Que Será Será
“Whatever Will Be, Will Be”
Whatever Will Be, Will Be — the fatalist acceptance of the future's unknowability, a Western pop standard that Ahmad Zahir made resonate with Persian poetry's own tradition of tawakkul (trust in fate).
About This Recording
Que Será Será — the Doris Day standard from Alfred Hitchcock's 1956 film The Man Who Knew Too Much — entered Ahmad Zahir's catalog as one of several Western recordings that demonstrated his range and his cosmopolitan formation. The song's resignation to fate — whatever will be, will be — connects naturally to the Persian concept of tawakkul: trusting in God's plan and releasing the anxiety of trying to determine the future.
Heard in the context of his full catalog, the song acquires a biographical dimension: the singer who recorded a song about accepting an unknowable future would be dead at 33, assassinated before the future he could not have foreseen had fully arrived. Whatever will be, will be — the words acquire a weight the original recording did not carry.