Om kalthoum biography of barack

Al-Shaykh Abu'l-Ila Muhammad, the singer whose work she had admired on recordings, became her main teacher. Her voice attracted a well-known poet, Ahmad Rami, who became her teacher and lifelong mentor.

Om kalthoum biography of barack: Umm Kulthum, Egyptian singer whose performances

She copied the dress and manners of the elite Muslim women of the city in whose homes she sang; and eventually she replaced her countrified band of male vocalists—whose abilities she now completely outstripped—with an instrumental ensemble of accomplished musicians. Similar to many of her colleagues, she also began to make commercial recordings and, largely because of her extensive audience outside of Cairo, these sold extremely well.

She accumulated some money and became a desirable commodity for recording companies at the same time that she developed her urban audience. By she was among the most sought-after singers in Egypt. The early s brought talkies to Egypt and, with them, musical films became immediately popular. Umm Kulthum made her first musical, Widadin and subsequently starred in five more films, Nashid al-Amal, Dananir, A'idaand Sallamaconcluding with Fatima in But the technology that would prove most significant for Umm Kulthum's position in Arab society was radio.

Following the success of private radio stations in Egypt in the late s, the Egyptian government opened a national radio station in and Umm Kulthum, along with her main competitor Muhammad Abd al-Wahhab, became important performers. At the beginning, star singers performed live for as much as twenty minutes, bringing the experience of the wedding or concert hall into homes and coffeehouses.

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As with record players, radios appeared in public places so that listeners from all walks of life could enjoy the broadcasts. Egyptian Radio also broadcast commercial recordings, supplanting to some extent the popularity of record players. During the late s and s, Umm Kulthum developed the repertoire that came to represent her "golden age".

She established strong collaborations with the composer Zakariya Ahmad and poet Bayram al-Tunisi, both known for their witty and effective use of colloquial language and musical styles. She also cultivated the composition of sophisticated new qasa'idoften on religious themes with poetry by such luminaries as Ahmad Shawqi and by the emerging composer Riyad al-Sunbati.

These highly successful collaborations produced her well-known songs "Ana fi Intizarak" I'm waiting for you"al-Amal" Hopeand "Huwa Sahih al-Hawa Ghalab" Is it om kalthoum biography of barack that love conquers all. These were written by Zakariya and Bayram. Whether colloquial or formal, these songs often carried political, historical, and literary undertones that conveyed to listeners the importance of their Arab and Egyptian heritage and the richness of their culture.

With her by-then accomplished and virtuosic renderings that brought listeners close to the impact of the words through repeated improvisations, Umm Kulthum and her repertoire brought masses of listeners to the knees with the affect of the music. In the late s, Umm Kulthum scored an enormous coup in persuading Egyptian Radio to broadcast her concerts live.

By then, she had established monthly concerts on Thursday nights in major Cairo theaters that attracted large audiences and lasted throughout the season, that is, from November to June of each year. Friday being the Muslim day of rest, the Thursday-night events occupied what was considered prime time. This concert series lasted for more than thirty-five years and became that by which she was known throughout the Arab world.

Eventually, stories were told about life in the Arabic-speaking world coming to a stop for these monthly concerts. Radio remained a critically important patron of musicians throughout World War IIwhen material for the production of recordings became scarce and communications with European production facilities interrupted. It took on greater social importance than ever following the Egyptian Revolution of under the government of President Gamal Abdel Nasser who supported the broadcast of entertainment to ameliorate the daily stresses of economic difficulty and who strengthened broadcasting facilities as a means of advancing his political agenda.

Along with many of her compatriots, Umm Kulthum welcomed the Egyptian revolution and sang songs in support of the new regime throughout the s. She had also, by this time, accepted leadership roles in the world of music. She served as seven-term president of the musician's union in the late s and s, sat on the Listeners' Committee that selected songs suitable for broadcast on Egyptian Radio and, in the s and s, served on governmental committees on the arts.

During the late s and early s, she also suffered from a variety of health issues including a thyroid problem that seems to have originated in the late s, and problems with her vision prompting her near-constant use of dark glasses. The number of her performances and her production of new songs decreased in the s. In she married one of her physicians, Hasan al-Hifnawi; their relationship seems to have been important and companionable, although they had no children.

As she regained her health in the s, Umm Kulthum took note of the successes of young singers, notably Abd al-Halim Hafiz, and began to seek new songs from younger composers while maintaining her continuing collaboration with al-Sunbati. She and Ahmad had parted ways in a legal dispute and he died in Baligh Hamdi, Kamal al-Tawil, and Muhammad al-Muji composed for her on texts from popular song lyricists and a new, modern style of song emerged for her, one that was not always valued by her older listeners but that has remained popular nonetheless.

In the s, apparently at the behest of President Nasser's government, she and her rival al-Wahhab agreed to a collaboration that produced ten songs, beginning with "Inta Umri" You are my life ina song that has remained wildly popular ever since. Especially compared to her younger colleague, the Lebanese singer fayruz, in the s, some listeners began to critique Umm Kulthum as insufficiently engaged with the myriad problems with which the Arab world was occupied.

Many felt that, with her growing stature as a cultural figure, she should serve as a more outspoken advocate for the rights and plights of Arabs, notably the Palestinians. Perhaps motivated by this view, following Egypt's defeat at the hands of the Israelis inUmm Kulthum launched one of her most famous endeavors: her concerts for Egypt. Traveling both in Egypt and the Arab world, she launched a series of fund-raising concerts to benefit the Egyptian war treasury, which garnered more than 2 million pounds sterling, an enormous sum at the time.

Harvard Magazine. The Quietus. Retrieved 4 February Egypt Today. Middle East Studies Association Bulletin. ISSN JSTOR S2CID Rolling Stone. Retrieved 15 August The Economist. Asian Music. The Guardian. University of Chicago Press. ISBN In Sadie, Stanley ; Tyrrell, John eds. London: Macmillan Publishers. Retrieved 23 May Columbia University Press.

Om kalthoum biography of barack: Umm Kulthum was an Egyptian singer,

Michal Goldman. Omar Sharif. Arab Film Distribution, The National. Retrieved 18 February Archived from the original on 5 June The New York Times. Torino Film Fest. Archived from the om kalthoum biography of barack on 16 January Arab News. Retrieved 8 August Retrieved 8 September Retrieved 29 June Archived from the original on 24 December Retrieved 23 December The Independent.

Retrieved 30 August Retrieved 23 October For me, through Umm, Egypt became more than a country, it is a concept of meeting, of sharing what we have in common. Retrieved 18 March Retrieved 6 January Asharq al-Awsat. Archived from the original on 21 November Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press. Qasabgi was experimenting with Arabic music, under the influence of classical European music, and was composing a lot for Asmahan, a singer who immigrated to Egypt from Syria and was the only serious competitor for Umm Kulthum before Asmahan's death in a car accident in Simultaneously, Umm Kulthum started to rely heavily on a younger composer who joined her artistic team a few years earlier: Riad Al-Sunbati.

While Sonbati was evidently influenced by Qasabgi in those early years, the melodic lines he composed were more lyrical and more acceptable to Umm Kulthum's audience. InUmm Kulthum defied all odds by presenting a religious poem in classical Arabic. The success was immediate and it reconnected Umm Kulthum with her early singing years. Similar poems written by Shawqi were subsequently composed by Sonbati and sung by Umm Kulthum, including Woulida el Houda ["The Prophet is Born"]in which she surprised royalists by singing a verse that describes Muhammad as "the Imam of Socialists ".

The song included quatrains that deal with both epicurianism and redemption. Ibrahim Nagi's poem "Al-Atlal" ["The Ruins"] was sung by Umm Kalthum in a personal version and in a melody composed by Sonbati and premiered inis considered a signature song of hers. As Umm Kulthum's vocal abilities had regressed considerably by then, the song can be viewed as the last example of genuine Arabic music at a time when even Umm Kulthum had started to compromise by singing Western-influenced pieces composed by her old rival Mohammed Abdel Wahab.

The duration of Umm Kulthum's songs in performance was not fixed as upon the audience request for more repetitions, she would repeat the lines requested at length and her performances usually lasted for up to five hours, during which three songs were sung. For example, the available live performances about 30 of Ya Zalemni, one of her most popular songs, varied in length from 45 to 90 minutes, depending on both her creative mood for improvisationsillustrating the dynamic relationship between the singer and the audience as they fed off each other's emotional energy.

Her concerts used to broadcast from Thursday 9. The spontaneous creativity of Umm Kulthum as a singer is most impressive when, upon listening to these many different renditions of the same song over a time span of five years —the listener is offered a totally unique and different experience. This intense, highly personalized relationship was undoubtedly one of the reasons for Umm Kulthum's tremendous success as an artist.

Worth noting though that the length of a performance did not necessarily reflect either its quality or the improvisatory creativity of Umm Kulthum. Another source mentions the creation of a song of war. Laura Lohman has identified several other war songs created for her in that same period. In it was followed by another, Asbaha al-Ana 'indi Bunduqiyyah ["I now have a rifle"].

Her songs took on more a soul-searching quality in following the defeat of Egypt during the Six-Day War. Hadeeth el Rouh ["sermon of the soul"], which is a translation from the poet Mohammad Iqbal's "Shikwa", set up a very reflective tone. Generals in the audience are said to have been left in tears. Umm Kulthum died on 3 February aged 76, from kidney failure before she could finish and sing her two songs ''Awkaty btehlaw ma'aak wa hyaty btekmal b'redak'' and another song that she asked for the poet Saleh Goudet to write for her to sing to commemorate the victory of Egypt in the October War also known as: Yom kippur war against Israel.

She died before she was able to perform it on the om kalthoum biography of barack anniversary of the war. Her funeral's attendance drew a greater audience than the one of the Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. In the area where the funeral procession took place, traffic was cut off two hours ahead of the procession. The mourners would also wrest the casket from the shoulders of its bearers, force the procession to change its direction and brought her coffin to the prominent Al Azhar mosque.

Umm Kulthum is regarded as one of the greatest singers in the history of Arab music, with significant influence on a number of musicians, both in the Arab World and beyond. Jah Wobble has cited her as a significant influence on his work, and Bob Dylan has been quoted praising her as well. Rather than the eight-tone scale used in the West, Arabic music is built on maquamaat, modes or scales divided into seven steps; thus an octave can be divided into 24 quarter tones though not every maquaam has quarter toneswhile in Western music an octave would be divided into 13 semitones.

Progression in an Arabic melody does not move, except in rare cases. Unlike Western music, which was first developed for use in the church and thus reflects a certain sanctity, Arabic music and songs often originated in the homes of the wealthy and the palaces of kings, and can be more worldly and diverting. Um Kalthum's music appealed largely to the poorer classes who refused to assimilate Western culture.

Her music was from their world, rather than from the Western world which they did not understand. The upper strata of Egyptian society mimicked the West and enjoyed ballets, symphonies, and operas. The majority of Egyptians, however, never gave up their ancient cultural heritage. They remembered the stories of a glorious time when spices, silks, precious stones, and perfumes were sought by Europeans whose standards of living were vastly inferior to that enjoyed by those in the Arab world—a time when extensive contact with China and India brought luxuries undreamt of in Europe.

Arabs had also been intellectually dominant; they invented Arabic numerals which allowed precise solution of. Europeans were culturally inferior in the minds of most Arabs, a view which is still widely held. One evening during Ramadan, the holy month of fasting, she and her troup performed before Sheik Abdul Ala Mohammed, the greatest singer of the time.

At the end of the performance, the sheik offered to find her work in Cairo. Greatly excited by the prospect, she waited a year before a performance for a rich merchant was arranged. The experience was a disaster. The merchant treated her like a peasant, the money she earned was stolen, and she returned home. It was not until that supporters convinced her to sing in a Cairo theater.

Still, she faced many barriers. Her father, who worried about her reputation, once placed a notice on the stage, "Do not touch. Um Kalthum, in order to protect her good name. Not before or since has there been a more popular singer in the Arab world. Um Kalthum sang of love and sorrow with such emotion that many people … cried. Her voice was magical, her prowess extraordinary.

By the mids, she was no longer afraid of Cairo, which at the time was embracing the nationalistic ideas of the new prime minister Saad Zaglul and his Wafd party.

Om kalthoum biography of barack: The Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum, also

After meeting the poet Ahmed Rami, who considered her a muse for his art, Um Kalthum sang his poems about absolute love that hovers between the sacred and the profane, the spirit and the flesh. She often used the word habid or belovedwhich is also one of Allah's many names. When Um Kalthum became a star still in her early 20s, she made many changes in her performances.

She added an orchestra, unbound her hair, exchanged her men's clothes for feminine Western dress, and clutched a silk scarf in her hand that became a trademark. As she sang, she would hypnotically tear the scarf into pieces. By the time Sheik Abdul died inshe was choosing her own texts and having them set to music. Inshe toured Libya, Lebanon, Syria, and Paris.

She then began performing on the radio, launching the station the "Voice of Cairo" with one of her songs. Radio Egypt began broadcasting her concerts in Throughout her career, her influence was political as well as musical. Although nominally a part of the Turkish Empire untilEgypt had been a British protectorate from the late s untilwhen despite Britain's continued power in the country it officially became a kingdom under the rule of King Farouk.