Reviewed by Riad Bahhur (The Ohio State University)
Michal Goldman's documentary film Umm Kulthum: A Voice Like Egypt sets out bravely to document the life and achievement of this century's greatest and most legendary Arab singer. In the process, Umm Kulthum, produced by the Cambridge-based Filmmakers Collaborative, also provides a glimpse into the historic changes and political upheavals shaking Egypt from the last years of British colonialism through the turbulent and dramatic years of Gamal Abd al-Nasser's rule. Indeed, Umm Kulthum's vocal and physical presence are inseparable from the cultural and political life of Egypt and the entire Arab world in the post/colonial period until her death in February 1975.
The film is narrated by Omar Sharif, whose voice imparts an air of respectful homage to Umm Kulthum. Thankfully, his narration is not detached from the person or events he describes. He uses the words I and we in such contexts as Egyptian resistance to British rule and in statements like "We all listened to her." Another narrator's voice, that of Mona Zakaria, narrates translated passages from Umm Kulthum's autobiography and, in a few cases, accounts others have written about her. The two narrative voices are woven delicately with images of Egyptian rural life, wandering street scenes of Cairo where Umm Kulthum performed and lived, rich footage of her in concert, and with interviews of people who knew Umm Kulthum or listened to her music.
The film opens with a village scene at dawn and Umm Kulthum's own translated words about her birth and her father's decision to name her after one of the Prophet's daughters. Umm Kulthum's father, Sheikh Ibrahim, figures prominently in her life. A religious man, he was sought after as a reciter of the Quran and a singer of spiritual songs. In another passage from Umm Kulthum's autobiography, she recounts how she overheard a conversation between her parents. Her mother pleaded with her father to find the money necessary to keep Umm Kulthum in school after Sheikh Ibrahim had expressed his desire to pull his daughter out of school because he could not afford to educate both her and her brothers. Somehow, Sheikh Ibrahim found the extra money and Umm Kulthum continued to study in a kuttab, or traditional school where she was trained in the art of Quranic recitation and singing classical poetry.
She began to accompany her father to mawlid celebrations commemorating the birth anniversaries of the Prophet Muhammad and other notable spiritual figures. At these events, she joined her father in chanting verses from the Quran and singing religious songs. During this period, Umm Kulthum recounts that she was like a parrot, singing whatever her father sang. Sheikh Ibrahim dressed his daughter in boys' clothes in an attempt to convince others, and perhaps himself (as Umm Kulthum wrote) that she was a boy. This was to alleviate the embarrassment of taking his daughter into largely male-attended celebrations. An old photograph of Umm Kulthum dressed as a boy is one of the many archival jewels elegantly presented in this film. Cameraman Kamal Abd al-Aziz's dramatic pans bring the old photographs to life. Zakaria's narrating voice over a slow walkthrough shot of one of Cairo's sha`bi quarters speaks Umm Kulthum's account of why she began singing in those early days:
People say I began to sing for love of the art of singing, but it is not true. In the beginning, I sang because we were in need. At my second mawlid, the host gave me a coin: 10 piastres, almost half of my father's monthly salary. Since then, I have held thousands of piastres in my hands, but none has moved me as much as that small simple coin.
Umm Kulthum continued to sing in the houses of the wealthy, traveling with her father by train to other towns amidst the events of the day. In 1919, a revolt against British rule shook the country but was suppressed with the might of the British army. Growing anti-colonial sentiment and activism became part of the ambiance of Egypt. Cairo was becoming the largest and most important Arab city in terms of political and cultural happenings. Artists moved to Cairo from other parts of the Arab world. The city provided a climate where poetry, cinema, music, and dance could be explored and performed. Though nightclubs abounded and nightclub singers were held in low esteem, several women performers became well-known in Cairo: Fathia Ahmad, singer; Rose al-Yusuf, actress and magazine publisher; Badi`a Masabni, dancer and nightclub owner; and Munira al-Mahdia, known as the "Nightingale of the East." Goldman includes stunning photographs of these women.
Alongside these women, Umm Kulthum was a country bumpkin, explains musicologist Virginia Danielson whose book on Umm Kulthum has just been published. Umm Kulthum did not know how to walk on stage, how to hold a cup. She wore cotton dresses and exhibited country ways. It was not until she was befriended by Amin al-Mahdi that she learned from the women in his family the mannerisms of elite Egyptian society.
As she became involved in new social circles, she met other artists like the poet Ahmad Rami, who fell in love with her. Though she did not fall in love with him, she sang his angst-ridden love poems throughout her life. He introduced her, as well, to Egypt's other leading poets and artists.
Umm Kulthum's remarkable career coincided with technological advances which made her fame possible. Goldman's film represents her success as resulting from three technologies which were new to Egypt: the phonograph, radio, and cinema. Umm Kulthum wrote: "The first time I heard the sound of my own voice, I ran to my room and threw myself on my bed, overcome with delight." For the first time, Umm Kulthum's voice intermingled with the air, with the smell of mint tea, coffee and cardamom in cafes, and the cluttered sounds of Cairo's streets. With the new technologies, she was able to bring the tradition of classical Arabic poetry and song to a mass audience. People recited the poetry she sang in the streets.
She was committed, unlike her rival Muhammad Abd al-Wahhab, to preserving the classical tradition of Arabic music and poetry. The following excerpt from her writings floats as narration above one of the most strikingly artful shots of the entire film, a moving shot across a row of music shops and oud makers which stops to contemplate a man standing apprehensively in the doorway of an oud shop, as a younger man walks out with new oud in hand:
Music must represent our Eastern spirit. It is impossible to present the listeners with foreign tastes. They won't accept it. Those who study European music learn it as one would learn a foreign language. Of course it is useful, but it would be silly to expect that this European language would become ours.
She insisted on her classical styles and compositions while her rival Abd al-Wahhab experimented with new styles and foreign influences, though always adapting them to Egyptian and Arabic moods. She captured her audiences with her commitment to the idea and practise of tarab, a word without equivalent in English, akin to a kind of musical ecstasy. Naguib Mahfouz appears in the film to describe Umm Kulthum as being like a preacher who, when she sees what reaches her audience, works it, refines it, embellishes it, into a moment of uncontainable enthusiasm.
The tarab and uncontainable enthusiasm of Umm Kulthum's live concerts is still moving, even decades removed, through the footage of her in concert dispersed throughout this film. Umm Kulthum, fully engaged with her audience and some higher force, sings lines which lose almost everything in translation, like
A glance and I...
A glance and I...
I thought it was a greeting.
It passed so quickly,
or
I see you are unable to weep.
Restraint is in your nature.
Is desire forbidden to rule you?
By the 1930s, she had become the most famous singer in Egypt and had sung in King Farouk's court. In the wake of the anti-British demonstrations of 1935, she supported many of the poor students who had participated in the demonstrations by holding concerts to raise funds for their tuition. A decade later, Egyptians were protesting the corrupt monarchy of King Farouk. In 1948, after Farouk had sent Egyptian troops to fight in Palestine with faulty ammunition, the Faluka Brigade of Egyptian officers returned as heroes for their stand against Zionist forces. Umm Kulthum hosted a party for them at her home despite a request from the Minister of Defense that she cancel the party in the interest of not embarrassing Farouk. One of those officers was Gamal Abd al-Nasser, who four years later led a group of army officers into the Palace and deposed Farouk in a bloodless coup. Umm Kulthum's songs had helped to rally Egyptians into a spirit of activism, with one couplet in particular becoming the motto of many demonstrations:
Not through wishing will the goal be obtained.
The world must be taken through struggle.
The group of Free Officers established a republic and, led by Nasser, Egypt embarked on a program of socialism, industrialization, Arab nationalism, and Third World non-alignment. Umm Kulthum admired Nasser and supported the revolutionary changes, adding through the narrator's voice over a photo of her standing in front of (and competing in stature with) the Sphinx, that:
It is necessary to fill the revolutionary society with everything that is beautiful. For beauty endures and it is the best manifestation of authenticity.
She survived attempts, with Nasser's support, by the Musicians' Union to ban her songs from the radio because she had sung for King Farouk. When Nasser increased the power of the broadcast signal of Egyptian radio, she gained an audience throughout the Arabic-speaking world and beyond. On the first Thursday of every month, people throughout the world (including my Uncle Ibrahim in Cleveland, Ohio with his giant shortwave radio) waited patiently for Umm Kulthum to sing a new song.
The film points out that "people gossiped endlessly about this woman who sang so passionately about love." Much of the gossip seemed to revolve around her own love life (or perceived lack thereof) and the fact that she married late in life. When, in her fifties, she married a well known doctor, people said that it was a marriage of convenience. She continued to sing longingly and passionately of love and lovers, though there was little evidence of either in her own life. Umm Kulthum chose to build her house in Zamalek, at that time an isolated location, to maintain her privacy and seclusion from public scrutiny. Her public persona was largely constructed around her career.
In 1964, an uneasy collaboration between the two great giants of Arabic music -- Umm Kulthum and Muhammad Abd al-Wahhab -- finally culminated in a concert of a song which Abd al-Wahhab had composed for her and which she agreed to sing. The concert was awaited with patient anticipation and was received with tremendous excitement. Nasser attended her concerts and they both admired each other greatly. After the 1967 War with Israel and the defeat of Egyptian forces, she secluded herself for two weeks, only to emerge with renewed efforts to raise Egyptian and Arab consciousness and to rearm Egypt. She donated millions of pounds towards rearming Egypt and sang a new song which was to become one of her most famous. Goldman includes footage from Umm Kulthum's Tunis concert where she sings Al-Atlal:
Give me my freedom,
Untie my hands.
I gave, I held back nothing.
Aaah, your bonds have made my wrists bleed.
Why did I keep vows that you despoiled?
And why do I languish when the world surrounds me?
Tunisian audiences went wild at the concert and during Umm Kulthum's visit. She told a journalist of the trip: "When I see these people, I realize I can never give them as much as they give me." Her visit to Tunisia coincided with the breaking off of relations between Egypt and Tunisia. Umm Kulthum met with President Bourguiba for hours, and a few days later, diplomatic relations were restored between the two countries.
After Nasser's sudden death in 1970, she went into a period of mourning and withdrawal from the stage. She was reported to have been ill and never recovered the stamina needed for her long concerts. She died in 1975, with 4 million people filling the streets of Cairo for her funeral.
One of the final shots of Umm Kulthum is an elevator ride in a Cairo apartment building. It begins on the ground floor as the bawwab settles into a waterpipe and listens to an Umm Kulthum song on a tape player. As the elevator rises, sounds of Egyptian popular music, sha`bi and gil, fill the space. At the top floor, Umm Kulthum's voice once again dominates and the camera flies over Cairo with her song. People on the street sing verses from her songs as they remember how the songs moved them, each in a particular way.
Umm Kulthum: A Voice Like Egypt is an excellent portrait of the singer's legacy. By including so much live footage of her in concert, the film is brimming with the tarab Umm Kulthum so commandingly inspired. The calm and wandering pace of the film is appropriately reverential, though at times contrastingly un-tarab-like. The camera work and use of archive photos enrich the film and add precious context. Although the film might have done well to include more young voices reflecting on Umm Kulthum, and more about recent Egyptian musical trends, it manages to cover a great deal of her life and achievement in one hour. The commentary of people on the street, as well as their impromptu renditions of Umm Kulthum's songs, were expressive moments that I wish could have been extended. In lieu of a longer film, I will be content to watch this one again, as I recall a verse of Umm Kulthum's performed by one of her fans on the street:
They try to remind me of you.
As if I had forgotten.
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