Umm Kulthum with some of the most prominent names in Egyptian classical music. From left: Riad Al Sunbati, Mohamed El Qasabgi, Farid al-Atrash, Zakariya Ahmad.
Umm Kulthum was a famous Egyptian singer, songwriter, and actress, known as "Star of the Orient". She is considered to be one of the greatest and most influential singers of the 20th century.
Background
Umm Kulthum was born Fatima Ibrahim as-Sayyid al-Biltagi on December 31, 1898 in the village of Tamay e-Zahayra, El Senbellawein, El Daqahlia, Egypt.
Education
Kulthum was a talented singer from a young age and learned singing by listening to her father, an imam, teach her older brother, Khalid. She was also taught to recite the Qur'an. When sixteen, she began to study music with Mohamed Aboul Ela, a modestly famous singer.
In 1923 she moved to Cairo, having been invited by composer and oudist Zakariyya Ahmad. There she was educated to play oud by Amin Beh Al Mahdy.
Career
By the mid-1920s Kulthum had made her first recordings and by the end of the 1920s, she had become a sought-after performer and was one of the best-paid musicians in Cairo. In 1932 Kulthum embarked upon a major tour of such Arab cities as Damascus, Baghdad, Beirut, Rabat, Tunis, and Tripoli(Libya), thus increasing her fame.
Over the second half of the 1930s, she began to appear on the radio and in musical movies. In 1936 she made her first motion picture, Wedad, in which she played the title role. During this time her repertoire took the first of several specific stylistic directions, as she moved from singing religious songs to performing popular tunes. Umm worked extensively with texts by Ahmad Rami, who wrote 137 songs for her and a composer Mohammad El-Qasabgi, whose songs incorporated European instruments such as the violoncello and double bass, as well as harmony.
The 1940s and early 1950s are popularly known as "the golden age" of Umm Kulthum, when she began her collaboration with poet Mahmud Bayram el-Tunsi, and composers Zakariya Ahmad and Riad El-Sonbati, thus changing her artistic inclinations. That repertoire had lasting appeal for the Egyptian audience.
Around 1965, Umm Kulthum started collaborating with composer Mohammed Abdel Wahab.
In the 1950s and ‘60s, Umm Kulthum’s health declined; yet she continued with her demanding concert schedule.
In 1967, she performed for the first time outside the Arab world in Paris. That same year, she embarked on a grand tour across the Arab World to bolster Egypt’s image in the wake of its defeat in the Six-Day War. She was the voice and face of the nation across all the Middle East. She served as a cultural ambassador for Egyptians and Arabs alike.
By 1975, Umm Kulthum’s health continued to decline, and the Egyptian newspapers wrote daily updates on her medical state. On February 3, 1975 she died of heart failure.
Between the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the 1952 Egyptian revolution, Kulthum became a patriotic Egyptian and a devout Muslim. She sang songs in support of Egyptian independence and in the 1950s sang many songs in support of Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, with whom she developed a close friendship. One of her songs associated with Nasser—“Wallāhi Zamān, Yā Silāḥī” (“It’s Been a Long Time, O Weapon of Mine”)—was adopted as the Egyptian national anthem from 1960 to 1979.
After Egypt’s defeat in the Six-Day War of June 1967, she toured Egypt and the broader Arab world, donating the proceeds of her concerts to the Egyptian government.
Views
Quotations:
"This life is a book and you are the thoughts."
"All the things unsaid are filling my chest and it has narrowed."
"Our happiness will make the moon shine bright and the stars bigger."
"Has my tenderness hardened your heart?"
"Love appears in the eyes of the one who loves."
"We ran and raced our shadows."
"We are defeated but we continue to love."
"What is life, but a night like tonight?"
"And I chose to stay away, and I learned how to become stubborn, and even abandon you. See? See what cruelty does to you?"
Membership
Umm served as president of the Musicians’ Union, as a committee member on the government division of the arts.
Personality
Kulthum’s voice was unbridled power, as she was able to sing as low as the second octave and as high as the eighth. In many ways like an Opera, her concerts typically lasted anywhere from three to six hours, during which time she would only perform two to three songs. She would always perform with a live orchestra and the length of her songs was never premeditated; she would perform according the reaction of her audience in an improvised style. Playing off of the emotional reactions of the crowd, she would often repeat a phrase over and over again in different ways, emphasizing different portions of it to achieve intense audience response and emotion.
Quotes from others about the person
Virginia Danielson, Harvard Magazine: “Imagine a singer with the virtuosity of Joan Sutherland or Ella Fitzgerald, the public persona of Eleanor Roosevelt and the audience of Elvisand you have Umm Kulthum.”
Connections
In the 1920s Kultghum was linked with a number of men, including poet Ahmad Rami.
In about 1946, Sharif Sabri Pasha, one of King Faruq's uncles, made her a proposal, but it was immediately barred by the royal family. Feeling the disappointment of the broken engagement, Umm Kulthum agreed to marry a fellow musician, the oud player, composer and a vice-president of the Musician's Union, Mahmud Sharif. The marriage was dissolved within days, regarded by both parties as a mistake.
Finally Umm Kulthum married one of her doctors and a long-time audience member, Dr. Hasan al-Hifnawi, in 1954.
Father:
Ibrahim al-Biltagi
husband:
Hasan al-Hifnawi
Friend:
Ahmad Rami
Friend:
Mohammad El-Qasabgi
Friend:
Mahmud Bayram el-Tunsi
Friend:
Zakariya Ahmad
Friend:
Riad El-Sonbati
Friend:
Gamal Nasser
References
"The Voice of Egypt": Umm Kulthum, Arabic Song, and Egyptian Society in the Twentieth Century (Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology) - Kindle edition by Virginia Danielson. Arts & Photography Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.
Umm Kulthum, the "voice of Egypt," was the most celebrated musical performer of the century in the Arab world. More than twenty years after her death, her devoted audience, drawn from all strata of Arab society, still numbers in the millions. Thanks to her skillful and pioneering use of mass media, her songs still permeate the international airwaves. In the first English-language biography of Umm Kulthum, Virginia Danielson chronicles the life of a major musical figure and the confluence of artistry, society, and creativity that characterized her remarkable career. Danielson examines the careful construction of Umm Kulthum's phenomenal popularity and success in a society that discouraged women from public performance. From childhood, her mentors honed her exceptional abilities to accord with Arab and Muslim practice, and as her stature grew, she remained attentive to her audience and the public reception of her work. Ultimately, she created from local precendents and traditions her own unique idiom and developed original song styles from both populist and neo-classical inspirations. These were enthusiastically received, heralded as crowning examples of a new, yet authentically Arab-Egyptian, culture. Danielson shows how Umm Kulthum's music and public personality helped form popular culture and contributed to the broader artistic, societal, and political forces that surrounded her. This richly descriptive account joins biography with social theory to explore the impact of the individual virtuoso on both music and society at large while telling the compelling story of one of the most famous musicians of all time. "She is born again every morning in the heart of 120 million beings. In the East a day without Umm Kulthum would have no color."—Omar Sharif Umm Kulthum, the "voice of Egypt," was the most celebrated musical performer of the century in the Arab world. More than twenty years after her death, her devoted audience, drawn from all strata of Arab society, still numbers in the millions. Thanks to her skillful and pioneering use of mass media, her songs still permeate the international airwaves. In the first English-language biography of Umm Kulthum, Virginia Danielson chronicles the life of a major musical figure and the confluence of artistry, society, and creativity that characterized her remarkable career. Danielson examines the careful construction of Umm Kulthum's phenomenal popularity and success in a society that discouraged women from public performance. From childhood, her mentors honed her exceptional abilities to accord with Arab and Muslim practice, and as her stature grew, she remained attentive to her audience and the public reception of her work. Ultimately, she created from local precendents and traditions her own unique idiom and developed original song styles from both populist and neo-classical inspirations. These were enthusiastically received, heralded as crowning examples of a new, yet authentically Arab-Egyptian, culture. Danielson shows how Umm Kulthum's music and public personality helped form popular culture and contributed to the broader artistic, societal, and political forces that surrounded her. This richly descriptive account joins biography with social theory to explore the impact of the individual virtuoso on both music and society at large while telling the compelling story of one of the most famous musicians of all time. "She is born again every morning in the heart of 120 million beings. In the East a day without Umm Kulthum would have no color."—Omar Sharif
2008
Umm Kulthum: Artistic Agency and the Shaping of an Arab Legend, 1967–2007 (Music/Culture)
In 1967 Egypt and the Arab world suffered a devastating defeat by Israel in the Six-Day War. Though long past the age at which most singers would have retired, the sexagenarian Egyptian singer Umm Kulth m launched a multifaceted response to the defeat that not only sustained her career, but also expanded her international fame and shaped her legacy. By examining biographies, dramas, monuments, radio programming practices, and recent recordings, Laura Lohman delves into Umm Kulth m’s role in fashioning her image and the conflicting ways that her image and music have been interpreted since her death in 1975.