In the previous two articles, we talked about the legendary singer Om Kalthoum. This week we will talk about someone else at the pinnacle of Egypt’s musical heritage – Mohamed Abdel Wahab- who was dubbed the “Musician of the Generations”.
Abdel Wahab was born in Bab-el-Shaariya, Cairo, most likely in 1897, and died in 1991. He started his artistic career in 1917, when he joined the Gazayerli group and sang during the breaks of the group’s performances.
In 1921, he replaced the renowned Sayyed Darwish in singing the main role in the operette “Shahrazad”. Then, in 1924, he joined King Fouad’s Institute of Arabic Music to hone his talents. In 1932, Abdel Wahab participated in the famous international conference for Arabic music known as the: “1932 conference”.
One of the major influences on the formation of Abdel Wahab’s character was his relationship with the famous poet Ahmed Shawqi. He wasn’t only a music composer and a singer, as he also produced and played the main role in seven movies, between the years 1933 and 1946.
As it did with Om Kalthoum, the Center for Documentation of Cultural and Natural Heritage has published a book (in two volumes) and a CD containing of the works of Mohamed Abdel Wahab.
The book says that, of the 601 songs he sang, 275 were composed by him.
Abdel Halim Hafez performed the greatest number of Abdel Wahab’s songs (30), followed by Nagat (25) and Laila Morad (24). Om Kalthoum had only ten songs composed by Abdel Wahab, as they did not join forces until 1964.
Abdel Wahab composed most of his songs in Western musical scales including Nahawand or minor (121 songs), Bayati (65), Kurd (62), and Agam or major (52 songs). Next come the typical Arabic scales or maqamat, the Rast (44 songs), Higaz (35) and Huzam (26).
As for the lyricists for Abdel Wahab’s songs, Hussein el-Sayyed should be mentioned first, because he wrote 130 songs for Abdel Wahab, followed by Om Kalthoum’s favourite Ahmed Rami (43 songs), then Maamoun el-Shenawi (32) and finally Shawqi (31).
In addition to his wealth of musical compositions, Abdel Wahab contributed to the evolution of the Arabic music by adding a lot of Western musical instruments to his orchestra and introducing relatively long musical introductions to his songs, especially those he composed for Om Kalthoum. He had also enriched the orchestration of musical pieces and played a major role in the transformation of the takht style of music that was common before him to the musical “orchestra” style.
