Planet Pop Week 6: Katherine Brown k.r.brownleeds.ac.uk

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Planet PopWeek 6 Katherine Brown
k.r.brown_at_leeds.ac.uk

• The Artist
• Umm Kulthum (Egypt)

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Todays Lecture

• Study of the individual as a way into a
  music-culture
• The iconicity of the star (negotiation between
  audience and performer)
• Umm Kulthum, Voice of Egypt (c.1904-1975)
• HOW is it possible that fifty years in Arab
  societies. . . could be represented by the life
  and work of a woman?

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The individual in music studies

• PRO individual stars hugely important in many
  societies
• PRO Study of myth and legacy can tell us much
  about both music and culture
• CON stars (and individual non-stars) are by
  definition not representative
• CON can deviate into boring biography and worse,
  hagiography

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Umm Kulthum, First Lady of Arabic Song, Star of
the East
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Umm Kulthum c.1904-1975

• The most famous singer in the 20C Arab world
• Career 1910-73
• A village girl who grew up to become the
  cultural symbol of a nation

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Umm Kulthum c.1904-1975

• First to manipulate new technologies of radio,
  film, TV
• Celebrity with control over her own myth
• Iconic Egyptian, Arab, Muslim
• Ironic because she was a woman

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Women and music in Muslim societies

• Music is controversial in Muslim societies and
  forbidden in the most conservative
• Four categories halal (approved), mubah
  (neutral), makruh (disapproved), haram
  (forbidden)
• Art music usually disapproved
• BUT cultural elites usually sponsor art music
  with impunity ideas of nation
• Egypt liberal, cosmopolitan, cultured

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Women and music in Muslim societies

• The honour of the Muslim family and nation
  invested in purity of women
• Segregation of space public male, private
  female
• Respectable religious women may sing and
  dance in the privacy of their homes, for both
  women and close male relatives
• Public recitation of the Quran acceptable
• Art music and other public music-making
  traditionally unacceptable
• How did Umm Kulthum transcend these prohibitions
  and become the idolised, and fully respectable
  voice of Egypt?

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Umm Kulthums transcendence

• Carefully controlled, mythical biography
• Conservative, religious rural, started as
  Quranic reciter, fathers control of early
  career, single so no conflict with motherhood,
  late marriage to respectable doctor, modest dress
  onstage, ruthless control of public image
• National culture brilliance of her singing,
  mastery of classical music, focus on classical
  and Egyptian Arabic poetry. Collaboration with
  most innovative Arab composers

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Enta Omri (1964)

• Collaboration with Abdul Wahhab
• Most innovative of classical composers
• Modernist, synthesis of Arabic and Western
• Enta Omri 1964, first collaboration

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Enta Omri (1964)
Ragaaouni aeinaik el Ayam illi rahou Your eyes
took me back to my days that are gone Aalamouni
andam aala El-Madhi wi gerahou They taught me to
regret the past and its wounds.   Illi shouftouh
kabli ma tshoufak ainaih Whatever I saw before
my eyes saw you was a wasted life. Omri dhayea
yehsibouh izay aalaya? How could they consider
that part of my life?   Inta Omri illi ibtada
bnourak sabahouh With your light, the dawn of my
life started
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Umm Kulthums transcendence

• Nationalism represented herself as one of the
  people public roles, support for indigenous
  Arab culture, concerts to raise money for Egypt
  after 1967 war
• Sound recordings, radio disembodied voice allows
  for transcendence of women performers, making way
  for respectable entrance onto public stage. Huge
  fame nationwide through public broadcasting.

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Umm Kulthum, Egyptian icon

• Embodied everything the new middle-class patron
  wanted nationally recognised icon who was
• Conservative and pure
• Religious Muslim
• BOTH Arab high culture
• AND One of the people, rags to riches
• Egyptian nationalist
• Musical iconicity songs about love and longing
  embodied hopes and values of all Egyptians
  ecstasy of tarab

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