Reviewed in the July/August 2003 issue of Songlines magazine and proclaimed as one of the 50 World Music Albums You Must Own
Oum Kalthoum The Lady (El Sett) Buda Records
Legend is a term hugely over-used in music writing, but Oum Kalthoum (c1904-75) is the real thing: an icon of the Arab world, whose funeral in Cairo in 1975 was attended by three million people, and a dozen heads of state. Indeed, there is a saying that Kalthoum is the one subject about which all Arabs agree. What they agree is that nobody has ever rendered so poetically or with such heart the traditional Arab song, and El Sett (The Lady) offers compact evidence: six songs of anguish ('You are delighted by my sobs!'), and a rallying call to Egypt (sung for the accession of King Fairouk), recorded between 1936 and 1946, when Kalthoum's voice was at its peak. ME
