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The 1920s were a period of rapid transition in urban Egyptian music, partially as a result of the proliferation of sound recording during the previous decade. The voices of the greatest singers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries who performed for an elite audience of connoisseurs reached larger audiences through the discs they made and influenced a new generation of aspiring singers. Among that new generation were, significantly, women who for the first time, became celebrities in their own right, earning followers who read about them in magazines, heard them on the radio, and saw them at cabarets, theaters, and nightclubs, despite the disreputable baggage that being both female and a stage performer carried. Parallel to the female singers of jazz in the U.S. in the ‘20s (Mamie Smith, Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Annette Hanshaw, Ruth Etting, etc.), some of those women in Cairo played a significant part in the development of their country’s national music. Anyone with even a glancing knowledge of the music of the Arab world knows the name Umm Kulthum, who was part of that wave of performers born at the end of the 19th century and who exemplified that shift as much as anyone.
Meanwhile, the record labels continued to record the surviving great male singers born in the 1870s-80s while a new generation influenced by composer-singer Sayyid Darwish (b. 1892; d. 1923 ) transformed popular music. Recording technology shifted from the old, acoustical method to the electrical recording (utilizing microphones) around 1927, discs were increasingly issued to the Arab diaspora in the Americas, the first silent movies were produced in Cairo around 1922, American sound films were shown by early 1928. By 1932 when sound films began to be produced in Egypt and the first Cairo Arab Music Congress took place, the writing was on the wall for the music that had developed in the previous century. The small instrumental ensembles (takht) that had accompanied singers gave way to larger orchestras. Elaborate poetic forms were supplanted by punchier, easier-to-remember lyrics and melodies. The intricate pitch relationships were simplified into something closer to European scales. Overall, something simpler and more populist, if no less affecting, arose; the music changed.
This brief collection offers a snapshot of that period following the Egyptian Revolution of 1919 resulting in the 1923 constitution, as the cultural shift was happening. The recordings still include the convention of an opening “branding” announcement of the name of the record label similar to logos used by movie studios (like MGM’s roaring lion), derived from the previous decade when many listeners heard discs in cafes and on horse-drawn carts rather than in their own homes so that they’d know which company had released the productions as much as the stars who performed on them.
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We have been unable to find biographical or discographical data regarding AHMAD FAKECH who recorded in Alexandria in the 1920s for Odeon Records.
SAKINA HASSAN (b. Asyut Governorate ca.1892-96; d. 1948) was one of several sight-impaired women singers who performed as reciters of the Qur’an at women’s funerals and on records and radio during the 1920s and early ‘30s until broadcasts of women performing the Qur’an was banned on Egyptian radio in 1934. Among them, she was the first to record, having pivoted to singing taquta. She recorded both religious and secular music prolifically for Odeon Records during the 1920s and ‘30s, but there is little biographical research available about her life.
FATHIYYA AHMAD (b. Cairo 1898; d. 1975) was one of three daughters of a reciter of the Qur’an each of whom had a singing career. She started in musical theater and as a singer at women’s wedding functions from about the ages of 12 to 27. From 1925 to 1929 she concertized as a soloist and made her first records, becoming one of the most popular female performers in Egypt along with Mounira al-Mahdiyya (b. 1884; d. 1965) and Ahmad’s exact contemporary Umm Kalthoum (b. 1898; d. 1975) with whom shared a music teacher, Abu Al-Ala Muhammad. She worked with bothof them. She retired for several years to focus on her family but returned to recording and performing in the ‘30s, touring in Syria, and singing regularly at the famous nightclub of the influential performer Badi’a Masabni. She was a significant force in Cairo’s music scene until illness ended her career in the late 1940s.
ZAKI MOURAD (b. 1880; d. 1946) worked in his Jewish family’s textile business in Alexandria before studying at the Arab Music Conservatory in 1907 and becoming a disciple of Abd Al-Hayy Hilmi. He started recording for the Gramophone Company in January 1909, including compositions by Abu al-Hamouli, ultimately recording 163 sides for them over the next decade as well as many recordings for Baidaphon. He had several significant theatrical roles in the 1910s & ‘20s including a starring role for which he was chosen by Sayyed Darwish. In the late ’20s and early ‘30s, as Egyptian music transitioned from the old, elaborate style to a newer more populist style, Mourad toured North Africa and the United States (where he released some recordings on A.J. Macksoud’s label in New York, including his performance of Darwish’s evergreen “Zourouni.”). Returning to Cairo, he discovered that the scene had changed radically and that he was old hat and forgotten. He spent the last decade of his life embittered. Two of Mourad’s brothers had brief singing careers in North America, and among his six children, his son Mounir (b. Jan. 1922; d. Oct. 1981) became a singer and composer and all three of his daughters became singers, most famously Leila (b. Feb. 1918. d. Nov. 1995) was one of the most famous singers of the Arab world in the 1930s-50s.
AMIN HASANAYN SALIM was the son of a teacher of Qur’anic recitation and, following his formal education received further musical education from Sheikh Darwish al-Hariri, Daoud Hosni, and at the Oriental Music Club of the qanunist Mustapha Reda. While working as both a Qur’anic reciter and nightclub performer, he began composing in the late 1910s. In the 1920s he began singing on discs for Polyphon and touring from Iraq to Tunisia, where he ultimately settled.
Biographical details of EIN AL-HAYAT remain unknown to me at this time.
SAYYID AL-SAFTI (b. 1875; d. 1937) was a religious singer before becoming a secular performer. His mastery of intricate metrical material and dedication to his art made him among the most popular singers of the early 20th century. He began recording in 1903, and over the next two decades is thought to have recorded 300 discs. His influence was felt in Syria / Lebanon, where he toured. He was, however, a severe alcoholic, leading to a decline in his productivity and popularity in the last decade of his life.
credits
released February 11, 2024
All recordings made in Cairo except 1-3 made in Alexandria.
Recording dates:
Tracks 1-5 ca. 1923-25
Track 6 1926
Track 7 ca. Jan.-Feb. 1926
Tracks 8-9 ca. 1926-27
Tracks 10-12 ca. 1927-28
Recording date estimates were made by Jonathan Ward and Ian Nagoski
Where transliterations of titles were not given on the original disc labels, transliterations were made by Nizar Ismael. Thanks also to Dargham A. Hassan.
Cover image of Sakina Hassan via discogs.
Biographical data drawn largely from research available at the site of the Foundation for Arab Music Archiving and Research.
www.amar-foundation.org
Transfers, restorations, and notes by Ian Nagoski
Further reading:
Raphael Cormack, Midnight in Cairo: The Divas of Egypt's Roaring '20s (Norton, 2021)
