Umm Kylthum (1904-1975) Star of the East contralto

Umm Kylthum and a B was an Egyptian singer, songwriter and film actress. She was active from the 1920s to the 1970s. In her native Egypt she is a national icon and has dubbed as The Voice of Egypt and Egypt’s** Fourth Pyramid.

She was the daughter of an imam who performed religious songs at local weddings. Having heard her father practising one day she asked if she could join his small, all male group. She stood in when her brother fell ill before a public performance.
Word soon spread about her enchanting voice and she received invites from near by villages- walking miles to reach the venue.

Her early concerts were controversial - some members of the community disapproved of gatherings for entertainment. Her father, for her safety and reputation, suggested she wore a boy’s coat and a Bedouin headscarf.

In the 1930s she moved to cosmopolitan Cairo where her reputation grew and grew.

Umm had a very strong contralto voice, the lowest female voice, with a range of over 7 octaves, and she performed without a microphone.

Her concerts lasted for hours. Audiences regularly requested encores of her favourite lines- she was known to improvise and never sang the same line exactly the same - she might change the scale or the emphasis !

For 40 years she broadcast a live concert on the last Thursday in the month.

She recorded over 300 songs over her 60 year career. One of her best songs Enta Omn has been covered and reinterpreted numerous times.

Umm embodied pan-Arab unity and her songs of love, longing and loss are still played in taxis, radios and cafes across the Arab world today.

Sources
Wikipedia
*RISE: Extraordinary Women of Colour Who Changed the World * by Maliha Abidi