Oum Kalthoum, Om Kolthom, Om Kalsoum, Omm Kalsoum, Omme Kolsoum, Oom Koolsum, Oum Kalthoum, Oum Kalthum, Oum Kalsoum, Oum Kaltsoum, Oum Kolthoum, Oum Koulsoum, Oum Kulthum, Oum Kulthume, Um Kalthoum,

I've never seen the movie clip for this song before. "Ha Ablou Bokra," one of my favorite relatively shorter songs from her career:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBSSnRQw3v0

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/10/AR2008081001801_pf.html

life at the Uum Kulthum cafe in Iraq

Devotees of the Sad, Beautiful Voice of Umm Kulthum

By Andrea Bruce
Washington Post Staff Photographer
Monday, August 11, 2008; A11

The cafe's dust-streaked sign is lost amid the chaos of old Baghdad. But a painted silhouette of a woman hangs above the entrance, signaling the way to an unlighted, soot-covered hallway stacked with broken generators.

Through the passage, street sounds fade and a woman's voice becomes clear. A reel-to-reel tape player is spinning the songs of the Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum. More than 30 years after her death, she is still probably the best-known and most beloved singer in the Middle East.

Several regulars -- well-dressed men who appear to be in their 50s -- sit on benches in the multitiered room known as the Umm Kulthum Cafe. They sip tea as they listen.

"Her voice is sweet," says Waheed A. Fatia, 61, who claims to have had an Umm Kulthum obsession since he was 10. "She has layers, a rich soprano. And she performs improvised, like American jazz."

Hookah pipes bubble, the fragrant smoke competing with the harsh, unfiltered cigarette smoke from the other side of the room, where men flip dominoes or softly move a rook into check. They play from midmorning to early evening, every day, to the sad, beautiful voice of Umm Kulthum. The cafe plays nothing else.

"No one obeys laws now, or has pride," Waheed says. "No security. No stability. But through all of this," he adds, looking around the cafe, "this is the same."

Less than a minute later, four young men wearing soccer jerseys and T-shirts emerge from the hallway and approach the cafe manager. They are members of the Sons of Iraq, former insurgents now allied with U.S. forces, here to collect the monthly "protection" fee of 15,000 Iraqi dinars -- about $12.

"This used to be a good street. With a bus stop, nightlife," says Jehad el-Obeiedi, 70, a retired movie director. "They called it 'the city of singing.' There was a famous nightclub next door."

From age-blackened paintings and framed black-and-white photos, Umm Kulthum looks down over her fans from every wall of the cafe while they hum her songs.

"We listen to her every day," Obeiedi says, "as if listening to it for the first time."

Washington Post photographer Andrea Bruce is documenting the lives of people in Iraq in a feature, Unseen Iraq, appearing regularly in the World pages. For a photo gallery and previous columns, visit http://blog.washingtonpost.com/unseen-iraq.

Still the best.

I think there might be a tribute to her coming up as part of the February and March Arabic Music events coming to the Kennedy Center in DC

Oum Kalthoum rehearsing a song she never formally recorded or publically performed:

rockist can you send something our way? post a link on yousendit perhaps? I'm very interested to hear some more of her if possible.

My access to the internet is kind of limited at the moment (no dsl at home), so if I do it, it won't be real soon..

Also they are using a two year old version of Explorer in the library here making it hard for me to proof my posts, thanks to the way they display. I think I need to ask about updating that again.

Moka check your e-mail (& continue checking).

Okay I'm already finished. I forgot just how easy everything has become. (Connection speeds here are usually really slow though, but that didn't seem to have an impact in this case.)

There's some nice ol black & white footage of her with Youssou N'Dour talking about growing up listening to her, in the new Youssou N''Dour movie doc I recently saw that focussed on the making and promotion of his Egypt album.

this is prob my favorite thread title ever

How is it possible that there is footage of her talking to Youssou N'Dour? She died in 1975. But now on checking Youssou N'Dour's bio I see that he started singing when he was 12 and was already a big hit in the early 70s, so I suppose it's not impossible. I will have to look for this.

No, that's not what I meant-- I left out a comma and phrased that poorly. Youssou is shown in the documentary talking about Oum and the movie cuts away to a black and white film clip of Oum. Youssou talks about listening to Oum on the radio as a kid.

noone but rockist scientist is likely to care, but laure daccache died in 2005. i hadn't known.

http://www.jetsetmagazine.net/culture/revue,presse/laure-daccache-une-figure-mythique-de-la-belle-epoque.21.92.html

Actually, I put that on this thread:

Arabic music (not elsewhere classified)

You must have missed it.

And by the way, this guy has an amazing youtube channel:

http://www.youtube.com/user/theconsultantgary

holy shit. wish i could read arabic so i know what the different videos are!

I finally bought Ansak and it turns out that (1) it's great (so far) and (2) I already know the basic outline of the song from a George Wassouf Reader's Digest condensed version. It's got this one little hook that I have always loved. I think I need to rate Baligh Hamdi a little more highly than I have lately. (On the other hand, I think he probably ended up writing too much and maybe taking too many drugs. But with Oum Kalthoum, anyone doing compositions for her gets filtered through a serious quality control mechanism.)

The volume is a little low on this clip, but it's worth it for the crazy audience:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eRJrzqAVtw

(Once again, I wish my mom had lived long enough for me to get her into Oum Kalthoum. I know she would have loved her.)

Give me my freedom, set free my hands!
--Al-Atkal

(errata: Al-Atlal)

You cannot get what you want in this world by wishing; you must take it by force
--"Salû Qalbî"

I think what comes across the most in this interview is simply her control, especially her control of her image. She definitely doesn't seem like the easiest interviewee:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzhPQBuLER4

This slays:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7v1FJbKrT7Q

I think an excerpt from this is included in the documentary A Voice Like Egypt.

I think I don't have a recording of this song either.

"I put on music: Little Miss Train, a collaboration, Van Morrison duetting with Coirsa Yakov, the Besz Umm Kalsoum as he was called, on his 1987 tour."--from The City & the City, by China Mieville.

Spotify seems to have massively upgraded their Oum Kalthoum holdings, or at least the way they are presented. Hopefully they've caught some of the glitchy files as well. But at a glance it seems like there are more songs available now. If not, they are at least better organized.

Here's the live recording of Hazihi Leylati, which is inexplicably difficult to find:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Sn-dcPjFs4

This is still probably my favorite Abdel Wahab songs sung by Oum Kalthoum.

Actually, this isn't even the same live version I have on cassette. Of course!

Less playful and inspired.

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2013/02/islamists-drape-niqab-over-offensive-statue-of-famous-egyptian-singer/

Let the fundamentalist Islamists, or whatever they should be called, attempt to ban Umm Kulthum's music in Egypt, and we'll see how far they got. That is laugh out loud funny.

(That brief article needs some fact checking. I'm pretty sure Umm Kulthum did not appear in dozens of movies. Closer to a total of a half dozen. I wouldn't say she did anything to integrate western singing approaches with Arab ones either. Asmahan did more of that, during her brief career. Of course, many of Umm Kulthum's composers did integrate some aspects of western music, and she performed that music. But in terms of vocal technique, I think she was pretty purely within Arab tradition.)

I'm starting to think that those who claim the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has been compromised and brought into power by the west are correct. Anyway, I'd be very surprised if there is a popular majority in Egypt in favor of this sort of extremism, even despite enormous frustration.

FWIW: 'CIA favors Brotherhood as Egypt dictatorship benefits US'

I don't remember exactly what he says here, but I find Engdahl generally comes well armed with facts. Of course, that doesn't mean he's right. (And there are facts and then there are "facts.")

I almost hope they will ban Umm Kulthum's music, because that would be a really quick way for the takfiris to end up with their throats slit overnight.

I really need to listen to more of this, enjoyed it greatly last time I checked her out.

Not really aware in enough depth to comment on the news article...

After the Revolution, they almost banned her for her close ties to the monarchy but Nasser said, "Are you crazy?! Do you want Egypt to turn against us?"

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Okay, I'm taking a new approach to creating a semi-comprehensive Oum Kalthoum playlist on Spotify. This could take a couple months. It depends how quickly I can get through all these early recordings that still sound like the Ottoman Empire to me (because I want to listen to every track I include, if only for audio issues). Hopefully, more to come.

Did anybody hear about this?

http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2013/nov/25/american-jennifer-grout-arabs-got-talent-umm-kulthum

Thanks. I hadn't seen this, and she is an impressive singer, to me.

Baeed Anak:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wY-E3w-nIB4

And here she is singing an Asmahan song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQ4QFqTeFw8

Just a footnote, but an interesting one.

Thanks for all of this-- the Jennifer Grout stuff via Michael and your Spotify work

The Asmahan cover makes things more complicated since Asmahan herself borrowed from European classical vocal technique (at least partly self taught I think).

And despite a career cut short by an early death, Asmahan is one singer who actually deservers to be mentioned in the same breath as Oum Kalthoum.

There is now a crater on the planet Mercury named for her. https://carnegiescience.edu/news/mercury-crater-naming-contest-winners-announced

Yay!

Sorry I missed that message from the person with the Nagat connection. Definitely noteworthy.

Here is a late performance of Robaeyat el Khayam, at a much slower tempo than the more familiar earlier recording. At first I didn't care for that so much, but over time this realization goes to a lot of unique places:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URpJBt2kGYg

It does take a little while to get to the first passage with an intense tarab feel (at least in my listening), but it's worth it.

I'd say it starts to get more intense a little before the 20 minute mark.

This is closer to the style of her 40s and 50s performances than maybe any of her live recording I've heard from the 60's.

The kanunist does really crazy runs like I don't think I've ever heard in an Oum Kalthoum song. Would be overkill on a regular basis, but the novelty of it is enjoyable here.