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,

Oum Kalthoum in Iraq, 1932. (That's what the website said anyway.)

Oum Kalthoum's villa.

BOOM, the GLASSES.

Thanks

"The greatest ever singer in the world"--Rabih Abou Khalil (quoted in Songlines, Jan/Feb 2006).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtWvmD9A2RA

The beginning of "Baid Anak" is now up on youtube. (There are other parts up too. I haven't checked to see if it is a complete concert. The CD copy of this is quite long, and even it, I think, leaves off a portion of the instrumental intro. here, though I haven't listened for a while, so I'm not positive.) This opening passage is one of my favorite Oum Kalthoum performances (and it's from relatively late in her career). Notice how she totally works off the one possibly overzealous audience member who calls out (around 4:26ish) and just takes everything deeper. This is absolute must-see if you are remotely interested in Oum Kalthoum:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kl0g6dXIsqQ

Performing "Al Atlal" in Paris:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dy_24rwXlKA

Another "Al Atlal"!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLmDUk4g7xg

(This was something she performed very heavily in her international touring at one point in the 60s. Not like I was there, alas.)

This is pretty amazing (one-hand oud solo version of "Inta Omri"):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRvcIwKL2fI

Interesting. This Kuwaiti audience behaves more like a western audience than maybe any other audience I've seen/heard in an Oum Kalthoum live recording.

another victim of ilx2 thread title truncation

Yes, it's sad. What is it with people reviving my old threads today? (Not complaining, it's just weird.)

If only ILX could do Arabic script - then we would only need one version of her name.

Hey Rockist Scientist or someone, can you date/rate these two new eMusic acquisitions....?

http://www.emusic.com/album/Oum-Kalthoum-Oz-Kourini-MP3-Download/11174931.html

http://www.emusic.com/album/Oum-Kalthoum-Oud-Kourini-MP3-Download/11174968.html

or daterape

I think I have a copy of this first one, but I will have to check and get back to you once I'm at home.

These are good:

http://www.emusic.com/album/Oum-Kalthoum-Oum-Kalsoum-Arabian-Master-MP3-Download/10978902.html

I'm checking out Ozkourini now. I think I picked this up in one of the last batches of Oum Kalthoum CDs I bought, which I haven't listened to all that much. This didn't really stand out for me, but sometimes it takes me a while to get into particular recordings by the subject of this thread. There are some fine solo violin passages so far.

There was just a big "ALLAH!" from the audience which I didn't see coming, which means I'm not quite clicking with it. Usually when I really click with one of these performances, I know when the audience is about to flip out.

It's very dark and brooding (presumably, romantically), even by the standards of her repertoire.

The pace is finally picking up somewhat, but I'd have to say this is not something I'd recommend to someone who hasn't heard a bunch of her other music already.

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.