(b Tammay al-Zuhayra, El Mansura, Egypt, ?1904; d Cairo, 3 Feb 1975). Egyptian singer. She was born to a poor family. Her father, al-Shaykh Ibrāhīm al-Baltājī, was an official of the local mosque; he sang religious songs (al-inshād al-dīnī) and recited the story of the Prophet Muhammad's life (al-qissa al-nabawiyya) for weddings and other festive occasions in nearby villages. Umm Kulthum learned to sing as a child by listening to him teaching her older brother Khālid. When he discovered the unusual strength of his daughter's voice, her father asked her to join the family ensemble. She sang religious songs normally performed by males and appeared dressed as a boy to avoid the disapprobation that her father might face as a result of putting his daughter on stage. Other singers began to encourage al-Shaykh Ibrāhīm to move the family to Cairo, which was a centre of musical performance and commercial recording.
After more than five years of performing in the north-eastern cities of Egypt and in Cairo, the family moved to the capital in 1923. The requirements of performance in a cosmopolitan city prompted Umm Kulthum to alter her musical style and her appearance. She added new popular songs and historic Arabic poems to her repertory and replaced the vocal accompaniment provided by her father and brother with a prestigious takht, a small ensemble consisting of violin, qānūn, riqq and ‘ūd. She adopted the modest yet rich and Europeanized dress of the wealthy Muslim ladies of the city.
Her first success came with commercial recording. In 1924 and 1925 she recorded 14 songs for Odeon. These sold remarkably well, probably because of her large audience in the countryside and the fact that record players and recordings were appearing in public places such as coffee houses. Subsequent contracts with Gramophone and Odeon provided Umm Kulthum with a growing audience beyond the concert halls of Cairo and a substantial income that allowed her to choose her performing venues. By 1928 she was one of the most successful performers in Cairo.
In 1934 Umm Kulthum performed for the inaugural broadcast of the Egyptian state radio station, and radio became her principal means of reaching her audience. In the late 1930s she arranged for live broadcasts of her Thursday night concerts, which carried these events into homes and coffee houses during ‘prime time’. These concerts developed into a series held on the first Thursday of every month from October or November until June; they became Umm Kulthum's most famous activity and lasted until the onset of her final illness in 1973. She also appeared in six musical films, beginning with Widād in 1935 and ending with Fatma in 1948, but film never became a primary medium for her.
She worked with the major composers of her day, presenting them with poetry of her choice and supervising the composition of her repertory. Riyād al-Sunbātī, Muhammad al-Qasabjī, Zakariyyāh Ahmad and Muhammad ‘Abd al-Wahāb, among others, wrote songs for her. She recorded almost 300 songs, among the most famous of which are al-Atlāl (written by al-Sunbātī), Inta ‘Umrī (‘Abd al-Wahhāb), Raqq al-Habīb (al-Qasabjī) and Huwa Sahīh (Ahmad).
Umm Kulthum had a powerful voice and wide range with uniform strength throughout. She developed control that allowed her to extend phrases and to alter resonance and placement in delicate and artistic ways, and she applied these skills to the affective delivery of lines of poetry, inventing multiple renditions of important lines. In so doing, she advanced the historic Arab art of sung poetry.
During the 1950s and 60s she became a major cultural figure. She supported the initiatives of President Jamāl ‘Abd al-Nāsir and, following Egypt's defeat in the 1967 war, launched a series of concerts to replenish the Egyptian treasury, beginning in Paris and continuing throughout the Arab world. When she died, she was called ‘the voice and face of Egypt’.
N.A. Fu'ād: Umm Kulthūm wa-‘asr min al-fann [Umm Kulthūm and an era of art] (Cairo, 1976)
M. Shūsha: Umm Kulthūm: hayāt naghm [Umm Kulthūm: the life of a melody] (Cairo, 1976)
G. Braune: Die Qasīda im Gesang von Umm Kultūm: die arabische Poesie im Repertoire der grössten ägyptischen Sängerin unserer Zeit (Hamburg,1987)
G. Braune: Umm Kultūm: ein Zeitalter der Musik in Ägypten: die moderne ägyptische Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt, 1994)
V. Danielson: ‘The Voice of Egypt’: Umm Kulthūm, Arabic Song and Egyptian Society in the Twentieth Century (Chicago, 1997)
VIRGINIA DANIELSON