing: listening to music. “A big part of my day is listening to music, listening to artists, and immersing myself in the sounds and directions unfolding across the region,” he explains. “You have to carry a deep understanding and appreciation for so many different traditions, which is not easy.”
Unlike many of the industry’s power players, the Lebanese artist-turned-executive has a natural ease in stepping into the shoes of the artists he works with. Only a few years ago, he was on the road with his own band. He has witnessed the disconnect that occurs between labels and artists, both during his years with Mashrou’ Leila and in his own journey. “I see the disconnect that happens sometimes. I see it and I understand,” he says. “The end goal is to create a system where artists of all stages can live off their music and have enough space to truly create,” he adds.
At 37, Firas Abou Fakher looks back on the moment when everything shifted. As a 20-year-old guitarist, he found himself trapped in habits and instincts that no longer sparked inspiration. So he turned to a new instrument, the piano, and it opened an entirely new world. Already drawn to orchestration, he discovered that the piano allowed him to stretch his imagination further. That decision would ultimately shape his career, leading two decades later to a milestone: winning a BAFTA in 2024 for scoring The Shamima Begum Story, a BBC Two documentary following the journey of a British teenager who ran away to join the Islamic State.
At the time, Firas was an architecture student at the American University of Beirut. This was long before genres like hip-hop and mahraganat found mainstream acceptance and rose to dominate the charts. Back then, anything outside the mold of glossy commercial pan-Arab pop was cast as “alternative.” It was in this landscape that Mashrou‘ Leila emerged from Beirut’s indie circuit, defying the odds to become one of the region’s most remarkable success stories. Their music captured local realities and generational disillusionment, moving from small, self-organized shows to coveted slots at festivals like Ba‘albek and Mawazine. However, their rise was not without backlash, as they often faced bans and political pushback across the region.
“I don’t think we were that far from mainstream,” says Firas. “One of the goals we had was to keep one foot in the general population and another in something more niche,” he adds. Looking back, he says, “It’s better now. Artists have more options, faster access to the industry, and more knowledge.” But would one of their albums fare differently if released today? He isn’t so sure, but he is certain they would not make that album now. “We loved the ability to be transgressive and hard to pin down. We wanted to prove that making such music was possible and viable. Even today, I don’t see many artists tour the way we did or connect musically the way we were connected. I’m very proud of that.”
Mashrou‘ Leila disbanded in 2022 after a run of twelve years. “It’s a story of a lifetime,” says Firas, who was the composer, guitarist, and keyboardist. “Now and then, when I’m scrolling through TikTok, I see people using the songs in new ways and finding new meanings. The music lives on.”
In late 2019, right before each bandmate went their separate ways, Firas co-founded Last Floor Productions with Nasri Atallah and Daniel Habib, a venture built to create original film and television from the Arab world. One of its standout works is Fixer, starring Badih Abou Chakra as Tony, a celebrity fixer in Beirut, a role that channels Kevin Costner in The Bodyguard but with a sharper, irreverent, and very Lebanese twist. Co-created and scored by Abou Fakher, the show is what he calls a “Spaghetti Eastern.” “All the percussion is sampled, chopped, screwed, and reworked, modulated in a way that fits the world of a contemporary crime comedy,” he says. After all, what is the entrance of a protagonist without a riqq?
Scoring a film, he explains, is “diving into a whole world,” a process where a single instrument, guitar or piano alone, is never enough. “I picked up the clarinet because I want to understand how woodwinds breathe and think. Now I’m learning the rababa for an upcoming score.”
Curiosity pushes him to collect instruments and sounds from across the globe, to break habits, and to embrace the amateur’s perspective, a liberating space where, as he puts it, “you’re not aware of the so-called rules, and sometimes that’s the most creative thing of all.” Scoring is collaborative and technical, shaped around serving a director’s vision, while songwriting is intimate and raw, yet both carry the same shadow. “Sometimes the best compliment for a film score is when someone says they don’t remember any of the music, which means it was the perfect accompaniment, and it drew you into the whole work of art,” Firas says.
Firas’s compositions move fluidly across genres, from intimate coming-of-age dramas to political documentaries and experimental television. His credits stretch across Netflix, Film4, and the BBC, where his compositions rise beyond background sound, shaping the very emotional architecture of a story.
In 2025, he composed the haunting score for Louis Theroux: The Settlers, a documentary that exposes the Israeli settlers in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip during the Gaza war. For the score, he mostly uses the guitar but modifies its sound to resemble the oud, the instrument that preceded it. “Symbolically and conceptually, it makes sense for a story about settlers and illegal colonization,” he explains. “It’s subtle. Perhaps just for me, but I like doing it.”
For Firas, success is about perspective. He often reminds artists not to fixate on a lukewarm comment or a song that underperforms. “There’s a bigger picture,” he says. “People are forgiving because they love the art, and they want to see more.” To him, isolated incidents are never the measure of success or failure. What matters is how things build over time. “Over a year, have I grown? Have I reached some of the goals I set for myself?” he asks.
When it comes to what’s on repeat for Firas, his playlist is as layered as his own compositions: Lege-cy’s “3alam Kaddaba,” the new deluxe reissue of Love Letters by Saint Levant, Hamza Namira’s new album Qarar Shakhsy, and the work of Moroccan rapper Najm all find a place in his rotation. It also includes tracks by Bedouin Burger, the funk-disco experiments of Elias Rahbani and His Orchestra, and the soundtrack for the 2025 film Weapons.
“Most people listen to music while they work,” he adds. “For me, listening to music is the work.”
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