Patrick Bade
Divas of the Arab World

Patrick Bade | Divas of the Arab World | 08.07.21

- [Lauren] All right, Patrick, it’s three past. So I think that we can get started. And just a big welcome to everybody joining us today, and thank you so much for tuning in to “Divas of the Arab World”. Patrick, over to you.

Visuals displayed and audio played throughout the presentation.

• Thank you, Lauren. In the summer of 1942, German armies were approaching Stalingrad and coming very close, threateningly close to Alexandria. It was a real panic in the streets of Alexandria, as Rommel came very close indeed. And the war was really in the balance at this point. And there was perhaps one woman in the world who could have tipped that balance towards the Axis. And that was the Egyptian singer, Umm Kulthum, who you see on the screen. At this point, ‘cause most of the Arab world, was, you could say, under the heel of either the British or the French. And very resentful of this.

Already, there were big stirrings of independence movements. There was also suspicion and fear of the increasing number of Jewish refugees coming into the Middle East, coming into Palestine. And so there was a real danger that the Arab world could rise up against the British and French, and really, as I said, tip the balance towards the Axis. Suez Canal, of course, was a key element in and the oil fields of the Middle East. Now, Umm Kulthum had a kind of following and a kind of influence that no singer or no single artist has ever had in the Western world. And her influence, and her success went across national borders.

It was really the entire Arab world that followed her. The first Thursday of every month, over a period of 40 years, she sang on the radio and it was said that in large Arab cities that the streets emptied as people rushed home to listen to her on the radio. So the British were quite nervous about this, and they kept close tabs on her. They were worried either that she would fall into the hands of the Germans, that they could kidnap her, or that she might choose to go over to them, in the hope that the Germans would support independence movements in the Arab world. Now, it sometimes seems that in the Middle East, at this time, anyway, the musical worlds of the West and the Arabs were like ships passing in the night.

They didn’t really understand each other’s music. Or certainly Westerners, and Brits in particular, didn’t really understand Arab music. You’ve got Joyce Grenfell on the right hand side. She was entertaining troops along North Africa and in the Middle East at this time. And in the diary that she kept, she describes what she calls “a Muslim wedding.” And she doesn’t identify the singer, but it is very clearly Umm Kulthum. She describes her as a “mezzo-soprano costing 150 pounds a night, sang with a range of six notes for well on an hour.”

So, I mean, that just shows you really, the total incomprehension of most, even somebody a very intelligent and very musical woman like Joyce Grenfell, that she really can’t grasp what Umm Kulthum or Arab music is all about. I mean, cause the virtuosity is, I mean, I remember once, I think one of the most remarkable vocal performances I’ve ever heard was from an Arab taxi driver in Tunis. He drove me for half an hour, he was quite an elderly man, and he sang the same phrase repeatedly, for half an hour, each time differently. And I was just astonished by the incredible wealth of nous in his singing.

So Umm Kulthum, it’s not about range. She does sing within a very narrow range. But the other thing is the text. I love the sound of these Arab singers and I listen to Umm Kulthum, Asmahan, Line Monty quite often. But I’m very aware, of course I’m only getting half of it, maybe even less because the texts are so important. And Umm Kulthum, I’m told, that the the poetry of her songs is extraordinarily beautiful.

Now, I have a very close Arab friend, who’s probably listening in tonight, who has helped me to get into this world of Arab song. She’s a wonderful singer herself, and she will sometimes translate the words of songs for me. And sometimes I’m very surprised because just listening to the music, I will have had a very different impression of what the song is about. But, so here is Umm Kulthum, oh, to give you a little bit more background about her, she was born into really a peasant family in a village in Egypt in 1904. And they were very, very religious.

Her father was extremely religious, and so was she. And it was claimed that she learnt the whole of the Quran by heart and could recite the whole thing. So her career, the start to her career was a difficult one. Because there were great prejudices in the Arab world against women performers. And in fact, for the first years of her career, her father insisted that she dress in a boy’s clothes to make her less attractive. And she arrived in Cairo in the 1920s, and various poets and musicians were very impressed by her and wrote songs for her.

She appeared in several films, five films altogether. She wasn’t a beautiful woman. She was rather, I mean, I think this is probably quite a flattering photograph. She was rather a plain woman. So I’m going to play you an example of her singing, and regardless of whether you understand the words or not or what the song’s about, her voice has an extraordinary expressive and plaintive quality. And as somebody who appreciates the bel canto tradition, I also really, I hear an extraordinary virtuosity and flexibility in the use of the voice.

I remember the one and only time that I had a massage in a hammam in Tunis. It was a rather alarming experience, where I was sort of thrown around like a rag doll and trampled on, and kind of beaten up really, by a little hairy man. I didn’t really enjoy it very much at the time. But then afterwards, you have to lie still, wrapped in the sheet, to let your heartbeat come back to normal. And over the loudspeakers, they were playing this voice that I’m going to play to you.

And I remember at the time, it was almost like a dagger to the heart, the incredible beauty and expressiveness of her singing.

♪ Music Playing ♪

She had many flattering nicknames. She was called the Star of the East. She was called the Fourth Pyramid, the Voice of Egypt. And she really was a kind of goddess, not just in Egypt, but throughout the Arab world. There was a slightly wobbly moment when the monarchy was replaced by Nasser, because she had sung for King Farouk, but Nasser was perhaps her biggest admirer. And he would even arrange his speeches over the radio around her timetable on the radio.

He never wanted to clash with Umm Kulthum. She died in 1975 of kidney failure. And there were scenes of total mayhem and hysteria. It was claimed that 4 million people attended her funeral in Cairo. And so she really had become a total national icon. You can see this postage stamp with her face on it as though she were Queen of Egypt.

Now, her greatest rival at this time, during the Second World War was Asmahan, who could not have been more different. Asmahan was born into an aristocratic, actually even a princely, family of Druze. Her father was Syrian, her mother was Lebanese, and she was fabulously, jaw-droppingly, amazingly beautiful and sexy. And you know, every man who came across her was bewitched by her beauty, and her seductiveness. Also a wonderful singer, wonderful singer, with, I would say, a brighter, lighter voice than Umm Kulthum.

And actually not a singer who’s confined to such a narrow range. I mean, she could go, she could sing quite high. She could even do coloratura in the fashion of Western Opera. So here is a taste of the voice of Asmahan.

♪ Music Playing ♪

And she died at the age of 32 in very mysterious circumstances. But she packed a hell of a lot of action into her short life, she was married four times, twice to a Druze prince who was her cousin. Of course there was huge prejudice against an aristocratic Arab woman entering the entertainment business. So she was pretty tough. She was a very determined woman. The first time she married her cousin, she stipulated that, well condition, for marrying him, was that she’d never have to wear the traditional hijab. As I said, there’s a lot of mystery concerning her death. It seems that during the Second World War, she was a spy.

In fact, she was a double agent. She was working for the British and French, but on the understanding that her native Syria would be given independence. And of course, the French had absolutely no intention whatsoever of giving independence to Syria. And when this became clear to her, she turned towards the Germans, she thought that maybe they would have a better chance of getting independence if Germany won the war. So her death in 1944, she was actually halfway through shooting her second movie, which did come out.

They actually then incorporated her death into the story of the movie. And she was being driven by a chauffeur, she and a friend. And the chauffeur drove the car into a canal. She was locked in the back with her friend. They couldn’t get out. The chauffeur escaped and disappeared. And it was widely assumed that it was murder, but who murdered her? All sorts of different theories. I’d been told, with great assurance, by Arab friends, that she was murdered on the orders of Umm Kulthum. I think this is very, very unlikely. And I think the most likely explanation is that she was murdered on the orders of the British when they realised that she was putting out feelers towards the Germans.

I’m going to play you another excerpt of Asmahan. This is a record I absolutely adore. It’s so sexy and so exotic, actually, because it’s a tango, it’s an Arab tango. So it’s a really strange fusion of Latin American rhythms and Arabic inflexions, Oh, I seem to have put the wrong thing. Anyway, this is a poster for the first of her two movies. Now, after the death of Asmahan, the singer who came closest to being a rival and a successor was Leila Mourad. And like several of the singers I’m going to play you, like many successful female singers in the Arab world, she was of Jewish origin.

Her real name was Leila Zaki Mordechai. And, at this point anyway, up 'til the Second World War, and even for a little bit afterwards, up 'til 1948, it wasn’t really a problem for any of these singers to be Jewish in an Arab world. Though in the 1950s, she did actually come in for criticism, both from Jews and Arabs. And it was obviously a very tricky tightrope for her to walk. Now I’m moving on along the coast of North Africa to Tunisia. And this is Habiba Msika, again, she was Tunisian of Jewish origin and she was the most adored, most glamorous female performer in Tunisia in the 1920s.

She also died very young and also in very dramatic circumstances. She had quite a racy love life. She went to Paris with a lover. She met Picasso, she met Coco Chanel. And she was also not just a great singer, but a widely admired actress. She used to specialise in trouser roles. So she played Romeo in a Arab version of “Romeo and Juliet.” And here you can see her as L'Aiglon a play which, of course, was written for Sarah Bernhardt who you see on the right hand side. L'Aiglon, who is the son of Napoleon.

And her songs are pretty racy too. And I think you can get a flavour of that, even if you don’t understand the words.

♪ Music Playing ♪

She’s still very much a revered figure. Everybody knows about her and, of course, they know about her death. A jealous former lover crept into her house at night and poured petrol over her and set her alight. And she died from her burns. It was interesting. I heard this story from several people when I used to go to Tunisia in the 1990s. And each person always stressed, well, you know of course, this evil lover who murdered her was a Jew and of cause what they didn’t say, 'cause she was a Jew as well.

This is Zohra Al Fassiya. I know we have listeners who are related to her 'cause they contacted me after my talk on the Middle East. And she was the most admired and celebrated female singer in Morocco. Again, from a Jewish background. Morocco, probably amongst all the Arab countries, was one where Jews were very assimilated. And certainly until after the Second World War, her Jewish background was no impediment to her. She was a favourite of the King of Morocco. She sang at the court.

But I suppose that it was a sort of an ill wind blowing through the entire Arab world as far as Jews were concerned, you know, in the 1950s, and particularly I would say with the independence of Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and so on. So in 1962, she obviously felt it was safer for her to go to Israel, but it wasn’t really a happy end for her. At this point, I think in Israel, Israel was, I suppose, very, very dominated at that point by Jews of European background. And there was a certain prejudice, I think, against Sephardi Jews from the Arab world who came into Israel.

And she was not really appreciated. And she actually ended her life in neglect and poverty after her glorious earlier years in Morocco. But here, this is probably the most traditional piece I’m going to play you in this talk, 'cause it’s using the traditional Arab scale, which I think is also an impediment for a lot of Westerners listening to Arab music because it all sounds slightly out of tune to them because the intervals between the notes are different from the Western scales.

♪ Music Playing ♪

My next singer is Reinette L'Oranaise, who was born in 1918 in Oran, again, into a Jewish family in Algeria. And she suffered from smallpox at the age of two. And that left her blind. And so it was actually her mother who really encouraged her to learn the oud and to learn how to sing so that she would have a means of supporting herself. And she, in fact, cause L'Oranaise just means the girl from Oran.

But she took that name after her teacher and mentor, a man called Saoud l'Oranais. And he developed her talent. And in 1938, he took her to Paris he set up a club where Arab music was performed. And that was very successful. But wisely, when war broke out, she returned to Algeria. He didn’t, and of course he was rounded up by the Nazis and he died in a concentration camp. Her career thrived until Algerian independence.

So, after that, of course many Jews in Algeria had really sided with the French. They didn’t really want independence. They were worried about what independence would mean for them. So she left Algeria and she went to Paris and she earned a very modest living, singing at weddings and Bar Mitzvahs until, in the 1980s, when she was in her sixties, there was this great revival of interest in, inverted commas, “World Music”. And she was rediscovered and she made several CDs at the time, that were very, very successful.

And this is one, this is an excerpt from one of her late CDs.

♪ Music Playing ♪

This is Line Monty, who’s, again, Algerian, very glamorous. I think of her as actually being a kind of Arab Édith Piaf. There’s a certain similarity in the timbre of the voice. She’s that much younger. So, in fact, although she began her career in Algeria, the bulk of her career was in France. Again, of course, of Jewish origin. And I’m going to play you two excerpts.

She’s a singer I absolutely adore and I listen to very often. I find the timbre of her voice so expressive and so seductive. And she’s one of those singers who goes backwards and forwards between Arabic and French. And some of you who who saw me, my half lecture last night, will have noticed that I’ve had a haircut today. And I had my hair cut at a Algerian barber at Finsbury Park, and I was very amused while I was sitting there to listen to the conversation, which was going backwards and forwards between Arabic and French, often in the same sentence.

There’ll be some Arab words and some French words. So this is a song where she’s singing about the loss of her homeland. She starts off with a wonderful kind of Arab wailing, Arab melisma. And then she moves into French and she talks about her guitar and her homeland. I mean, it’s a very Jewish thing. I think that loss, that sense of loss, I suppose Jews have had it since the Ancient world. And, it was a loss that was repeated throughout the Arab world, with Arab Jews having to leave or being driven out of many Arab countries.

♪ Music Playing ♪

For me, it’s an incredible sadness that this wonderful mixture of cultures that you got in Arab cities up 'til the 1940s has been lost. That Judeo-Arabic culture was such a rich and wonderful one. And I think the most exciting, most interesting places in history have been where, you know, different cultures come together and those cities like say Salonika or you know, where you had Muslims, Christians, and Jews living together or you know mediaeval Spain or whatever.

These were wonderfully rich periods. And I did get a sense of it when I used to go to Tunis, I mean Tunis, in the 19th century and in the early 1900s was a third Jewish, it was a very important Jewish centre, it’s wonderfully described, I’ve mentioned this before, by , who went on a trip to Tunis and wrote a short book about it and the Jewish culture of Tunis. And, as with other Arab countries, the vast majority of Jews left after independence. When I was there in the nineties, it was estimated there were only about a hundred Jews left in Tunisia. They had this vast amazing synagogue in the city.

Most of the Tunisian Jews were in Tunis itself. And many of them would meet, on a big cafe on the Avenue Bourguiba, the Café de Paris, in the early evening, they had what the Germans would call their . They’d sit together and often I would go and sit with them and have very interesting conversations with them. And there’s one couple in particular who really I became very friendly with and they were just adorable. Very sweet couple. They were in their eighties. And the husband said to me, and I think he, I sort of believe it, he said he’d never, he was very happy in Tunisia.

His children had gone off to Israel and to France, but he felt at home there. And he said he had never encountered any kind of prejudice and he was such a sort of radiant person. He was one of those people who just gave off incredible good humour, positiveness. So, and I’m sure he must have encountered prejudice and hostility, but I think it would’ve bounced off him because he was just that kind of a person.

And his wife, I’ll never forget sitting with his wife. And she was asking me about where I came from and she said to me, “Do you have Jews in England?” And I said, “Yes we do.” And she said, “What are they like?” And I said, “What do you mean, what are they like?” And she said, “Well, are they Europeans?” And I said, “Well, of course they’re Europeans.” And she said, , “Not like us. No, no, we are Arabs.” She was very assertive that she was Jewish, but she was an Arab. And she sang a little Arab song to me to prove this.

And then she said to me that, “Of course we are very open to other cultures.” And so she sang me a French song and then she told me that as a girl, she’d been taught by Italian nuns and to prove this point, she sang the fascist hymn “Giovinezza”, which I suppose must have been current when she was a girl between the wars. I thought this was completely bizarre. An elderly Jewish woman sitting in an Arab cafe singing me an Italian fascist hymn. Anyway, this is leading up to my next excerpt, which is again Line Monty.

And this is a very popular song in the Arab world, “Ya Oummi Ya Oummi”. It’s the exact equivalent of “My Yiddishe Momme”. And you’ll hear her the way, the words are almost identical, you know? About how I owe my mother everything. And she was so wonderful and she made all these sacrifices and I miss her. And she’s the most important person in my life.

So here is Line Monty singing “Ya Oummi”. My mommy.

♪ Music Playing ♪

Now that song, for me, it reminds me how alike Arabs and Jews are in many ways, what they have in common. The reverence for the mother. This matriarchal figure is really central to both cultures. And I can’t resist playing you this French version of “My Yiddishe Momme” sung by Renée Lebas, just to make that comparison and that point.

♪ Music Playing ♪

Right, I hope there’s not a dry eye amongst the audience after that. And I just want to finish with a comment about Arab singers singing Western music or Western classical music. 'Cause there was an opera culture in the Arab world, from Cairo, right way along to Tangier, there were Western opera houses. You can see Cairo, top left. Algiers, top right. Oran, bottom left and Tunis, bottom right. Gorgeous Belle Époque opera houses. But these were, I suppose, they were symbols of Western dominance, of imperialism. Only a tiny elite of Arabs would’ve gone to these. I think the audiences would’ve been primarily the European settlers in these countries. And I can only think of two Arab singers who really made important careers in the world of Western opera. On the left, was a very handsome baritone, Algerian baritone, Dinh Gilly, who was probably, he’s probably more famous as being the lover of the great Czech soprano, Emmy Destinn. And his nickname in the opera world was La Forza del Destino. And on the right hand side is the exquisite Algerian singer Leïla Ben Sedira. And since I’ve been sort of singing the praises of cultural mixes, this is really a cultural mix that I’m going to finish with. Here is an Algerian singer singing a song by a Berlin Jewish composer, Richard Werner Heymann for a film, it’s a song about Vienna and she’s singing it in French.

♪ Music Playing ♪

Right? Well, let’s see, I think we do have some questions or comments.

Q&A and Comments

“Please write or spell her name.” Umm Kulthum There is, you can spell it any way you want. And if you google just U-M or U-M-M, you’ll find numerous different ways in European letters of spelling her name.

“Please explain her name.” Mother of, I’m not sure I can answer that. What is her name? Umm Kulthum. People all asking the same question. Or Umm Kulthum. And sometimes with an O instead of a U as well, right.

“Music sounds canto.” Well I suppose, they’re very often these singers you would find religious melody, or there’s a two-way traffic here, really, between songs that started off as secular and became religious or the other way around.

This is Abigail, here. Saying that she had an Ashkenazi friend who was very excited to hear Umm Kulthum in New York.

Q: “What instrument is that, with the second singer?” A: I can’t tell you. That might have been an oud, I suppose.

Yes, her death. Yes, like that terrible story with Edward Kennedy except that, you know, that was an accident, however badly he behaved. But I don’t think that Asmahan’s death was.

“Oh, Leila Mourad, my dad’s cousin, was also in the movies.” Yes, she was. I’m not sure that she did convert to Islam. Apparently in her personal, you know, her identification papers, she still identified herself as a Jew.

Q: “How did the Tunisian performer die?” A: She was burned to death by a lover, who doused her in petrol and set her alight.

I’m not sure I can help you about the instrument. Yes, absolutely. Thank you, James Levy, I should have said that. Asmahan’s brother had a very long career, he was the top male musical star in the Arab world. Farid al-Atrash. Very charming, very debonair. He’s a kind of, you know, I don’t know Fred Estaire really of the Arab movies.

Q: “What was the theme of most songs?” A: Well, you know, there’s love, separation. Although I remember my friend Radha, I mean there was a song I particularly liked by Asmahan and I thought it must be a love song. And I asked her what it was about and actually it was, it was a kind of war song, so I’d really got that one wrong.

“Line Monty borrows something from the cantorial art at the time.” I think you’re probably right. And she does have a wonderful voice and incredible vocal control. Oh, that’s interesting. I’d love to get hold of that. Salim Halali also sang “My Yiddishe momme” in Arabic.

Q: “Is Israeli music the beneficiary of the fusion of Sephardi music that you’ve shown us today with Ashkenazi influence?” A: I don’t know enough about it. I’d like to know a lot more. We need to get somebody else in to talk about that. But I know, I should have put in, Fairuz. She’s the only one of these singers I actually heard live when she sang once in London. Also wonderful singer. It’s just that when I was putting together this, I couldn’t, I know I have a CD of Fairuz somewhere or other. I just couldn’t lay my hands on it.

“"Yiddish momme” beats Eddie Fisher by miles.“ I adore that version of it. She also had a very interesting story, Renée Lebas, she escaped into Switzerland during the war and broadcast back to France from Switzerland during the occupation.

Q: "How about the contemporary Egyptian soprano Fatima Said today, who sings at La Scala and has sung at Wigmore Hall?” A: Yes, I’m sure, there must be plenty of good Arab singers today. I was just really talking about the early 20th century.

This is Robin, saying he remembered Fairuz from Beirut, after the June War. “Would there have been any divas there who did not have…” Yes, yes, there certainly have, but it is surprising, the percentage who did have a Jewish background. And I think that is, and some had a Christian background as well. And I think it’s probably because that it was, they were more open to having a career in the performing arts.

Q: “These songs resemble my idea of Israeli songs and cantorial songs. Is it the scale?” A: Yes, it probably is the scale.

Thank you for saying, your kind compliment. I’m very aware that I’m not actually, I’m an enthusiast about these singers. I’m not really that knowledgeable, for the simple reason, of course, that I don’t speak Arabic.

“Current diva Fatima Said.” “Umm means mother in Arabic.” Yes, I suppose it’s, yeah, Umm, that is part of her image, I suppose, with Umm Kulthum, she was like almost the mother of the nation.

“Did you say the…” No, I didn’t, I don’t think. Yes, I am familiar with Fairuz. Wonderful, wonderful singer. Although the time I heard her, I didn’t really enjoy her because she was singing Christmas carols and that wasn’t really her forte I would say.

“Umm Kulthum was…” I don’t know if you can say she was anti-Jewish. She was certainly anti-Israeli. Well she was very, very patriotic, shall we say. But I don’t know if you could say that she was anti-Jewish.

The male singer, his name is, it’s not, don’t confuse him with Benjamino Gigli, no, the male singer was Dinh Gilly. It’s spelt different. It’s G-I-L-L-Y.

“Kulthum means daughter of the prophet,” I’m told. “This instrument is the sitar orientale, that my father played,” that’s Claire Martis telling me this.

Q: “Did Umm Kulthum favour the Nazis?” A: She was a very discreet woman. I don’t know if that’s known that she did favour them. I mean, she could, you know, I could imagine, well she didn’t go over to the other side, so that’s all you can say.

Good. I think that’s, “Were there any male…” Oh yes, of course there are wonderful, wonderful male singers. Farid al-Atrash being one that comes to mind, but oh, David saying he prefers Eddie Fisher. Well, It’s a matter of taste, isn’t it?

So I think that’s it for today. Thank you for your patience and bearing with me. And I’ll be back on more familiar ground on Wednesday, talking about collecting art deco prints in Paris.

• [Lauren] Thank you so much, Patrick. This was wonderful. And thank you to everybody for joining us today. Bye.

• Buh-bye.