MOG

I have it on good authority that Dylan was and is a massive Umm Kulthum fan. Just an FYI...

If I'm his fan and he's her fan, then there are only two degrees of separation between me and her.

I love the Maria Papagika - although the melody and instrumentation are obviously different (although maybe not, with the hammered dulcimer), there's a sort of Appalachian catch and way of ornamentation to the way she sings. In sone weird way, I could imagine Emmylou Harris covering this.

As for Oum Kalthoum, how does one begin to plumb her greatness? I would guess that one reason this song is relatively compact is that there isn't seven or eight minutes of instrumental buildup before she starts singing. Which isn't a bad thing....

It's funny about Virginia Rodrigues - I've never been quite as crazy about her as I feel I'm supposed to be. That creamy voice is highly pleasurable, but I've never felt a great deal of depth in it. My shortcoming....

ivylander, now that you mention it, E.H. covering M.P. is imaginable. Next time I run into her (somehow without knocking her over), I'll suggest it.

Your comments about O.K. suggest that you've listened to her before, at least her intros, which is commendable. MOG is right to limit the length of music uploads because it keeps us from going overboard.

As long as you feel guilty about your shortcoming, that's the main thing. On the other hand, Persian rugs have to have a flaw to be acceptable. "Creamy" is a great adjective for V.R.'s voice. It reminds of when a friend and I saw a band covering Santana's "Oye Como Va," and I commented to him afterward that the guitarist didn't have Santana's "creamy sustain." Later I read a critic use that term to describe Santana's sound, and it felt good.

I thought I'd mentioned this on MOG before, but I happened to find myself in Cairo several years ago on the anniversary of Oum Kalthoum's death, On the two Egyptian state stations I was able to get on my hotel TV, one featured a drama based on her life (looked like it would be pretty dull even if you spoke Arabic) and the other a documentary about her career, with tons of clips. Seems she appeared in quite a few dramatic movies - especially in the late 1940s and 1950s, from the look of it.

One clip that appeared on the documentary was especially riveting, unforgettable. She (or her character) was singing a song on the radio. The film would cut from her standing in front of the studio microphone to the lives of various people listening to her. I remember in particular a young couple in a car arguing to the backdrop of the car radio, and an infirm old man listening in his study. There were others I can't recall. The point was to show how the music was affecting these people. The couple stopped arguing, transfixed by the sound. The old man seemed lost in reverie; I think he expired before the end of the song, but happily. I have some vague recollection of a young girl who became very excited and summoned her parents to the radio. The song was unspeakably beautiful and sad I kept thinking, as I watched it, that some enterprising young pop musician could do much worse than to rip off this idea as the basis for a video. Which would probably be awful....

That sounds like a great idea for a video. Now I'd like to see that documentary and any other old films she was in that were good. Come to think of it, there's a store in the hispanic neighborhood near me that sells Arabic CDs and might have DVDs of hers. I remember chancing upon the end of a documentary of her on TV, maybe the same one you saw.

I've heard a few tracks by her when she was a lot younger and they're not so powerful.

There is a documentary about that's narrated by Omar Sharif, the world's second most famous Egyptian. It was on public TV a few years ago. Not bad - nothing with her as the focal point could be - but veering close to hagiography.

By the way, I've neglected to add in previous comments how much I enjoyed the way you described the way she builds tension in a song. I listened to it with those words in mind, and damned if you weren't right on the money!

Three women, three songs, three cultures and one undercurrent of aural pleasure. I love those cuts you've offered us here.

Reading your reflection and association, one thinks about the pertinence of genres and borders.

Bartleby, thank you. Sometimes the jump between the end of one song and the beginning of another is as interesting as either song by itself. A good juxtaposition creates a tension between those forces bringing the songs together and those pulling them apart.

Thank you for the world tour with your musical collections. Now, I see that the lady who sings in Arabic reminds me of Arabic singer Souad Massi but that is because of the dialect. I throughly enjoyed the journey and will have to see if some of these treats are on emusic.com! Bless u! =)

2Serenity, thank _you_. I wish I knew the name of the Umm Kulthum song, but I copied it off an all-Arabic LP, Sono Cairo label, ESB 110, no longer in my possession. I'm impressed that you can detect dialects within Arabic!