Imaginary interview with Oum Kalthoum
by Charactorium · Oum Kalthoum (1898 — 1975) · Music · 6 min read
Cairo, a spring evening in the 1960s. In the hushed living room of her villa in Zamalek, the Star of the East receives us late, as is her habit, a steaming glass of mint tea on the low table. Her gold-rimmed glasses catch the light; the silk handkerchief never leaves her hand. She speaks softly, but every word carries weight like a verse.
—Do you remember the moment your voice was discovered, back there in your village?
In Tamay ez-Zahayra, in the delta, no one imagined that a girl could sing in front of men. My father was an imam; he taught me the Quran by heart, verse by verse, before I could even read. One day he heard me repeating a nashid he was rehearsing for a ceremony, and he understood that something was passing through my throat that he could not silence. So he did something scandalous and tender at once: he put a turban on me, dressed me as a boy, and made me go up to sing religious praises. Hidden like that, I took my first steps. The disguise fell away, the voice remained. I believe all my art comes from that: from a song that was first a prayer, never mere entertainment.
The disguise fell away, the voice remained.
—What does your singing technique owe to that religious education?
Everything, or nearly. Reciting the Quran is not speaking: it is holding the breath, placing each syllable like setting a stone, feeling where the voice must bend. The nashids of my childhood taught me the patience of the long note, that way of inhabiting a single word until it yields all its flavor. Much later, when I worked for hours with my musicians, I was still seeking that precision learned on the lap of my imam father. I was often told my voice was a gift. I answer that the gift is the morning; the rest is the labor of a lifetime repeating a phrase until it becomes as natural as breathing.
The gift is the morning; the rest is the labor of a lifetime.
—They say that on the first Thursday of every month, all Egypt came to a standstill. How did you experience that?
It was something I did not command and that surpassed me. The Egyptian radio, born in 1934, made my voice something that entered every home at the same hour. I was told that the streets emptied, that cafés filled up around the valve radio, that even those who lived in wrongdoing stopped that evening. Imagine: from Alexandria to the villages of the Gulf, millions of people leaning over the same receiver, holding their breath at the same time. I was not singing for a hall, I was singing for a country lying against its radio set. That responsibility, believe me, is heavier than any stage fright.
I was singing for a country lying against its radio set.
—Your concerts could last until dawn. What happens in those endless hours?
I never went on stage before ten in the evening, and sometimes the audience would not let me leave until daybreak. It is not stubbornness: it is tarab. A single song could last three, four, five hours, because a verse is not sung once — it is taken up again, turned over, opened onto a new maqam, and each repetition depends on what the audience sends back to me. When I hear a cry rise, an “encore” bursting from the back, I know I must begin again differently, higher, slower. My handkerchief then marks my breath like a secret metronome. We enter together, the audience and I, into a trance. It is no longer I who sing: it is a collective emotion that has found a mouth.
A verse is not sung once — it is taken up again, turned over, opened.
—Among your works, Al Atlal is often cited as your summit. Why that one?
Al Atlal, “The Ruins,” is a poem that Riad Al Sunbati set to music in 1966. It speaks of lost love, of what we contemplate when only traces remain. What moves me in this text is that it allows the mawwal, that improvised and melancholy chant where I can modulate a single syllable like turning over a stone to see what lies beneath. No performance of Al Atlal resembles the previous one; each evening, the ruin is rebuilt differently. I think the audience recognizes itself because everyone carries ruins within — a love, a country, a youth. To sing that is not to weep over the past, but to make it habitable.
Everyone carries ruins within — a love, a country, a youth.
—How did your collaboration with Mohammed Abdel Wahab on Enta Omri come about?
We were believed to be rivals, Abdel Wahab and I, two peaks that would never meet. In 1964, I wanted to prove otherwise. I asked him for a melody that would speak of love of the homeland as much as love of a man — because these two feelings, for me, are inseparable. It became Enta Omri, “You Are My Life”: over an hour of music where classical tradition marries new sounds. When I sing “you are my life,” I address a beloved, yes, but also Egypt, that land of the Nile that made me. The audience is not mistaken: it hears both loves at once, braided in the same phrase. That, I believe, is the secret of a song that never ages.
Love of the homeland and love of a man, for me, are inseparable.
—You speak of two inseparable loves. Do you fully assume this confusion between the intimate and the national?
Fully. Our language, our classical Arabic poetry, has always mingled the beloved and the city, desire and loyalty. When I choose a poem, in the afternoon, rereading it at home before entrusting it to a composer, I seek that exact point where the private becomes common. A well-sung love song becomes the business of a whole people, because each person puts his own beloved face into it. I have never separated the woman who sings “I love you” from the daughter of the Nile who loves her land. That is why my songs, even the tenderest, ended up uniting Arabic speakers from the Atlantic to the Gulf: a heart that beats for one being learns to beat for all.
A well-sung love song becomes the business of a whole people.
—After the defeat of 1967, you hit the road for a long tour. What drove you?
The Six-Day War had left us prostrate, humiliated. A wounded country needs many things, but first of all not to feel alone with its shame. I decided to sing across the Arab world and as far as Europe, and to donate every penny to the Egyptian state. As long as I had a voice, it would be in the service of this homeland — that is what I said on the airwaves in that month of June. It was not a slogan: I thought of the soldiers, of the honor of a people that is raised not only by weapons but by dignity. A singer does not rebuild an army. But she can, perhaps, prevent a people from collapsing into silence.
A singer does not rebuild an army, but she can prevent a people from collapsing into silence.
—That tour took you all the way to the Olympia in Paris. How could an audience that did not understand your words follow you?
In November 1967, at the Olympia in Paris, I expected polite, distant faces. It was a triumph I had not foreseen. French people came to tell me they did not understand a word of Arabic, but they felt everything of the emotion. There, I said to myself, is what universal music is: it does without translation. The Arab diaspora wept in the hall, and beside them silent Parisians let themselves be carried away by tarab without knowing its name. I understood that evening that my voice no longer belonged only to Egypt or even the Arab world. A true emotion crosses the borders that words erect between people.
A true emotion crosses the borders that words erect between people.
—You have become much more than a singer — a living national symbol. How do you carry that weight?
I am called Kawkab al-Sharq, the Star of the East, and some evenings this nickname feels heavier than my stage gowns. Since the beginnings of Egyptian radio, my voice has accompanied the great moments of the nation: celebrations, crises, mourning. I sang for Nasser in grave times, and the country ended up confusing its own pulse with mine. It is an honor and a gentle prison. I can no longer afford a wrong note, because it is not only Oum Kalthoum who would sing out of tune, it is something of Egypt. So I rehearse, I rehearse again, the whole afternoon if necessary. One does not become the voice of a people: one becomes it again each evening.
One does not become the voice of a people: one becomes it again each evening.
This imaginary interview was generated by artificial intelligence from sources documented in Oum Kalthoum's profile. It dramatises what the figure might have said based on what we know about them, but does not constitute attested historical testimony. For primary sources and factual documentation, refer to the full profile.