Umm Kulthum

Egyptian-born vocalist Umm Kulthūm (1904-1975) is considered perhaps the most famous singer in the modern Arab world. Her unique and masterful singing style appealed to her fellow Egyptians as well as to other Arabs due to its great range and virtuosity, and for many her singing was a symbol of the Egyptian national spirit during the period from Egypt's emergence from British colonial rule through the first decades of that country's independence.

Kulthūm was born poor in Tamayet-el-Zahayra, a rural village in Egypt's Nile delta. Her birth year is a matter of some doubt, but is usually set at 1904. Kuthūm's father, al-Shaykh Ibrāhīim al-Sayyid al-Baltājī, led the local mosque, and her mother, Fatma al-Malījī, kept the family's home. As quoted by Virginia Danielson in her The Voice of Egypt: Umm Kulthūm, Arabic Song, and Egyptian Society in the Twentieth Century, Kulthūm once wrote of her village: "The greatest display of wealth was the [village leader's] carriage pulled by one horse.… And there was only one street in the whole village wide enough for the … carriage." Her village comprised some 280 households.

Studied the Qur'an

Kulthūm entered a local Islamic religious school when she was about five years old. Memorizing the Qur'an and learning Arabic was the course of study, and she learned to enunciate Arabic, an ability that would bear significantly on her future success. To add to the family income, her father, her brother Khalid, and a nephew would sing religious songs at weddings and other events in the surrounding villages, and Kulthūm learned the songs by hearing her father teach them to the boys. Once when Khalid was ill, Kulthūm was allowed to sing in his place. The repertoire was Qur'anic recitation and other religious songs. Only between five and eight years old, she astounded the audience with the strength of her voice, and she was immediately invited to perform in another village. Word spread, and she soon was in great demand, the family traveling by foot to many villages and towns. She would later remark "that it seemed to her they walked the entire Delta before they ever set foot in Cairo." Because crowds were sometimes rowdy or drunk, Kulthūm's father thought it prudent to dress her as a boy.

Entered the Cairo Milieu

In 1919 or 1920 Kulthūm's father arranged for his daughter's first performance in Cairo. She continued to perform in working-class venues there and also in the homes of wealthy patrons. According to Danielson, "By mid-1922, she was an established performer in the city." The family soon moved to Cairo, where audiences, resentful of condescending Western attitudes toward Arabs and Egypt, hailed the teen as an authentically Egyptian performer because of her roots in the Qur'an and the countryside.

By 1928 Kulthūm had altered her dress and appearance, developed her musical skills, and become a major star. A strengthening Egyptian economy also helped the fortunes of entertainers, and entertainment venues proliferated. Kulthūm was one of a number of young female performers who often entertained primarily male audiences. She no longer concentrated on working-class districts, but was booked into music halls and smaller theaters. Still performing with her father and brothers, she also began to add popular songs to her repertoire. In 1923 Kulthūm began recording and by 1926 had released a number of secular recordings. These sold successfully, in part because her rural following wanted to hear her again. As her popularity grew, she raised her fees, a foreshadowing of the hard-nosed business sense she would develop. She also commissioned new religious texts to be set to music for her to perform.

Part of Kulthūm's education in this period included reading and memorizing poetry and analyzing its form. She also developed her vocal flexibility, learned to play a musical instrument, and learned a new type of song involving difficult melodies. She also studied composition. One teacher in particular, al-Shaykh Abu 'l-'Ila Muhammad, helped her master her strong voice and learn skills for harmonizing meaning and sound. It was felt to be a uniquely Arab and Egyptian style. "He taught me to understand the words before I learned the song and sang it," Kulthūm later recalled of the man who coached her until his death in 1927. As Danielson explained, "the extent to which she pursued musical training distinguished her from most of her peers."

Became Established as a Star

The year 1926 proved to be a watershed year for Kulthūm. She began to wear fashionable dresses and sing love songs written specifically for her, and often drew from a repertoire of completely new songs. She also replaced her family accompanists with a professional instrumental ensemble, called a takht. She hired experts with good reputations, bringing a sophisticated, modern tone to her performances. The takht also facilitated a new mode of singing that became her trademark: As described by Danielson, it was "the solo rendition of sophisticated texts shaped in relation to audience response calling for varied repetition of lines and supported by creative but unintrusive heterophonic accompaniment." Kulthūm was a country girl no longer. Before long she was even the object of imitators. She entered the 1930s at the top of Egypt's roster of female performers, and her wise business management insulated her from the hard economic times ahead.

In the 1930s Kulthūm began one of the best-loved traditions of her career when she started to perform on weekly radio broadcasts. Her live Thursday-night sessions "were undoubtedly her best-known venture, and she continued them almost every season of her career until 1973," noted Danielson. Thursday is significant as the eve of the Muslim holy day. Although some criticized the performances initially, Kulthūm persisted, characteristically determined to follow a path she thought would be productive. Furthermore, the ambitious singer took the production of the concerts into her own hands, negotiated with theaters and arranged advertising, all of which increased her profits. The live broadcasts "institutionalized the first Thursday of every month as 'Umm Kulthūm Night,'" explained Danielson. Kulthūm was at the same time seeking and nourishing friendships with influential men and women within elite Egyptian society. She also learned to cultivate a positive relationship with the press, which had criticized her lack of sophistication in earlier years, and she was diligent in controlling what newspapers and magazine journalists wrote about her.

In 1935 Kulthūm began a new career in the motion picture industry, starring in a film with a story line she invented about a loyal singing slave girl of thirteenth-century Egypt. Her next film tapped nationalist sentiments at a time when students were demonstrating for independence from Great Britain. The third film opened in 1940. "In each film," wrote Danielson, "Umm Kulthūm cultivated sophistication and respectability in her public image and styled herself as an elegant exponent of Egyptian romanticism." The singer made a total of six films, and in five of them she starred as a singer. The songs from these films often made their way into her performance repertoire, where she could elaborate on them.

Possessed Remarkable Vocal Ability

Kulthūm's vocal ability was multifaceted. Her diction was remarkably clear and her pronunciation of literary Arabic excellent. Her voice was strong, and during much of her career she had the stamina to sing for hours at a time. She could sing over two octaves in the 1930s - in 1955, she could still reach a high G - and could sustain long phrases. She also mastered coloristic change, a trait her listeners appreciated as characteristically Egyptian. She controlled resonance well and mastered falsetto, vibrato, and trilling, combining all these devices with great sensitivity to text and great subtlety; furthermore, she did so extemporaneously. Danielson described the desired virtuosity of Egyptian vocalists: "The first task was the clear and skillful delivery of the initial segment [such as a line or stanza] of the composition. Depending on audience response, the singer would then repeat that section, introducing variations, or go on to the next section of the piece. In the ideal performance the singer would vary one or more lines upon encouragement from the audience and thus extend a five-minute song to twenty or thirty minutes or more. The song performance was shaped in this way by singer and audience responding to each other." Not only were her abilities outstanding; they were regarded as specifically Egyptian.

Another important feature of her art was its close association with a live audience. She liked to observe an audience from backstage before going out to perform, in order to gauge its mood. Her first song in a performance often served the same purpose. Her artistry enabled her to tailor a performance to each audience's mood and inclinations. Although she repeated favorite songs in many performances, it is said that "she never sang a line the same way twice."

1940s Proved to Be Golden Age

The 1940s have been referred to in Egypt as "The Golden Age of Umm Kulthūm." They were also a particularly tumultuous time for Egypt and the Middle East. The economy was recovering slowly, and resentment toward Europeans and European-influenced Egyptian leaders was growing. Kulthūm's music became less romantic; instead she chose songs that glorified the Egyptian working classes. Her last two films also reflected this new direction, and were among her most popular, despite her age. Also in the 1940s, she set out in a new musical direction, called neoclassical, and she continued to sing the songs from this period into the 1950s. This shift, explained Danielson, "may be viewed … as part of a strong, deep social and political current toward reaffirmation of Islam and classical Arab civilization as the bases for social order." Neoclassical music was firmly rooted in classical poetry and tradition and overlaid with new musical devices. Kulthūm helped choose texts for these songs, called qasa'id, and suggested the musical devices. With the end of World War II, Egypt's demands for the withdrawal of British troops grew louder, and the music of Kulthūm became more and more closely associated with such nationalist feeling. It was in this period that she was called the singer who "taught poetry to the masses." She also introduced simpler songs that drew popular attention to the nobility of the Egyptian peasantry. Both these populist songs and the more complex qasa'id were appreciated as decidedly non-Western. Once admired, the West was coming to represent in many Arab minds a materialistic and ultimately destructive approach to life. Western secularism in particular was gaining in disfavor. Kulthūm's strong association with pro-Arab feeling is reflected in the sentiment expressed by one Egyptian that "if you want to know what Arab music is, listen to Umm Kulthūm."

Kulthūm's health began to decline in the late 1940s, and she had already been troubled with liver and gallbladder problems in the 1930s. Her mother, with whom she had lived all her life, died in 1947. Curiosity about the singer's personal life and her apparent decision not to marry had existed since she came to Cairo, but it was quieted in 1954 when she married one of her doctors.

Became Associated with Nationalism, Nasser

The 1950s began badly for Kulthūm because of illness and also because the region's political instability and civil unrest had led to curfews and canceled concerts. In July of 1952, when Egyptian King Farouk was forced to abdicate, events were set in motion that led to the 1956 election of Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918-1970) as president. When Kulthūm heard of the overthrow of Farouk, she returned from vacation immediately and commissioned a national song. Danielson says that "between 1952 and 1960, Kulthūm sang more national songs than at any other time in her life; they constituted almost 50 percent of her repertory, and roughly one-third of her new repertory after 1960." She also began to speak out on social and political questions, and she developed a friendship with Nasser. According to Danielson, "Both were from the lower classes and had utilized opportunities for upward mobility new in their lifetimes. Both were powerful personalities who became skilled at reaching the Egyptian population." Nasser's popularity in the Arab world remained strong even after his death, partly because of his long association with Kulthūm.

Musically, Kulthūm once again changed course during the 1950s, choosing romantic love songs from a new generation of writers. Songwriters were eager to write for her because the association gave a powerful boost to their careers. Possibly with the encouragement of Nasser, she also began an important association with a noted musician of her own generation, Muhammad 'Abd al-Wahhab. Their first collaboration was an unprecedented success and represented a modernizing trend in Kulthūm's repertoire. During this period, she still performed some songs in older styles and themes, many written by Riyad al-Sunbati, who nevertheless introduced piano and electric guitar into his compositions. Another innovation of this time was a long love song with a long instrumental introduction and instrumental improvisation. Many of her new songs shifted emphasis from their vocal to their instrumental aspects, perhaps because, while her voice remained strong, it had altered with age. At the same time, Nasser's expansion of radio and television broadcasting extended her audience.

Following Egypt's humiliating defeat against Israel in 1967, Kulthūm began a series of concerts to raise money for the national treasury. She took her concert to Paris in November of that year, her one and only performance outside the Arab world. Between 1967 and her death these concerts raised over $2.5 million for the Egyptian government.

A Funeral Larger than Nasser's

In 1971 Kulthūm's health worsened, sometimes causing her to cancel concerts, and she gave her last performance in 1973. Finally her heart failed, and she died on February 3, 1975. Mahmoud Fadl, a contemporary Egyptian musician, attended the funeral and wrote on the Piranha Web site; "The whole of Cairo turned out for her funeral procession - even more than when Nasser died.… The police immediately lost control of the coffin.… It was claimed by the masses and touched by tens of thousands of hands as it left the square on a whole new route." Danielson wrote that the crowds bore the coffin "for three hours through the streets of Cairo" before taking it to one of Kulthūm's favorite mosques.

Fadl recalled that Kulthūm's Thursday broadcasts "brought public life to a complete stand-still, not only in Cairo and Egypt but in the whole Arab world from Atlantic and Gulf. On any Thursday … nobody would, nobody could, even try to compete with her." It is said that Nasser "timed his major political speeches carefully around her broadcasts." Decades after her death, Kulthūm's voice continued to be heard on Arab radio stations; according to Fadl, "In Egypt, it seems, only the Nile, the pyramids and Umm Kulthūm are forever."

Books

Danielson, Virginia, The Voice of Egypt: Umm Kulthūm, Arabic Song, and Egyptian Society in the Twentieth Century, University of Chicago Press, 1997.

Rough Guide to World Music, Volume 1: Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, Rough Guides, 1999.

Periodicals

Ak-Mashriq, November, 1995.

Online

Fadl, Mahmoud, "Personal Memories from the Funeral of Umm Kalthum," http://www.piranha.de/records/english/all_1470r.htm (December 19, 2003).

"Umm Kulthūm," All Music Guide,http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll (December 23, 2003).

c. 1904 - 1975

The most famous Arab singer of the twentieth century.

Umm Kulthum performed for more than fifty years, beginning in the villages and towns of the Egyptian delta in the early twentieth century and continuing until her final illness in 1973. In the course of her long career, Umm Kulthum recorded over three hundred songs and appeared in six films. She performed throughout the Arab world and is often considered the most accomplished singer of her time.

She was born in the Egyptian village of Tammay al-Zahayra in the province of Daqhaliya to Shaykh Ibrahim al-Sayyid al-Baltaji (died 1932), the imam of the village mosque, and his wife, Fatima al-Maliji (died 1947). Her father augmented his income by singing religious songs for local celebrations. Umm Kulthum learned the songs while listening to him train her brother Khalid as his accompanist. Impressed with the power of his young daughter's voice, Shaykh Ibrahim eventually included her along with Khalid and their cousin Sabr in his performances.

The young girl with the very strong voice became the family's star attraction. To protect her reputation, the father had her wear a boy's coat and head covering, and he conducted all business on her behalf. By 1917, the family began to consider a serious singing career for Umm Kulthum and in about 1922 they moved to Cairo to launch her in the commercial music business. In Cairo, Umm Kulthum was not an immediate success. Compared with the women already established as successful performers and recording stars, including Munira al-Mahdiyya and Fathiyya Ahmad, she was viewed as unsophisticated and countrified. She engaged music teachers and endeavored to copy the manners of the elite women in whose homes she sang. Like other aspiring performers, she was aided and schooled by a number of mentors, including singer Shaykh Abu al-Ilah Muhammad, poet Ahmad Rami, and the amateur musician Amin al-Mahdi. By 1928, she surpassed the popularity of her competitors and remained at the top of musical society for the remainder of her career.

Umm Kulthum began to make commercial recordings in 1924. Although recording companies were usually conservative and disinclined to take a chance on an unknown singer, they vied with each other for the largest possible share of the market; as a result the relatively unknown Umm Kulthum was recruited by Odeon Records and recorded fourteen songs in 1924 and 1925. These were immediately successful, for, as she later explained, her long years of performing in the delta provided her with a larger audience outside Cairo than most other singers. This experience awakened Umm Kulthum to the nature of her potential audience. During the late 1920s and the 1930s she began her lifelong involvement with the mass media: commercial recording (1924), radio (1934), film (1934), and television (1960). Commercial recordings had been circulating in Egypt since about 1904 and, despite the relatively high cost of phonograph players and records, were widely accessible. They were installed in public places, such as coffee houses, where even those who could not afford the equipment could hear the records. (Later, radios, televisions, and cassette players were similarly shared.) From 1937 until her final illness, her concerts on the first Thursday of each month were broadcast live to an ever growing audience. These concerts were certainly her best-known professional activity and allowed Umm Kulthum to count among her audience millions of listeners beyond the ticket-buying audience in Cairo.

She started with a repertoire of traditional, predominantly religious songs as a child; in the late 1920s and 1930s, she began to sing new virtuosic songs, often composed for her by Muhammad alQasabji on the romantic poetry then in vogue by Ahmad Rami. During her golden age in the 1940s and 1950s, she sang colloquial songs of populist expression written by Zakariyya Ahmad and Bayram al-Tunisi and serious neoclassical songs by Riyadh al-Sunbati and Ahmad Shawqi; these have become her best known. In the late 1950s and 1960s, she commissioned new love songs by younger poets and composers and finally collaborated with her colleague and rival, Muhammad Abd al-Wahhab; they produced ten songs, which retain great popularity to the present day.

In her later years, she was recognized as an important public figure, in general, and a symbol of authentically Egyptian and Arab culture and art. She served seven terms as president of the musicians' union and as a member of the selection committee for radio and of several national commissions on the arts. After the Egyptian defeat in the Arab-Israel War (1967), she initiated a series of benefit concerts in Egypt and throughout the Arab world designed to replenish the Egyptian treasury. She appeared in Morocco, Libya, Sudan, Lebanon, Abu Dhabi, and Tunisia, and her trips to these countries took on the character of diplomatic visits.

Health problems that had plagued Umm Kulthum for much of her life worsened as she aged, and she spent most of the last year of her life under medical treatment. She died on 3 February 1975.

Bibliography

Awad, Mahmud. "Umm Kulthum: Allati la ya'rifuha ahad" (The Umm Kulthum Nobody Knows). In Middle Eastern Muslim Women Speak, edited and translated by Elizabeth Warnock Fernea and Basima Qattan Bezirgan. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1977.

Danielson, Virginia. "Shaping Tradition in Arab Song: The Career and Repertory of Umm Kulthum." Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois, 1991.

Danielson, Virginia. The Voice of Egypt: Umm Kulthum, ArabicSong, and Egyptian Society in the Twentieth Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997.

— VIRGINIA DANIELSON

• Born: 1904, Tammy al-Zahayrah, Egypt
• Died: January 21, 1975, Cairo, Egypt
• Active: '20s, '30s, '40s, '50s, '60s, '70s
• Genres: World
• Instrument: Vocals
• Representative Albums: "El Atlaal", "Hakam Alena Al-Hawa", "Vol. 2: 1926-1927-1928

Biography

The reception accorded the death of Umm Kulthum showed how powerful and beloved the Egyptian vocalist had become. With the streets of Cairo lined by several million mourners, Kulthum's fans took her body from the shoulders of of the official pallbearers and passed her from person to person for the three hour long journey to the mosque of al-Sayyid Husayn. This sign of affection and respect was the culmination of a career that ahd begun nearly six decades before. In an article for Harvard Magazine, Virginia Danielson, author of The Voice Of Egypt: Umm Kulthum, Arabic Song And Egyptian Society In The Twentieth Century, wrote, "Imagine a singer with the virtuosity of Joan Sutherland or Ella Fitzgerald, the public persona of Eleanor Roosevelt and the audience of Elvis and you have Umm Kulthum, the most accomplished singer of her century in the Arab world".

Born in the rural village of Tammy al-Zahayrah, Kulthum was raised in very humble conditions. Much of her love of music was inherited from her father, who supplemented his income as an imam at local mosque by singing religious songs at weddings. Overhearing her father teaching songs to her older brother, she memorized the tunes and sang them herself. Her father was so impressed that he began to include her in Kulthum's obvious talents led her family to relocate to Cairo, the entertainment center of Egypt. In 1923, she came under the wing of a musical mashayaikh who assisted her in securing gigs and helping her to meet theatrical agents. Famed composer and singer, al-Shaykh Abu al-Ila Muhammed, became her chief mentor and teacher.

While blessed with natural skills, Kulthum was looked down upon as an unschooled singer, lacking the vocal subtleties and melodic nuances necessary for Egyptian music. Kulthum did much to change this impression of her, studying with numerous music teachers hired by her father and with poet Ahmad Rami, who taught her poetry and literary Arabic.

Kulthum's repertoire went through many changes during her career. Although she initially sang songs that she learned from her father, she began to rely on compositions written for her by Egypt's finest songwriters. During the 1930s, she sang songs by Rami and composer Muhammed al-Qsabji, and, qasa'id by Ahmad Shawqi set to music by composer Riyad al-Sunbati. Beginning in 1964, she callaborated with composer Muhammad al-Wahab.

Considered one of Cairo's top singers, by 1928, Kuthum sought a variety of mediums to showcase her talents. She appeared on the radio as early as the first broadcasts of Egyptian National Radio in 1934, films as early as 1935 and television in 1964.

Kulthum increasingly took control over all aspects of her career. In addition to producing. her own concerts, she chose her own accompanists for her performances and actors and technicians for her films.

In the 1940s, Kulthum became a member of the Listening Committee, which chose music for radio broadcasts, and, was elected president of the Egyptian musician's union. Kulthum's political activism increased following the Egyptian Revolution of 1952. Granting more interviews, she spoke candidly about her rise from impovishment and provided hope for the less-fortunate segment of Egypt's population. In the wake of Egypt's defeat in the 1967 war, she performed a series of concerts to benefit Egypt.

Kulthum was plagued by health problems throughout her life. At various times, she suffered from gall bladder, kidney ailments and light sensitive eyes. Concerts were postponed in spring, 1971 and winter, 1972. During a concert in December 1972, she felt faint during the program. Although she completed the show, it turned out to be her final concert performance. After being treated by kidney specialists in Europe and the United States, she seemed to be on her way to recuperation by the winter of 1974. Plans were made for her to premiere a new piece, "Hakam Alayna al-Hawa." Although she recorded the tune during a twelve hour session on March 13th, the scheduled concert was cancelled. On January 21, 1975, Kulthum suffered a kidney attack. She died two weeks later.

A biographical film, Umm Kulthum: A Voice Like Egypt was released in 1997. ~ Craig Harris, All Music Guide

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