The Shaggs

The Shaggs were an American all-female rock group formed in Fremont, New Hampshire in 1968. The band was composed of sisters Dorothy "Dot" Wiggin (vocals/lead guitar), Betty Wiggin (vocals/rhythm guitar), Helen Wiggin (drums), and later Rachel Wiggin (bass).

The Shaggs were formed by Dot, Betty, and Helen in 1968 on the insistence of their father, Austin Wiggin, who believed that his mother foresaw the band's rise to stardom. The band's only studio album, Philosophy of the World, was released in 1969. The album failed to garner attention, though the band continued to exist as a locally popular live act. The Shaggs disbanded in 1975 after the death of Austin.

The band is primarily notable today for their perceived ineptitude at playing conventional rock music; the band was described in one Rolling Stone article as "...sounding like lobotomized Trapp Family singers." ^[1] As the obscure LP achieved recognition among collectors, the band was praised for their raw, intuitive composition style and lyrical honesty. Philosophy of the World was lauded as a work of art brut, and was later reissued, followed by a compilation album, Shaggs' Own Thing, in 1982. The Shaggs are now seen as a groundbreaking outsider music group, receiving praise from mainstream artists such as Kurt Cobain and also from Frank Zappa after he called the Shaggs "better than the Beatles".^[2]

Contents [hide] 1 History 1.1 Career 1.2 Rediscovery 2 Members 3 Discography 3.1 Studio albums 3.2 Collections 3.3 Tribute albums 3.4 V/A compilations 4 References 5 Notes 6 External links

[edit]History

[edit]Career

The conceptual beginning of The Shaggs came from Austin Wiggin, Jr.'s mother. During Austin's youth she had predicted during a palmreading that he would marry a strawberry blonde woman, that he would have two sons after she had died, and that his daughters would form a popular music group. The first two predictions came true, so Austin set about making the third come true.^[3] Austin withdrew his daughters from school, bought them instruments, and arranged for them to receive music and vocal lessons. The Wiggin sisters themselves never planned to become a music group, but as Dot later said, "[Austin] was something of a disciplinarian. He was stubborn and he could be temperamental. He directed. We obeyed. Or did our best."^[4] Austin named The Shaggs after the then-popular shag hairstyle and as a reference to shaggy dogs.^[4] In 1968, Austin arranged for the girls to play a regular Saturday night gig at the Fremont, New Hampshire Town Hall.

	Sample of "Who Are Parents?" by The Shaggs Sample of "Who Are Parents" from the 1969 album Philosophy of the World
Problems listening to this file? See media help.

On the topic of the album, Cub Koda wrote, "There's an innocence to these songs and their performances that's both charming and unsettling. Hacked-at drumbeats, whacked-around chords, songs that seem to have little or no meter to them ... being played on out-of-tune, pawn-shop-quality guitars all converge, creating dissonance and beauty, chaos and tranquility, causing any listener coming to this music to rearrange any pre-existing notions about the relationships between talent, originality, and ability. There is no album you might own that sounds remotely like this one." (emphasis in original) [1]Reportedly, during the recording sessions the band would occasionally stop playing, claiming one of them had made a mistake and that they needed to start over, leaving the sound engineers to wonder how the girls could tell when a mistake had been made.

At this point, the man who had promised to press 1,000 copies of Philosophy of the World reportedly absconded with 900 of them, as well as with the money paid him. The rest were circulated to New England radio stations but attracted little attention, and the girls' dreams of superstardom were dashed.

Upon closer examination, The Shaggs seem to have a consistent (but highly idiosyncratic) approach to melody, harmony, and rhythm. The songs use highly irregular verse structures, which are emphasized by the melodic structures, which typically accord one note per syllable: the guitar accompaniment attempts to reproduce this pattern as well. Most of the Shaggs' material is made up of eighth- and quarter-notes.^{[citation needed]}

In 1975, Austin Wiggin arranged a second recording session for his daughters, during which time the group recorded several songs. However, when the sessions were forestalled by Austin's fatal heart attack, The Shaggs aborted the recording project and disbanded the group shortly thereafter.

[edit]Rediscovery

In 1980, Terry Adams and Tom Ardolino, of the band NRBQ, who owned an original copy of the LP and were fans of the music, convinced their record label, Rounder Records, to reissue Philosophy of the World. Upon the LP's release, Rolling Stone magazine accorded the Shaggs "Comeback of the Year" honors. The album was widely—if derisively—reviewed. Adams and Ardolino issued some unreleased 1975 recordings on the 1982 LP Shaggs' Own Thing, but its closer approximation to conventional music caused some to disregard this collection. In 1988 Dorothy Wiggin rediscovered the lost masters of Philosophy of the World in a closet; these and the tracks from Shaggs' Own Thing were remastered and released on Rounder as a CD, which had different cover art and a resequencing of all tracks. RCA Victor releasedPhilosophy of the World (with the original cover art and track sequence) on CD in 1999, whereupon it was hailed as something of an avant-garde cult classic. The Wall Street Journal reviewed the CD on the day it was released, and The New Yorker subsequently ran a lengthy profile of the Shaggs, authored by Susan Orlean.

On November 20 and 21, 1999, NRBQ celebrated their thirtieth anniversary with two concerts in New York City; their opening act each night were The Shaggs. Helen, who had been suffering from depression for years, declined to attend, so Ardolino, NRBQ's drummer, was faced with the challenging task of attempting to play Helen's parts. Dot, Betty, Rachel, and Ardolino played the same four-song set both nights.^[5]These performances marked the Shaggs' only live stage appearances outside of Fremont.

In 2001, the Animal World label released Better Than The Beatles, a Shaggs tribute album. The title was based on the title of an article by Lester Bangs in which he described the importance of what The Shaggs accomplished musically. The album featured established acts such as Ida, Optiganally Yours, R. Stevie Moore, Deerhoof and Danielson Famille covering The Shaggs' songs.^{[citation needed]}

Artisan Entertainment bought the movie rights to the band's story in 2000, with Katherine Dieckmann assigned to script and direct.^{[citation needed]} Since that time, the project has been acquired by a succession of production companies, but no film has yet been made.

A stage musical about The Shaggs, Philosophy of the World by librettist/lyricist Joy Gregory, composer/lyricist Gunnar Madsen, and co-conceiver/director John Langs, opened at the John Anson Ford Theatre inLos Angeles in November 2003. The LA Weekly Theater Award-winning Scenic Design was created by Brian Sidney Bembridge. The production was staged at Lookingglass Theatre Company in Chicago in the spring of 2004 and at the New York Musical Theatre Festival in September 2005.^{[citation needed]}

The show received its New York premiere starting May 12, 2011 in a co-production between Playwrights Horizons and New York Theatre Workshop.

In May 2011 The Shaggs were the subject of a BBC Radio 4 documentary by Jon Ronson.^[6]

Helen Wiggin died in 2006.^[7] The widow of Austin Wiggin, Jr., Annie Wiggin, died in 2005.^{[citation needed]}

Lucha Reyes

Maria de luz Flores (May 23, 1906-June 25, 1944), better known as Lucha Reyes, was a famous Mexican mariachi singer. She was a native of Guadalajara, Jalisco. She used the last name Reyes as a homage to her stepfather.

Reyes had a very poor childhood. In 1917, she and her mother moved to Mexico City. By 1919, she began singing during circus acts. At the young age of thirteen, she had begun to make some money with her voice, and to meet some of that era's most popular Mexican singers.

Reyes went on tour in 1920 to Los Angeles, where she would become an icon among the local Hispanics. She made a duo with Nancy Torres, and decided to stay in Los Angeles. In 1924, she returned to Mexico.

Reyes would eventually decide to launch a solo career, and she became popular with Mexican radio listeners, while keeping a busy theater schedule. In 1927, she decided to try to conquer Europe, and she joinedJuan N. Torreblanca on a tour of that continent.

The tour, however, had to be cancelled when it reached Berlin. It is not publicly known how the tour members were stranded in Germany; what is known, however, is that a popular piano player who travelled with them had to play one night at an infamous local bar in order for her to be able to afford an air ticket back to Mexico.

One positive aspect about this tour was that Reyes was able to record her first LP, one of the first LPs to introduce Mexican music to European audiences. Reyes was not a Mariachi singer during this period of her career, she was rather a soprano.

Reyes had taken light clothing with her for her European tour; this, combined with the cold weathers of Europe when compared to Mexico, caused her to get sick and, eventually, to lose her voice. She took one year off and returned in 1929.

Her voice ailment was the cause of a voice change, and, upon returning, she started singing "rancheras". One of her first songs in the "ranchera-mariachi" genre, "Guadalajara", became a classic that is nowadays considered by many to be Mexico's second national anthem.

When she decided to sing with mariachis, she caused a culture shock, as Mexicans were not used to seeing women lead mariachi bands. Despite her success, she also garnered much criticism, especially when talking about alcoholism in public: she would declare after certain songs that she wanted to go and get drunk, or such things like that.

In 1934, she married producer Felix Martin Cervantes, and she made her first movie, "Cancion del Alma" ("Song of the Soul").

Between 1937 and 1943, she made six movies, acting with Pedro Armendariz (twice), Dolores del Río, Jorge Negrete, Flor Silvestre and Consuelo del Alba, among others.

Lucha Reyes' death was a mysterious one. Her alcoholism problem had become worse, and she had begun to use other drugs. She was found dead after taking tequila and some pills, she committed suicide, this was due to her failing health, she was just 38.

A movie about her life would later show that Reyes supposedly hired workers for her mansions and treat them like slaves. These allegations, however, have never been denied nor accepted by her relatives.

She has a statue in 'Mariachi Plaza' in East Los Angeles, California.

Judy Mowatt

Judy Mowatt was born in the year 1948 in Gordon Town, St. Andrew Jamaica. She is an internationally acclaimed reggae artist who rose to fame as 1/3 of the trio the I THREE who were the Back-Ground vocalists for Bob Marley.

[edit]Biography

13 years old, Judy Mowatt became a member of a dance troupe which toured Jamaica and other islands in the Caribbean. Her ambition was to become a registered nurse, but instead she dedicated her life to nurse and restore healing to the hearts and soul of mankind through her music. Her earliest influences were Aretha Franklin,Otis Redding, Curtis Mayfield, Dionne Warwick, Bob Marley, Marcia Griffiths, The Staple Singers and The Soulettes. A coincidental meeting with two teenage girls who were earlier in her dance troupe led to the formation of the Gaylettes, in 1967.

Judy Mowatt associated with Bunny Livingston/Wailer in the early 1970s, and she has written some of the tracks recorded by Bunny Wailer. At that time, for legal reasons in the music business, she used alternate names as Juliann and Jean Watt.^[1] On The Wailers LP Burnin' (1973), two songs with Bunny Wailer as lead singer was written by Judy Mowatt under the pseudonym Jean Watt: "Hallelujah Time" and "Pass It On". Furthermore, the Wailers recorded a single, "Reincarnated Soul", also written by Jean Watt and sung by Bunny Wailer. This song – with the name changed to "Reincarnated Souls" – was included two years later on Bunny Wailers first solo album Blackheart Man (1976).

In 1974, she got her big break by joining Bob Marley's backing vocal trio the "I-Threes".^[2]

Her Black Woman LP (1980) is considered by many critics to be the greatest reggae LP done by a female artiste. It was also the first reggae LP recorded by a woman acting as her own producer.^[3]

She became the first female singer nominated for a Grammy in the category of reggae music when her Working Wonders LP was nominated in 1985.

Formerly a member of the Rastafari movement,^[4] in the late 1990s she converted to Christianity and now sings Gospel music.

Uum Kulthum

Umm Kulthum

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about Egyptian singer. For other uses, see Umm Kulthum (name).

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Oum Kalthoum
Background information
Birth name	Oum Kalthoum
Born	December 31, 1898 Tamay Ez-Zahayra, El Senbellawein, Dakahlia Governorate, Egypt
Died	February 3, 1975 (aged 76) Cairo, Egypt
Genres	Arabic classical music
Occupations	Singer, actress
Years active	c. 1924–73
Labels	EMI Arabia
Associated acts	Fairuz Abdel Halim Hafez Mohammed Abdel Wahab Maria Callas
Website	(unofficial)

Umm Kulthum (Arabic: أم كلثوم‎, born أم كلثوم إبراهيم البلتاجي , Umm Kulthum Ebrahim Elbeltagi; see Kunya; Egyptian Arabic: Om Kalsoum) (December 31, 1898-February 3, 1975) was an Egyptian singer, songwriter, and actress. Born in Tamay ez-Zahayra village that belongs to El Senbellawein, she is known as the Star of the East (kawkab el-sharq). More than three decades after her death, she is widely regarded as the greatest female singer in Arab music history.^[1]

Various spellings of her name include Om Koultoum, Om Kalthoum, Oumme Kalsoum and Umm Kolthoum.

Contents [hide] 1 Biography 1.1 Early life 1.2 Fame 1.3 "Golden age" 2 Legacy 3 Voice 4 Selected discography 4.1 Anthology by modern artists 5 References 6 Sources 7 External links

[edit]Biography

[edit]Early life

Umm Kulthum was born in Tamay ez-Zahayra village in El Senbellawein, Dakahlia Governorate, Egypt, in Dakahlia, in the Nile Delta, near the Mediterranean Sea. Her birth date is unconfirmed as birth registration was not enforced throughout the Arab world. The Egyptian Ministry of Information seems to have given either December 31, 1898, or December 31, 1904.^[2] She was likely born some time between these two dates.

At a young age, she showed exceptional singing talent. Her father, an Imam, taught her to recite the Qur'an, and she is said to have memorized the entire book. When she was 12 years old, her father disguised her as a young boy and entered her in a small performing troupe that he directed. At the age of 16, she was noticed byMohamed Aboul Ela, a modestly famous singer, who taught her the old classical repertoire. A few years later, she met the famous composer and oudist Zakariyya Ahmad, who invited her to come to Cairo. Although she made several visits to Cairo in the early 1920s, she waited until 1923 before permanently moving there. She was invited on several occasions to the house of Amin Beh Al Mahdy, who taught her how to play the oud, a type of lute. She developed a very close relationship to Rawheya Al Mahdi, daughter of Amin, and became her closest friend. Kulthum even attended Rawheya's daughter's wedding, although she always tried to avoid public appearances.

Amin Al Mahdi introduced her to the cultural circles in Cairo. In Cairo, she carefully avoided succumbing to the attractions of the bohemian lifestyle, and indeed throughout her life stressed her pride in her humble origins and espousal of conservative values. She also maintained a tightly managed public image, which undoubtedly added to her allure.

At this point in her career, she was introduced by friend Robert McClure to the famous poet Ahmad Rami, who wrote 137 songs for her. Rami also introduced her toFrench literature, which he greatly admired from his studies at the Sorbonne, Paris, and eventually became her head mentor in Arabic literature and literary analysis. Furthermore, she was introduced to the renowned oud virtuoso and composer Mohamed El Qasabgi. El Qasabgi introduced Umm Kulthum to the Arabic Theatre Palace, where she would experience her first real public success. In 1932, her fame increased to the point where she embarked upon a large tour of the Middle East, touring such cities as Damascus, Syria; Baghdad, Iraq; Beirut and Tripoli, Lebanon.

[edit]Fame

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“	Imagine a singer with the virtuosity of Joan Sutherland orElla Fitzgerald, the public persona of Eleanor Rooseveltand the audience of Elvis and you have Umm Kulthum.	”
— Virginia Danielson, Harvard Magazine[3]

Umm Kulthum's establishment as one of the most famous and popular Arab singer was driven by several factors. During her early career years, she faced staunch competition from two prominent singers: Mounira El Mahdeya and Fathiyya Ahmad, who had equally beautiful and powerful voices. However, Mounira had poor control over her voice, and Fathiyya lacked the emotive vocal impact that Umm Kulthum's voice had. The presence of all these enabling vocal characteristics attracted the most famous composers, musicians, and lyricists to work with Umm Kulthum.

In the mid-1920s, Mohammad el Qasabgi, who was the most virtuosic oud player and one of the most accomplished yet understated Arab composers of the 20th century, formed her small orchestra (takht) composed of the most virtuosic instrumentalists. Furthermore, unlike most of her contemporary artists who held private concerts, Umm Kulthum's performances were open to the general public, which contributed to the transition from classical, and often elitist, to popular Arabic music.

By 1934, Umm Kulthum must have been one of the most famous singers in Egypt to be chosen as the artist to inaugurate Radio Cairo with her voice on May 31. Over the second half of the 1930s, two initiatives will seal the fate of Umm Kulthum as the most popular and famous Arab singer: her appearances in musical movies and the live broadcasting of her concerts performed on the first Thursday of each month of her musical season from October to June. Her influence kept growing and expanding beyond the artistic scene: the reigning royal family would request private concerts and even attend her public performances.

In 1944, King Farouk I of Egypt decorated her with the highest level of orders (nishan el kamal), a decoration reserved exclusively to members of the royal family and politicians. Despite this recognition, the royal family rigidly opposed her potential marriage with the King's uncle, a rejection that deeply wounded her pride and led her to distance herself from the royal family and embrace grassroots causes, such as her answering the request of the Egyptian legion trapped in Falujah during the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict to sing a particular song. Among the army men trapped were the figures who were going to lead the bloodless revolution of July 23, 1952, prominently Gamal Abdel Nasser, arguably he was a fan of Umm Kulthum and who would later become the president of Egypt.

Early after the revolution, the Egyptian musicians guild of which she became a member (and eventually president) rejected her because she had sung for the then-deposed king, Farouk of Egypt. When Nasser discovered that her songs were forbidden from being aired on the radio, he reportedly said something to the effect of "What are they? Crazy? Do you want Egypt to turn against us?"^[4] It was his favor that made the musicians' guild accept her back into the fold. But it is uncertain if that happened. In addition, Umm Kulthum was a dedicated Egyptian patriot since the time of King Farouk. Some claim that Umm Kulthum's popularity helped Nasser’s political agenda. For example, Nasser’s speeches and other government messages were frequently broadcast immediately after Umm Kulthum's monthly radio concerts. Umm Kulthum was also known for her continuous contributions to charity works for the Egyptian military efforts. Umm Kulthum’s monthly concerts took place on the first Thursday of every month and were renowned for their ability to clear the streets of some of the world's most populous cities as people rushed home to tune in.

Her songs deal mostly with the universal themes of love, longing and loss. They are nothing short of epic in scale, with durations measured in hours rather than minutes. A typical Umm Kulthum concert consisted of the performance of two or three songs over a period of three to four hours. In the late 1960s, due to her age and weakened vocal abilities, she began to shorten her performances to two songs over a period of two and a half to three hours. These performances are in some ways reminiscent of the structure of Western opera, consisting of long vocal passages linked by shorter orchestral interludes. However, Umm Kulthum was not stylistically influenced by opera and she sang solo most of her career.

During the 1930s, her repertoire took the first of several specific stylistic directions. Her songs were virtuosic, as befit her newly-trained and very capable voice, and romantic and modern in musical style, feeding the prevailing currents in Egyptian popular culture of the time. She worked extensively with texts by romantic poet Ahmad Rami and composer Mohammad El-Qasabgi, whose songs incorporated European instruments such as the violoncello and double bass as well as harmony.

[edit]"Golden age"

Umm Kulthum's musical directions in the 1940s and early 1950s and her mature performing style caused this period to be popularly called the "golden age" of Umm Kulthum. In keeping with changing popular taste as well as her own artistic inclinations, in the early 1940s, she requested songs from composer Zakariya Ahmad and colloquial poet Mahmud Bayram el-Tunsi cast in styles considered to be indigenously Egyptian. This represented a dramatic departure from the modernist romantic songs of the 1930s, mainly led by Mohammad El-Qasabgi. Umm Kulthum had abstained from singing Qasabgi's music since the early 1940s. Their last stage song collaboration in 1941 was Raq el Habib ("The Lover's Heart Softens"), one of her most popular, intricate, and high-caliber songs.

The reason for this abstinence is not clear. It is speculated that this was due in part to the popular failure of the movie Aida, in which Umm Kulthum sings mostly Qasabgi's compositions, including the first part of the opera. Qasabgi was experimenting with Arabic music, under the influence of classical European music, and was composing a lot to Asmahan, a singer who immigrated to Egypt from Lebanon and was the only serious competitor for Umm Kulthum before her tragic death in a car accident in 1944.

Simultaneously, Umm Kulthum started to rely heavily on a younger composer who joined her artistic team a few years earlier: Riad El-Sonbati. While Sombati was evidently influenced by Qasabgi in those early years, the melodic lines he composed were more beautiful and more acceptable by Umm Kulthum's audience. The result of collaborations with Rami/Sombati and al-Tunisi/Ahmad was a populist and popular repertoire that had lasting appeal for the Egyptian audience.

Umm Kulthum singing around 1960.

In 1946, Umm Kulthum defied all odds by presenting during her monthly concerts a religious poem in classical Arabic, Salou Qalbi ("Ask My Heart"), written by Ahmad Shawqi and composed by Sonbati. The success was immediate and huge. It also reconnected Umm Kulthum with her early singing years, defined Sombati's unique style in composing and established him as the best composer of music for poems in classical Arabic, toppling Mohammed Abdel Wahab. Similar poems written by Shawqi were subsequently composed by Sombati and sung by Umm Kulthum, including Woulida el Houda ("The Prophet is Born"; 1949), in which she raised eyebrows of royalists by singing a verse that describes the Prophet Mohammad as "the Imam of Socialists".

At the peak of her career, in 1950, Umm Kulthum sang Sonbati's composition of excerpts of what Ahmad Rami considered the accomplishment of his career: the translation into classical Arabic of Omar Khayyám's quartets (Rubayyiat el Khayyam). The song included quartets that dealt with both epicurism and redemption. Ibrahim Nagi's poem Al-Atlal ("The Ruins"), composed by Sonbati and premiered in 1966, is considered by many^[who?] as Umm Kulthum's best song. While this is debatable as Umm Kulthum vocal abilities had regressed considerably by then, the song can be viewed as the last example of genuine Arabic music at a time when even Umm Kulthum had started to compromise by singing Western-influenced pieces composed by her old rival Mohammed Abdel Wahab.

The duration of Umm Kulthum's songs in performance was not fixed, but varied based on the level of emotive interaction between the singer and her audience and Umm Kulthum's own mood for creativity. An improvisatory technique, which was typical of old classical Arabic singing and that she wonderfully executed for as long as she could have (both her regressing vocal abilities with age and the increased Westernization of Arabic music became an impediment to this art), was to repeat a single line or stance over and over, subtly altering the emotive emphasis and intensity and exploring one or various musical modal scales (maqām) each time to bring her audiences into a euphoric and ecstatic state."^{[citation needed]} For example, the available live performances (about 30) of Ya Zalemni, one of her most popular songs, varied in length from 45 to 90 min, depending on both her creative mood for improvisations and the audience request for more repetitions, illustrating the dynamic relationship between the singer and the audience as they fed off each other's emotional energy.

The spontaneous creativity of Umm Kulthum as a singer is most impressive when, upon listening to these many different renditions of the same song over a time span of 5 years (1954–1959), the listener is offered a totally unique and different experience. This intense, highly personalized relationship was undoubtedly one of the reasons for Umm Kulthum's tremendous success as an artist. Worth noting though that the length of a performance did not necessarily reflect either its quality or the improvisatory creativity of Umm Kulthum. Some of her best performances were 25-45 min in duration, such as the three available renditions, including the commercial version of El Awwila Fi'l Gharam ("First in Love"), and Ana Fi Intizarak("I am waiting for you"), (commercial and 3-3-1955 performance). On the other hand, her songs as of the mid 1960s would extend sometimes over a duration of two hours (premiere of Enta Omri, Enta el Hobb, etc.); however, the repetitions, mostly executed upon the request of the audience, were often devoid of creative musical improvisations and limited to vocal colorful variations on a syllable, letter or word.

Around year 1965, Umm Kulthum started cooperating with composer Mohammed Abdel Wahab. Her first song composed by Abdel Wahab "Enta Omri" (You are my Life") was condiered the "summit meeting". Several beautiful songs composed by Abdel Wahab followed such as "Amal Hayati" ("The Hope of my Life"), "Fakkarouni" ("They reminded Me"), and others.

Umm Kulthum also sang for composers Mohammad El Mougi and Sayyed Mikkawi.

[edit]Legacy

Monument to Umm Kulthum in Zamalek,Cairo. It is located on the site of the former house of the singer.

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Umm Kulthum has been a significant influence on a number of musicians, both in the Arab World and beyond. Among others, Jah Wobble has claimed her as a significant influence on his work. Bob Dylan has been quoted as saying, "She's great. She really is. Really great."^[5][6] Maria Callas, Jean-Paul Sartre, Marie Laforêt,Salvador Dalí, Nico, Bono, Farin Urlaub, and Led Zeppelin are also known to be admirers of Kulthum's music.^{[citation needed]} Youssou N'Dour, a fan of hers since childhood, recorded his 2004 album Egypt with an Egyptian orchestra in homage to her legacy.^[7] One of her best known songs, "Enta Omri," has been the basis of many reinterpretations, including one 2005 collaborative project involving Israeli and Egyptian artists.

She was referred to as the Lady by Charles de Gaulle, and is regarded as the Incomparable Voice by Maria Callas. Umm Kulthum is remembered in Egypt, the Middle East, and the Arab world as one of the greatest singers and musicians to have ever lived. It is difficult to accurately measure her vocal range at its peak, as most of her songs were recorded live, and she was careful not to strain her voice due to the extended length of her songs. Even today, she has retained a near-mythical status among young Egyptians. She is also notably popular in Israel among Jews (of Mizrahi/Arab background) and Arabs alike, and her records continue to sell about a million copies a year. In 2001, the Egyptian government opened the Kawkab al-Sharq (Star of the East) Museum in the singer's memory. Housed in a pavilion on the grounds of Cairo's Manesterly Palace, the collection includes a range of Umm Kulthum's personal possessions, including her trademark sunglasses and scarves, along with photographs, recordings, and other archival material.^[8]

[edit]Voice

Kulthum had a contralto vocal range.^[9] It is known that she had the ability to sing as low as the second octave, as well as the ability to sing as high as between the seventh and the eighth octaves at her vocal peak;^{[citation needed]} yet she also could easily sing over a range surpassing two octaves near the end of her career. Her ability to produce approximately 14,000 vibrations per second with her vocal cords^{[citation needed]}, her unparalleled vocal strength (no commercial microphone utilized for singing could withstand its strength, forcing her to stand at a 1- to 3-meter radius away from one^{[citation needed]}), and her voice surpassed convention arguably made her the one of the most incomparable voices of the Arab world. Her ability and capability to sing every single Arabic scale made her one of only five women in the history of the Arab world to be able to do this, along with Asmahan, Fairouz, Sabah, and the late Thekra.^{[citation needed]}