Umm Kulthum began singing hymns dressed as a boy and became Egypt's Fourth Pyramid
In rural Egypt a century ago, girls were not supposed to sing in public, so Fatima el-Beltagi's father dressed her in boys' clothes when she performed hymns alongside him. As Umm Kulthum she became the Arab world's defining voice, and more than 4 million people filled Cairo for her funeral.
She was born on 4 May 1904 in Tamay al-Zahayra, a village in Egypt's Dakahlia Governorate. Her first stage was religious music, sung beside her father, with the disguise keeping village disapproval at bay. In the early 1920s she moved to Cairo, and there her career took off. She worked with the poet Ahmed Rami and a string of leading composers, among them Mohamed El Qasabgi, Riad El Sunbati and, later, Mohammed Abdel Wahab and Baligh Hamdi.
Her instrument was a commanding contralto, and her speciality was the long song: pieces of great musical and poetic complexity that could stretch across an evening, alongside hymns and classical Arabic verse. Over five decades, from the 1920s to the 1970s, she performed hundreds of songs that are still loved, such as Inta Omri, Al Atlal and Alf Laila wa Laila, as well as a setting of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. She also acted in six films, including Weddad in 1936 and Sallama in 1945.
Audiences heard in her something rooted in the countryside and in classical tradition, and she used that standing to champion Egyptian identity. After 1967 she toured Arab and European cities giving benefit concerts for her country, and President Anwar Sadat later thanked her in a letter. Admirers called her the Planet of the East and the Voice of Egypt.
She died on 3 February 1975. Her Cairo funeral was the largest gathering in Egyptian history and one of the biggest funerals anywhere. In 2023 Rolling Stone placed her 61st among the 200 greatest singers of all time, and a museum in Cairo displays her personal belongings.
Source: Umm Kulthum
