Marcel Khalife is a Lebanese 'Oud composer, singer, 'Oud player, and music theorist. A militant communist, Khalife vehemently espoused the revolutionary horizons brought about by Lebanese National Movement (LNM) and the Palestinian Revolution. During the years of civil strife in Lebanon (1975-1995), his songs infiltrated popular culture, circulating widely through militant radio stations, cassettes, and a vibrant fan base. Born in 1950 in the northern town of Amchit, Khalife was among the first to receive a higher degree in Sharqi musical theory from the Lebanese National Higher Conservatory of Music in 1975. Soon after civil violence erupted in Lebanon, he relocated to Paris, where, in "self-imposed“ exile, he released his first solo album, Promises from the Storm. Upon his return to Lebanon in 1977, Khalife's name and his band "al-Mayadine" became intimately associated with the LNM’s cultural milieu, especially the Lebanese Communist Party. Along with leftist militant artists like Ziad Rahbani, Khaled Habre, and Ahmad Kaabour, Khalife's songs embodied a radical ethos of cultural production as revolutionary praxis. In contrast to his comrades' guitars and pianos, however, Khalife's music is celebrated for its capacity to captivate the untrained ears of Lebanese audiences through the familiar sounds and scales of the 'Oud. Nonetheless, this representation presumes a purity of Sharqi sounds that is diametrically opposed to Franji (foreign) influences. Against this binary, I examine Khalife's work as a negotiation with contemporary (and modern) global stylistic and performative elements, but one emanating from a particular vantage point within the Sharqi musical tradition itself. I draw on lyrical, musical, and stagecraft elements to highlight Khalife's inherently transnational approach and influence. Informed by the movement of ideas and sentiments amongst Arab constituencies (Palestinian-Lebanese), as well as around the globe, Khalife articulated an Arab internationalism that is rooted in the dissident lexicon of the Global Sixties, at the intersections of countercultural dissent and anti-imperialist struggle. As a public intellectual whose work effectively and affectively spoke to public sentiments, Khalife's work shows how militancy was being understood and translated into popular culture and consumed via mass media. His work provides a nuanced reading of the Lebanese/Arab leftist experience as it manifested outside the works of "professional" (textual) intellectuals, whether committed to or critical of party-line narratives.