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New nightingales of the Nile: popular music in Egypt since the 1970s1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Virginia Danielson
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Extract

‘Why buy all those?!’ a street vendor in Cairo asked as I picked out photographs of young singing stars he had for sale. ‘Take more of these,’ he suggested, proffering stills from the 1950s films of Abd al-Ḥalīm Hāfiẓ and photos of Muhammad Abd al-Wahhāb and Umm Kulthūm. ‘Those were really good days … the old singers were really good singers. There's nothing like that now. Umm Kulthūm, Abd al-Ḥalīm, they're all gone and the rest are kalām fāḍī [literally ‘empty talk’, indicating something nonsensical or of little value].’ The vendor's opinions resonate among Egyptians. When asked about music in Egypt now, listeners frequently respond by saying: ‘There are no good voices these days’; ‘The singers are all alike – you can't tell them apart’; ‘After Umm Kulthūm, Abd al-Ḥalīm, Farīd and Abd al-Wahhāb died, there was no one’.

Type
Articles
Information
Popular Music , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , October 1996 , pp. 299 - 312
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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