Arabic Music Days

Umm Kulthum’s Heiresses

Arabic Music Days at the Pierre Boulez Saal

Cornelia Wegerhoff

Her voice is omnipresent throughout North Africa and the Middle East: in taxis, tea houses, and through a million YouTube clicks. On Arabic radio stations, her songs are still among those most frequently played. People’s faces change when they listen to that distinctive dark timbre. They start to smile, they seem far away, even begin to praise the Almighty; in Algiers and Amman, in Baghdad and Beirut, in Khartoum and Cairo. Umm Kulthum remains one of the liveliest voices of the Arab-speaking world—even 44 years after her death.

The Arabic Music Days—the festival’s third edition at the Pierre Boulez Saal—this year present an homage to the legendary Egyptian singer, her life and her afterlife. “Umm Kulthum set standards in the Arab music world for decades,” says Naseer Shamma, who once again serves as curator for the program. “Her impressive voice, her emotional power, her artistic work, supported by some of the bestknown Arabic composers and poets of her time, are all unique. ‘The Heart Desires All That Is Beautiful,’” he quotes a famous song title by Umm Kulthum that has long become a set phrase. The heart of the Arab world, says Shamma, desires this incomparable voice.

Deep and mellifluous, it was heard every Thursday evening on the airwaves, beginning in 1934. That year, Umm Kulthum inaugurated Egypt’s first radio station, Radio Cairo, and ever since had a weekly show there, almost uninterrupted until 1973. Throughout the Middle East, the streets were often empty at these times, with kings and presidents foregoing public speeches and appearances—knowing full well that no one would have paid attention while Umm Kulthum was singing.

She almost invariably sang of love. Enta omri, “You are my life,” is one of her most famous songs, full of tenderness and longing. But the pain of possibly losing the beloved was always present in her music as well. For minutes, the singer was able to vary the first letter of a word alone, in different tones, modulating the syllables to give them deeper meaning. At the height of her career, Umm Kulthum would take up to two hours to sing just one song, frequently interrupted by the murmuring, cheering, and jubilation of the crowd. Holding a lace handkerchief, her trademark (which was sold at auction together with a pair of her dark glasses for roughly five million dollars in the late 1990s), she would signal the musicians. At the same time, she “conducted” her audience, allowing it to participate through intermittent applause. When Umm Kulthum died on February 3, 1975, more than four million Egyptians congregated on the streets in her honor.

A Musical Role Model for Generations

For the Arabic Music Days, Umm Kulthum’s modern heirs come to the Pierre Boulez Saal. The three musicians from the Middle East all feel inspired by the iconic artist from the shores of the Nile. “The first song I learned to play on my oud was one by Umm Kulthum,” says the Syrian musician Waed Bouhassoun, a singer and virtuoso on the Arabic lute. Farida Mohamed Ali from Iraq has also been an admirer of Umm Kulthum since her earliest childhood and has become an “umm” herself, a highly revered “mother” of traditional maqam singing. Egyptian Mai Farouk brings the songs of her great predecessor to the stage in a new way, including at her Berlin performance. “Right now she is the best Umm Kulthum interpreter,” says curator Naseer Shamma. Hearing and seeing the legendary vocalist is “like going to school,” Mai Farouk says—there is not only the art of singing to be learned from her, but also that of perfor- mance, Umm Kulthum’s respect for the audience and for herself, her own dignity.

None of this was predestined. The artist was born Fatima Ibrahim El-Sayyid El-Beltagi into modest circumstances, in a village in the Nile Delta, presumably on May 4, 1904, or so her biographers assume. In the country, births were often not registered at the time, especially if the newborn was a girl. What is known is that her father was an imam, a prayer leader at the local mosque. But to feed his family he had to earn extra money, so he travelled the countryside with his son and nephews to sing at weddings and recite from the Qur’an. At the early age of five, Fatima, who was already called Umm Kulthum by her family, is said to have sung the surahs by heart. Her father soon recognized her talent and took her along when he travelled with his small ensemble—although he dressed his daughter in boys’ clothes. For a girl to perform in public would have gone against the moral standards of the time.

“A Country Girl“

But her father did give in to her plea to let her attend Qur’an School together with the boys of her age. Her mother also supported her, as Umm Kulthum once recounted herself. When the father decided to stop her lessons for financial reasons, her mother won the day. The concentrated learning by heart, the precise enunciation of the Qur’an texts, the art of vocal improvisation in which the emotional intensity increases with each repetition—all this laid the foundation for Umm Kulthum’s artistic career. She herself liked to emphasize her simple birth and her strong connection with common folk. In interviews, she would call herself a “bent al-balad,” a “country girl.”

Even as a teenager, her extraordinary voice drew the attention of well-known artists, including Sheikh Mohamed Abu Al-Ela, then the most renowned religious singer in Egypt. He became one of Umm Kulthum’s mentors. From them, she learned the classic Arabic song repertoire and was encouraged to sing not only in the countryside, but also for select audiences in the Egyptian capital.

After much discussion within her family, Umm Kulthum finally moved to Cairo in 1923 with her father and brother. There she took vocal lessons, learned to play the oud, revised her repertoire, and adapted her style to that of the elegant upper-class ladies. Her first recordings were made and record contracts signed. By her mid-20s, the Egyptian was already celebrated as a star in her homeland.

On stage, by developing her very own elegant, feminine style, she visually distanced herself from the Egyptian entertainment industry, which had a dubious reputation at the time. Despite the many love songs she sang, she thus remained the woman who could recite the Qur’an and was respected and honored.

“Planet of the East“

In their attempts to describe the phenomenon Umm Kulthum, Western media have always been searching for comparisons. Regarding the Egyptian’s fame and influence, she is named alongside Nefertiti and Cleopatra. In musical terms, she has been called “the Arabic Maria Callas,” but has also been compared to Joan Sutherland and Ella Fitzgerald. And in her audience, an American journalist noted, she caused ecstatic reactions similar to Elvis Presley. In articles on Umm Kulthum, she is often called the “star of the Orient.” Arabic-speaking admirers have also found other metaphors for her. Farida Mohamed Ali prefers to call Umm Kulthum “kaukab el shark,” “planet of the East.” Stars may burn out, but planets remain… Even with her first international tour in 1932, Umm Kulthum conquered the Middle East. Then 28, she sang in Tripoli, Damascus, Baghdad, and Beirut. Soon thereafter, she launched her second career as an actress, performing in musical films popular at the time. During her public concerts, police had to deploy special units to control the crowds. Not least because of the glamorous performances of Umm Kulthum, the 1940s and 1950s are often referred to as a “Golden Age” in the Arab cultural world.

Memories of this era cause nostalgia in people of the region, beyond national borders and conflicts. “I grew up in a family that loved the songs of this golden age,” Waed Bouhassoun recalls. Her family also supported her wish to become a musician and encouraged her to study in Paris. “Music always allows you to create something beautiful,” says Bouhassoun—including with artists of different cultural backgrounds.

Mai Farouk also emphasizes the strong support from her family. Already as a girl, she sang in the children’s chorus of the Cairo Opera, and at that time also sang Umm Kulthum’s songs. Farida Mohamed Ali, on the other hand, embarked upon a different path. The Iraqi maqams, the so-called “maqam al-baghdadi” that originate in ancient Mesopotamia, were formerly only interpreted by men, she explains. Still, she has managed to become accepted and highly successful in this genre. Later, Farida Mohamed Ali taught traditional music as a professor in Baghdad. Today she lives in the Netherlands, but has been representing Iraq at international concerts for many years. All three musicians embody the self-confidence of strong, independent, unique female artists.

It was Umm Kulthum, however, who first established a new type of female artist in the Middle East during her time. Soon after her early success, she took control of her career, leaving nothing to coincidence, personally negotiating her contracts. Her musical talent was a gift of God, says Naseer Shamma, but Umm Kulthum worked tirelessly for her success, collaborating only with the best in her field. The famous Egyptian poet Ahmed Rami, who also came to fame as a Shakespeare translator, among other things, wrote no fewer than 137 songs for her. The two of them were said to have a close personal relationship as well, but this did not prevent the singer from rearranging his and other collaborators’ songs, texts, and music until they appealed to her one hundred percent and offered an ideal vehicle for her powers of expression.

Arabic Heads of State as Admirers

Her fame kept bringing Umm Kulthum into contact with those in power. She sang for Egypt’s King Farouk, who greatly admired her, and congratulated the king’s sister with a song on the occasion of her marriage to the later Shah of Persia. But after the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, Umm Kulthum also performed for President Gamal Abdel Nasser. He also revered her profoundly. Her popularity benefitted the former general—and as a strong woman, she certainly enjoyed being influential. First and foremost, though, her patriotism made the singer an unquestioned national symbol. “Umm Kulthum and the pyramids are eternal values,” Egyptians say to this day—and brook almost no criticism of her whatsoever. With her songs, rooted as they are in more than a thousand years of Arabic music tradition, she also strengthened the sense of brotherhood between the Arab states. The Times of London wrote about Umm Kulthum: “With the possible exception of Nasser, she represents the strongest personification of pan-Arab sentiments.” After Egypt’s defeat in the Six-Day War of 1967, the singer undertook a tour of numerous Arabic countries. Afterwards, she appeared at the Olympia in Paris twice—the only concerts in Europe she ever gave. She donated part of the fees to support the rebuilding of the Egyptian army. Supposedly she also raised millions for the October War in 1973 (known in Israel as the Yom Kippur War). Part of that money most likely came from the sheikhs of the Persian Gulf states, who paid large sums to attend Umm Kulthum’s concerts in Cairo. There is a story that Libya’s Muammar al-Gaddafi rescheduled a putsch against King Idris because Umm Kulthum was performing in Tripoli on the day originally chosen.

Despite all this—surprising as it may be—the singer remains popular in Israel to this day as well. “In Israel there was never a debate about whether to reject her because of her background,” the well-known qanun player Elad Gabbay of the Jewish Music Research Center in Jerusalem said about Umm Kulthum in an interview. “Music is art, and art is joy. We love her because her music is wonderful.”

Little is known about the private life of this much-admired artist. She was married to a respected doctor but had no children. Instead, she became the mother of the Egyptian people. When she was admitted to a Cairo hospital in 1975, two weeks before her death, thousands volunteered to donate kidneys or blood. During the funeral procession, the capital’s citizens took the coffin from the official pallbearers and carried it through the streets and alleys for hours. Umm Kulthum’s music lives on—not least because of her heiresses, who will commemorate her in music during these days at the Pierre Boulez Saal.