Farid Al-Atrash

فريد الأطرش‎‎ 

Farid, (October 19, 1910 – December 26, 1974), was a Syrian/Egyptian composer, singer, virtuoso Oud player. Having immigrated to Egypt at the age of nine with his Family.

Al-Atrash was born in al-Suwayda, in southern Syria to the Druze Al-Atrash family who fought the French colonial army. His father a Syrian, married a Lebanese and later immigrated to Egypt with his wife, Farid, Asmahan and Fouad. They immediately naturalized as Egyptian citizens.

Farid, Asmahan & Fouad with Mother

 Interesting to note that Farid's mother an artist sang and played the Oud, which spurred his musical interest at an early age.

As a child and young boy, Al-Atrash sang mostly in school events. He later studied music at the conservatory and became an apprentice of the renowned composer Riyad as-Sunbaty. In the 1930s, Al-Atrash began his professional singing career by working for privately owned Egyptian radio stations. Eventually, he was hired as an Oud player for the national radio station and later as a singer.

Farid and his sister Asmahan

His sister, Asmahan, was a very talented singer, she became one of the most popular female vocalists and cinema stars in the late 1930s and early 1940s, In 1941, Asmahan and Farid  starred in their first successful movie Intisar al-Shabab The Triumph of Youth, in which Farid himself composed all the music. Asmahan life was cut short due to an automobile accident in 1944.

Link to original song  -  Asmahan : Ya habibi taala

Musical career

FARID AL-ATRASH

Al-Atrash had a long and colourful music career lasting four decades. He composed musically diverse songs, and was a highly regarded composer, singer and instrumentalist. Al-Atrash maintained that although some of his music had western musical influence, he always stayed true to Arab music principles. Although the majority of his compositions were romantic love songs, he also composed several patriotic and religious songs.

One of Al-Atrash's most unusual and distinguishable traits was his voice. High and mellow at the start of his career, it evolved into a wider, deeper sound. A person not familiar with his work would find it hard to believe the singer in "Ya Reitni Tir" (1930s) and "Adnaytani Bil Hajr" (1960s) was the same singer. His singing style was deeply passionate.

In many of his songs, and nearly all of his concerts, Al-Atrash would sing a mawal, which is a slow voice improvisation of a few poetic lines. These improvisations sometimes lasted up to 15 minutes. The mawal was a favorite of his fans. Some of the most famous songs include "Rabeeh" (Spring), "Awal Hamsa" (first whisper), "Hekayat Gharami" (story of my love), "Albi Wa Moftaho" (my heart and its key), "Gamil Gamal", "Wayak", "Ya Zahratan Fi Khayali" (Flower of my imagination), "Bisat Ir Rih" (flying carpet), "Ya Gamil Ya Gamil", "Ya Habaybi Ya Ghaybeen", "Eish Anta", and "saa fi korb el habib" (an hour in company of the beloved).

Al-Atrash starred in 31 Egyptian musical films from 1941 to 1974. His last movie, Nagham Fi Hayati (Songs in my life) was released after his death. All his films except the last two were black and white. They ranged from comedies to dramas, or a combination. He composed all the songs in his movies including the songs sung by other singers, and instrumentals (usually belly dance routines). His earlier films would include approximately ten songs, but overall the films would average about five songs each. Some of Al-Atrash's well-known movies include Intisar al-Shabab (The Triumph of Youth, 1941), Yom Bila Ghad, Ahd el-Hawa, and Lahn al-KholOud ( "Eternal Lyric", 1952).

 

Al-Atrash shaking hands with Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, February 1955

Samia Gamal and Farid Al-Atrash

Quick success brought the young man a lifestyle of nightclubs, love affairs, and gambling. Soon Farid was in debt and found himself abandoned by his disapproving mother. During this difficult period of his life, he also endured the death of his sister and fellow performer Asmahan. Farid found comfort in a relationship with the belly dancer Samia Gamal, for whom he was motivated to risk all he owned. In 1947 he produced and co-starred in a movie with Samia directed by Henri Barakat; Habib al-'Oumr ("The love of my life," 1947), which became a huge success. After this came Afrita Hanem ("Madame la diablesse," 1949). Five films later, the unmarried couple broke up. Farid continued to work with other film stars in numerous successful movies in which he always had the romantic lead role of a sad singer. He even repeatedly chose his character's name to be "Wahid" meaning lonely.

Queen Nariman & Farid Al-Atrash

 Al-Atrash refused to get married, claiming that marriage kills art. In his films, the audience remembered his leading ladies and his beautiful songs more than the story lines.

Prior to the 1952 military coup d'état against King Farouk I, Al-Atrash became friends with Farouk's consort, Queen Nariman, a relationship that continued after the Queen's divorce and the coup that cost Farouk his throne. The former queen's family did not accept Al-Atrash, and the separation from Nariman sent the singer into a long depression, the start of health problems that worsened from that point on until his death.

Farid Al-Atrash lived in a building called “Dar El Hana” in Zamalek, a block away from the villa of Um Kalthoum. He later build a hi-riser on the Nile in Giza and moved to the roof garden.

Om Kalthoum  & Farid Al-Atrash

As Al-Atrash became older, he reconsidered his opinion of marriage and proposed to Egyptian singer named Shadia, but at the last minute he backed out. By now his health was poor, and he feared that he would leave her a young widow. He often played out that scenario and sang about it in his romance movies.

"He remained a bachelor throughout his life and constructed himself with references to the authentic post of Arab tradition and in a fairly idealized version of modernity. Tales of his love affairs were wildly popular during his lifetime and were seemingly merged with the lyrics of his love songs."

Al-Atrash suffered heart problems throughout his last 30 years. In the last few years of his life, he became physically thinner, and his singing voice became raspy as his sickness intensified. Although he was struggling with his health, he continued to produce movies and perform in concerts until his death.

Shortly after arriving from London to Lebanon he was admitted to the Al Hayek hospital in Beirut. On Monday December 24, 1974 the hospital doctors told Al-Atrash that he could leave after a couple of days to go home, as they noticed that Farid did not like his stay in the hospital and hated their food. On December 26, 1974, Al-Atrash died in the hospital he never left.

Al-Atrash was buried in Cairo, Egypt alongside his sisters and brother.

Over his lifetime, Al-Atrash starred in 31 movies and recorded approximately 350 songs. He composed songs for top Arab singers, foremost his own sister, Asmahan, as well as Wadih El-Safi, Shadia, Warda, and Sabah. He is widely considered to be one of the four 'greats' of Egyptian and Arabic music, along with Abdel Halim Hafez, Mohammed Abdel Wahab and Oum Kalthoum. The Notable Egyptian instrumental guitarist Omar Khorshid covered Farid Al-Atrash's songs in a tribute album.

Link to Original Song:  Farid El Atrash: Gamil Gamal

Sayed Darwish

  سيد درويش

Sheikh Sayed Darwish

Sayed Darwish was born in Kôm el-Dikka Alexandria on 17 March 1892. During his childhood his family could not afford to pay for his education, so he was sent to a religious school where he mastered the cantillating of the Quran. After graduating from the religious school and gaining the title "Sheikh Sayed Darwish", he studied for two years at al-Azhar, one of the most renowned religious universities in the world. He left his studies to devote his life to music composition and singing, then entered a music school where his music teacher, Sami Efendi, admired his talents and encouraged Darwish to press onward in the music field.

DARWISH The MUSICIAN

Darwish at that time was also trained to be a munshid (cantor). He worked as a bricklayer in order to support his family, and it so happened that the manager of a theatrical troupe, the Syrian Attalah Brothers, overheard him singing for his fellows and hired him on the spot. While touring in Syria, he had the opportunity to gain a musical education, short of finding success. He returned to Egypt before the start of the Great War, and won limited recognition by singing in the cafés and on various stages while he learned repertoire of the great composers of the 19th century, to which he added ”adwār” (musical modes) and “muwashshaḥāt” (Arabic poetic-form compositions) of his own. In spite of the cleverness of his compositions, he was not to find public acclaim, disadvantaged by his mediocre stage presence in comparison with such stars of his time as Saleh 'Abd al-Hayy or Zaki Murad.

After too many failures in singing cafés, he decided in 1918 to follow the path of Shaykh Salama Higazi, the pioneer of Arabic lyric theater and launched into an operatic career. He settled in Cairo and got acquainted with the main companies, particularly Nagib al-Rihani's (1891–1949), for whom he composed seven operettas that  the gifted comedian had invented, with the playwright and poet Badie Khayri, the laughable character of Kish Kish Bey, a rich provincial mayor squandering his fortune in Cairo with ill-reputed women... The apparition of social matters and the allusions to the political situation of colonial Egypt (the 1919 "revolution") were to boost the success of the trio's operettas, such as "al-'Ashara al-Tayyiba" (The Ten of Diamonds, 1920) a nationalistic adaptation of “Bluebeard".

Musical instrument Oud

Sayed also worked for Rihani's rival troupe, 'Ali al-Kassar's, and eventually collaborated with the Queen of Stages, singer and actress Munira al-Mahdiyya (1884–1965), for whom he composed comic operettas such as "kullaha yawmayn" ("All of two days", 1920) and started an opera, "Cleopatra and Mark Anthony", which was to be played in 1927 with Muhammad 'Abd al-Wahab in the leading role. In the early twenties, all the companies sought his help. He then decided to start his own company, acting at last on stage in a lead part. His two creations ("Shahrazad' and "al-Barooka", 1921) were not as successful as planned, and he was again forced to compose for other companies from 1922 until his premature death on 15 September 1923.

OLD ARABIC TAKHT

Darwish's stage production is often clearly westernized: the traditional takht is replaced by a European ensemble, conducted by il Signore Casio, Darwish's maestro. Most of his operetta tunes use musical modes compatible with the piano, even if some vocal sections use other intervals, and the singing techniques employed in those compositions reveal a fascination for Italian opera, naively imitated in a cascade of oriental melismas. The light ditties of the comic plays are, from the modern point of view, much more interesting than the great opera-style arias. A number of those light melodies originally composed for al-Rihani or al-Kassar are now part of the Egyptian folklore. Such songs as "Salma ya Salama”, "Zuruni koll-e sana marra” or “EI helwa di qamet " are known by all Middle-Easterners and have been sung by modern singers, as the Lebanese Fayruz or Syrian Sabah Fakhri, in re-orchestrated versions. Aside from this light production, Sayed Darwish didn't neglect the learned repertoire; he composed about twenty muwashshahat, often played by modern conservatories and sung by Fayruz. But his major contribution to the turn-of-the-century learned music is better understood through the ten adwar (long metric composition in colloquial Arabic) he composed.

CAFE DARWISH

Whereas in the traditional aesthetics defined in the second part of the 19th century, the "dor" was built as a semi-composition, a canvas upon which a creative interpreter had to develop a personal rendition, Darwish was the first Egyptian composer to reduce drastically the extemporizing task left to the singer and the instrumental cast. Even the "ahat", this traditionally improvised section of sighs, were composed by Darwish in an interesting attempt of figuralism. Anecdotic arpeggios and chromaticism were for his contemporaries a token of modernism, but could be more severely judged nowadays.

Sayed Darwish was personally recorded by three companies: Mechian, a small local record company founded by an Armenian immigrant, which engraved the Shaykh's voice between 1914 and 1920; Odeon, the German company, which recorded extensively his light theatrical repertoire in 1922; Baidaphon, which recorded three adwâr around 1922. His works sung by other voices are to be found on numerous records made by all the companies operating in early 20th-century Egypt.

Musical instrument Kanoon

Darwish believed that genuine art must be derived from people's aspirations and feelings. In his music and songs, he truly expressed the yearnings and moods of the masses, as well as recording the events that took place during his lifetime. He dealt with the aroused national feeling against the British occupiers, the passion of the people, and social justice, and he often criticized the negative aspects of Egyptian society.

Gramophne 78 disc Record (1925) Cairo

His works, blending Western instruments and harmony with classical Arab forms and Egyptian folklore, gained immense popularity due to their social and patriotic subjects. Darwish's many nationalistic melodies reflect his close ties to the national leaders who were guiding the struggle against the British occupiers. 
His music and songs knew no class and were enjoyed by both the poor and the affluent.

In his musical plays, catchy music and popular themes were combined in an attractive way. To some extent, Darwish liberated Arab music from its classical style, modernizing it and opening the door for future development.

Gazl El Banat original poster

Besides composing 260 songs, he wrote 26 operettas, replacing the slow, repetitive, and ornamented old style of classical Arab music with a new light and expressive flair. Some of Darwish's most popular works in this field were El Ashara'l Tayyiba, Shahrazad, and El-Barooka. These operettas, like Darwish's other compositions, were strongly reminiscent of Egyptian folk music and gained great popularity due to their social and patriotic themes.

Even though Darwish became a master of the new theater music, he remained an authority on the old forms. He composed 10 “dawr” and 21 “muwashshat” which became classics in the world of Arab music. His composition "Bilaadi! Bilaadi!" (My Country! My Country!), that became Egypt's national anthem, and many of his other works are as popular today as when he was alive. Sayed Darwish was highly influenced by his teacher, the great Iraqi musician and singer Othman Al-Mosuli (1854–1923), and it has been established that his most famous songs "Zuruni kul Sana Marra", "Talaat Ya Mahla Noura" and "Albint Alshalabiya" among many others were adaptations from well known works of Othman Al-Musoli's, who is considered to be the greatest musician and singer in the modern Middle East. This has cast serious doubt about "Biladi Biladi" in terms of origin as it has been suggested that Othman also composed it. It is well known that Sayed Darwish tried his best to show that everything he played was the result of his own creativity and never admitted to plagiarism.

Sayed Darwish died on 10 September 1923 at the age of 31. The cause of his death is unknown. Some say he was poisoned and died from cardiac arrest, others suggest a cocaine overdose. He now rests in the "Garden of the Immortals" in Alexandria.

Legacy

At the age of 30, Darwish was hailed as the father of the new Egyptian music and the hero of the renaissance of Arab music. He is still very much alive in his works. His belief that music was not merely for entertainment but an expression of human aspiration imparted meaning to life. He is a legendary composer remembered in street names, statues, a commemorative stamp, an Opera house, and a feature film. He dedicated his melodies to the Egyptian and pan-Arab struggle and, in the process, enriched Arab 

music in its entirety.

The Palestinian singer and musicologist, Reem Kelani, examined the role of Sayed Darwish and his songs in her program for BBC Radio Four entitled "Songs for Tahrir" about her experiences of music in the uprising in Egypt in 2011.

Sayed Darwish put music to the Egyptian national anthem, Bilady, Bilady, Bilady, the words of which were adapted from a famous speech by Mustafa Kamel.

Coincidentally, on the day of his death, the national Egyptian leader Saad Zaghloul returned from exile; the Egyptians sang Darwish's new song "Mesrona watanna Saaduha Amalna", another national song by Sayed Darwish that was attributed to "Saad" and made especially to celebrate his return.

Click on this link  SALAM YA SALAMA  to hear the original song

Sung by Sayed Darwish

Article from various sources

Edited and presented by Mike