Oum Kalthoum - The Enduring Light of Arabic Music’s Brightest Star

Words by Dalia Al-Dujaili, edited by Evar Hussayni

If there’s one thing that Middle Eastern people love more than hummus, or fighting over the bill, it’s Oum Kalthoum.

One afternoon, in the kitchen with my Iraqi mum and Egyptian dad, I started playing Enta Omri, her most prolific song; as if bewitched, they both closed their eyes, started to sway from side to side (somewhat ominously), and sang along to every word.

The almost deific singer seems lightyears away from any other musical sensation in recent history, somewhat so due to her fiercely guarded private life, but mostly because of her god-like powers to cast spells over audiences, lulling them into a Midsummer Night’s Dream-trance - but with less fairies and more chai.

Oum Kalthoum’s untouchable status is not without grounding, and her notability is one that is shared globally, not just sustained within the MENA region. She’s been noted as a favourite of Mick Jagger, praised by Bob Dylan, and cited as an influence on Led Zeppelin, demonstrating that her legendary musical status reached all corners of the world. However, Oum Kalthoum pointedly made minimal effort to indulge western audiences as she did with the people of Egypt mostly, but the wider Middle Eastern-North African region too. So much so that the only performance she ever gave outside of the Middle East was in Paris (a good choice if you’re going to be limited). It was after this Paris concert that she gave one of her many infamous interviews; a master of deviation, today’s celebrities would want to take note of the ways she dodges personal questions. It is in moments like this, glimpses into Oum Kalthoum the woman, rather than Oum Kalthoum the unknowable mega-star, we begin to see within her the simple human joy of pleasing her audience with devastatingly emotional performance.

Once she had reached idolatry status, her vocal abilities superseded music and Oum Kalthoum quickly became a nationalist image in Egypt and the MENA region. Arguably, this came at the cost of her humanisation. In her country’s eyes, she was perhaps their Virgin Queen; non-conformist to the expectations of her gender so that she transcended above the necessity to place her womanhood into a box of either wife, daughter, or “whore”. A strong supporter of Pan-Arabism, she was also vital in the region’s unification; sure, Arabs might disagree on a few things, but adoration for Oum Kalthoum is never up for debate. But to what extent can we cast such monstrously overwhelming expectations over a single woman?

Interested in the construction of Kalthoum’s public image and political affiliations, I had the pleasure of picking the brains of two others in my quest to learn more about the singer-songwriter. Speaking to Sally from Pride of Arabia, and Lina, a writer and seeming expert on the topic, they explained that what made Oum Kalthoum so interesting was the many ways in which her life was non-normative, yet she didn’t get punished for this in the way that other female celebrities did at the time, and still do today (to the point where Taylor Swift’s written a song about the issue).

Lina explains to me that it seems she was able to overrule prejudicial sentiments by reaching a certain level of “power and respect that makes you immune”. Perhaps the most apparent way in which she achieved this was by aligning herself with Gamal Abdel Nasser, the second president of Egypt and undoubtedly one the most prominent names in Middle Eastern political history. It was this strong political affiliation that led to such powers as being the only singer of the region who was able to choose her composer, not the other way around as per the norm.

The singer came from a particularly humble childhood. December 31st, 1898; the turn of the century. The daughter of a religious leader, Fatima Ibrahim is born into an Egyptian village perched on the Nile Delta, Tammay al Zahariyya. As soon as the strength of her voice becomes manifest, her father dresses her as a Bedouin boy in order to sing around villages and on stages. Not before long, Fatima would be whisked off to Cairo and become known as Oum Kalthoum, mixing and mingling with the elites of Egypt’s Golden Age. Perhaps it is this modest upbringing that stops her from being tempted into Cairo’s seductive “riotous underworld of parties and nightlife”, presenting its own version of the roaring 20’s which “rival[led] ... Berlin, Paris, or New York”. It is here, in the bohemian bustle of Egypt’s capital, she meets Ahmed Rami, the Sorbonne educated poet and scholar who would go on to write 137 songs for her, culminating in a close life-long bond which was to become the gateway of speculation into her private life.

Oum Kalthoum’s grounding in conservative culture played into notions of respectability politics of the time, and as Lina explains to me, no performance aspect was lyrically or physically playing into sexual performermativity. The singer even took her stage name from the daughter of Prophet Muhammad. In her acting roles also, she was never the object of desire; instead, Oum Kalthoum’s image became synonymous with deep feelings of love, loss, yearning and identity - easily harnessed among the Arabic audiences where there are over 30 words to connote the word “love”, and her Egyptian audience which was seeing a period of both political turmoil and exuberant national pride.

In 1948, Nasser was defeated by Israeli Defense Forces at Al-Faluja. As a way of showing her remorse, she invited the Army battalion in its entirety to her home in Cairo, a political stance so vehemently aligned to her country it’s almost unimaginable by today’s standards of political neutrality, even frowned upon. According to Virginia Danielson, author of Umm Kulthum: The Voice of Egypt (English spelling of the singer’s name varies), Government officials would even push their political engagements back in order to attend her Thursday-night concerts. And in 1975, her funeral procession attracted more people than the memorial for Abdel Nasser.

It becomes clear, then, why Lina heatedly states that “She’s not the Madonna of something” - there is no framework that you can use to explain to Western audiences what she meant to Egyptians. The relationship to music is markedly different for Arabs to that of Westerners, as Arabic music often draws heavily on religious scriptures and ecstatic divine sentiments, likening music to a form of devotional prayer. A single song for Oum Kalthoum could last up to two - yes, two - hours. The image of Madonna’s coffin being carried by thousands of Americans, from government officials to beggars, a mile down Hollywood Boulevard is rather unimaginable. A similar scene was what took place on February 5th for the Nightingale’s funeral procession from Tahrir Square to Ghana Sharkos Mosque, detailed in The New York Times where she is described as “the most famous woman of Egypt since Cleopatra”.

Transfixing them into a shahwah, meaning climax or physical ecstasy, was simply her voice rather than sexuality. “In a sense”, Lina theorises, “the state of ecstasy was brought about purely by her voice, because most Egyptians were listening to her on the radio”, which was played throughout the streets and in the qahwa’s (coffee houses) which crowded the city. If eyes are the windows to the soul, she made sure her soul kept hidden behind her famous black glasses, and gave away emotions to others only through her voice when she chose to sing. Therefore, she doesn't need a body or any sexual element - a disembodied source of adoration and devotion, she became apotheosised.