Oum Kalthoum Al Atlal The Ruins

When you read the news about how women are treated in Egypt these days, or in many Arabic countries,  consider that a few decades ago the same countries produced one of the most incredibly powerful women to have ever performed in public.   And if this were not specifically addressing the position of women, I'd have said one of the most incredibly powerful PEOPLE to have ever performed in public.  Oum Kalthoum was reputed to have such power in her singing that if she didn't stand back from the microphone, she would destroy it.  Her musicianship, her power, her improvisation and her mastery of the materials of music held an enormous audience for decades in a way that even the greatest stars here could only wish for.   Her funeral was a enormous scene of  mass grief, I recall someone saying that there were two million people at it.   How societies that supported her career have treated women, has to have some lessons.  How powerful she was is shown in this performance of one of her signature pieces,  what should stand as one of the greatest of monodramas,  Al Atlal, The Ruines.  And, compared to some of the others on youtube, the audience was down right restrained in their reaction.

The subtitles in French were a big help but if you don't read it,  here's a translation into English.   Here's what the translator says.

Oum Kalthoum's "El Atlal (The Ruins)" is a real classic and is considered a high point of Arabic music. The only song ever written by the legendary Ibrahim Nagi, it is one of the most complicated and esoteric works of modern Arabic music and poetry. This is the only English translation I have ever seen of the song, so if you want to post it somewhere please cite my website with a link.

I will point out that the lyrics and the music of the song are intensely erotic.  Hot, if you will, sung by a woman who may have been the predominant cultural figure across a huge range of countries for decades that later became synonymous in the West for the oppression of women.  Abdul Nassar once told one of his ministers, who had proposed clamping down on her that he was crazy, that his government couldn't remain in power if they took on Oum Kalthoum.  

How a culture and a society that produced Oum Kalthoum could be infamous for the subjugation of women has to count as one of the more important paradoxes of the past century.  

The reason I post this is the skepticism that someone voiced about the existence of a feminist movement in Egypt from the beginning of the last century.  There seems to be an insistence among even our college educated people that "Arab" countries and cultures have a monothematic,  unchanging character that prevents people from even looking online for a clearer picture.  The motives of those, here, who do that are frequently the worst, promoting bigotry, hatred, war.    Considering how many people fall under either that umbrella or the far larger, far more complex category of "Islamic" it's no surprise that we're always making a mess of things when we try to influence or, worst of all, control what happens to "those people" and their countries.