7 The 100 Most Influential Musicians of All Time 7she had moved from singing religious songs to performing
popular tunes—often in the colloquial dialect and accom-
panied by a small traditional orchestra—and she became
known for her emotive, passionate renditions of arrange-
ments by the best composers, poets, and songwriters of
the day. These included the poets A mad Shawqī and
Bayrām al-Tūnisī (who wrote many of the singer’s collo-
quial Egyptian songs) and, later, the noted composer
Mu ammad ‘Abd al-Wahhāb, with whom she collaborated
on 10 songs. The first of these tunes, “Inta ‘Umrī” (“You
Are My Life”), remains a modern classic. Her strong
and nuanced voice and her ability to fashion multiple
iterations of single lines of text drew audiences into the
emotion and meaning of the poetic lyrics and extended
for hours what often had been written as relatively short
compositions.
Known sometimes as Kawkab al-Sharq (“Star of the
East”), Umm Kulthūm had an immense repertoire, which
included religious, sentimental, and nationalistic songs. In
the midst of the turmoil created by two world wars, the
Great Depression of the 1930s, and the 1952 Egyptian revo-
lution, she cultivated a public persona as a patriotic Egyp tian
and a devout Muslim. She sang songs in support of Egyp-
tian independence (“Nashīd al-Jāmi‘ah” [“The University
Anthem”], “Sa‘alu Qalbī” [“Ask My Heart”]) and in the 1950s
sang many songs in support of Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel
Nasser, with whom she developed a close friendship. One
of her songs associated with Nasser—“Wallāhi Zamān, Yā
Silā ī” (“It’s Been a Long Time, O Weapon of Mine”)—was
adopted as the Egyptian national anthem from 1960 to
- She served as president of the Musician’s Union for
seven years and held positions on numerous government
commissions on the arts. Her popularity was further
enhanced by her generous donations to Arab causes. After
Egypt’s defeat in the Six-Day War of June 1967, she toured