Lebanon, as a nation-state, began in earnest following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of the French Mandate of Greater Lebanon. During these periods, the potential nation had several competing nationalist narratives emerging. Intellectuals and politicians articulated ideologies such as Phoenicianism and the Merchant Republic alongside the unique role of Mount Lebanon. While the Phoenician city-state as an imagined precursor to the nation was important, in particular, for the nation’s capitalist orientation, it accounted only for the maritime regions. The Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate that covered the Mount Lebanon region had provided the fulcrum for the Lebanese nationalist project but its overt sectarian tone was not a viable project within the borders drawn up by France. Therefore, an imagining of the rural countryside emerged within the state’s discourse that formed a pastiche of rural archetypes signified as “Lebanese.” The village tropes served didactic purposes in differentiating the state from Greater Syria and the Arab region as those were the most significant concurrent nationalist projects threatening the young state. Through state patronage of the arts, the mountainous non-urban space becomes a tool to fashion a national narrative that elucidated how Lebanese political elites envisioned their nation. My paper explores the multivalent trajectories of Lebanese discourse of the rural as the nation from independence until the years before the start of the Lebanese Civil War. Using the musical theater of the Rahbani Brothers, the music of Fairuz, and musical compositions by figures such as Zaki Nassif and Said ‘Aql, I explore how the mountainous regions of Lebanon formed the crux of the national identity. In state-sponsored events such as the Baalbek Festival, artists deployed an array of tropes, symbols, and phrases that evoked the countryside as the nation. In particular, these theatrical works and songs deploy imagery of idyllic villages with grapes, olive trees, springs, and other folkloric components. The phantasmagoria of the “Lebanese village” becomes a cornerstone for circulating politics centered around community and family. Ultimately, these pieces propped up conservative notions of the self and nation even if they did not account for reality. Up until the civil war, these depictions of the village as the nation persisted without significant pushback. The recurrent use of the village in nationalist discourse was part of a wider project in imagining the Lebanese nation as a distinct entity from its environs outside strict temporal demarcations.