( Oum Kalthoum )

Before she became Nasser's muse, the Cairo Diva lived the life of a queen in the last years of Egyptian monarchy. This anthology brings back her voice in the splendor of its genius. This CD presents remastered recordings made between 1936 and 1949. Her voice is both ardent and serene and its uncommon strength is so well under control that she can render in all possible regist'ers a moving feeling of compassion, fragility and vulnerability. She has often been compared to Billie Holiday or Edith Piaf: like them, she was a 20th-century singer, who married the modern world in all its most positive aspects: the universal love of art, beauty, liberty and improvisation.