The great Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz compared her to a preacher. Watching her videos, I thought she reminded me of a particularly tale...
The great Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz compared her to a preacher. Watching her videos, I thought she reminded me of a particularly talented politician, electrifying a crowd with fervent appeals to hope and truth. And over the last few months, as I’ve taken basic classes on Arab music, I’ve watched a lot of videos of Egyptian diva Umm Kulthum in the hope that they would help me understand a word that’s difficult to define: tarab.
A multitude of words has been offered up as possible translations, but the various definitions may be combined to vaguely form something like: the sensation of ecstasy and sensual engagement an audience feels when engrossed in the performance.
I got a hint of what tarab might mean as I watched a recording of Kulthum’s performance of Enta Omri (You Are My Life) on a stage in Paris’s Olympia Theatre in 1967.
“Your eyes took me back to my bygone days,” she begins, her quavering voice matched by the music of the tuxedo-clad backing musicians behind her, which rises and falls and trembles as her own vocal expression does. Her shimmering tones are mirrored exactly by the ouds and violins, creating a churning sea of sound that reverberates around the theatre.
