The pioneers and the roaring twenties in Cairo

Divas, from Umm Kulthum to Dalida, invites us to discover the lives and careers of the greatest artists of Arab music and cinema from the 1920s to the 1970s.

Stars the likes of Umm Kulthum, Asmahan, Fairuz, Warda, Dalida, Tahiyya Carioca, Samia Gamal, Laila Murad, Sabah, Soad Hosny, Faten Hamama, and Hind Rostom are for the first time reunited and honored in an ambitious exhibition. Coming from modest families or part of the upper-class, orphans or exiled, Muslim, Christian or Jewish, their unique histories bear witness to the cultural and social diversity of the Arab world. The exhibition pays tribute to these powerful women that contributed to transforming the arts by excelling in them, and allowed Egypt and Lebanon to shine upon the Arab World. Breaking with traditions, they gave women an unprecedented place in the press, in the fields of music, dance, singing and cinema. Thanks to their talent, they led the oftentimes male-dominated crowd to extasy during concerts to hold their breath in movie theaters. Beyond their artistic genius, they incarnated the ideals of Arab society and some fervently defended their political positions. They knew how to take advantage of the century’s technological evolutions, the coming of age of the record, the radio and of cinema. Going beyond borders, they conquered the heart of the Arab public, from Damas to Casablanca, from Paris to Algiers.

Their fight for emancipation still resonates in today’s creations. The exhibition ends with installations, most of them never exhibited before, by seven international artists that bear witness to the durability of the divas’ legacies in contemporary art and music.

Thanks to the families of these divas, to their friends but also to passionate collectors, unique works were reunited here for the first time. Mirroring the intimate and public portraits of these exceptional artists, this is a political, intellectual and social story of the Arab world that takes shape, interrogating the place of women in Arab societies.

The pioneers and the roaring twenties in Cairo

In the beginning of the 20^th century, Egypt went through important political, societal, artistic and technological transformations. The Nahda (intellectual renaissance) was then at its peak and Cairo was a cosmopolitan city at the center of the Arab world’s artistic activity. Born within the bourgeoisie, a movement opposed to British colonialism wishing to break with the past, advocated for nationalist ideas and dreamed of modernity. Women actively supported these uprisings and got engaged in other fights to advance their freedoms.

Others held a defining role in the artistic revolution that was unfolding. As the first women to go onstage, they contributed to the emergence of concert halls and cabarets in the capital. They actively participated to the changes that took place in music and were at the heart of the emergence of an Egyptian cinema. True pioneers, they paved the way for the great Arab divas as artists but also as entrepreneurs and businesswomen. Here, we pay tribute to their talent and visionary deeds that have gradually fallen into oblivion.

The feminist cause in Egypt

In the 1920s in Cairo, personalities like Hoda Chaaraoui, Ceza Nabaraoui or Safia Zaghoul, fought for women’s emancipation and were engaged in anti-imperialist movements. They took  a stand as soon as 1919 by protesting in the streets against the English presence. These upper-class born feminists focused their actions on issues such as the veil, education, women’s right to vote and marriage and divorce legislation. Some, such as the famous writer May Ziadeh, held a “salon” where intellectuals and politicians came to discuss. By letting men into the private sphere, they upset traditional codes. They were journalists, writers and founders of newspapers, and used Arabic and French, more rarely English, to spread their ideas. The 1920s were the years of the first public unveilings that would come to shake up  the place of women’s bodies in the city.

When women go on stage

At the end of the 19^th century in Egypt, musicians would perform for particular occasions in closed upper-class circles. These so-called classical representations of music used classical Arabic and were based on improvisation. In 1906, a true revolution came about with the advent of the 78-rpm record. The structure of songs got shorter in order to adapt to this new support. In parallel, concert halls called “casinos” multiplied in the streets of Cairo and music then became accessible to all. A real industry, carried by production companies, started to offer more entertaining genres. Women, the new actors of the musical scene, gained the status of moutribat (singers) and played an important role by interpreting a light genre of music called taqtûqa. All these factors contributed to bringing singers to the forefront where they gained public recognition.

From the stage to the big screen: the pioneers of cinema

In the beginning of the 20^th century, Egyptian musicals were a very masculine environment. Women were underrepresented and the actors and actresses are often of Syrian-Lebanese origins, whether Christian or Jewish. Munira al-Mahdiyya was the first Muslim woman to appear on a theatre stage in 1916. In just a few years, numerous female artists successfully defied the male-dominated world of entertainment. As they reached stardom, their pictures invaded the press and the shows’ posters put them in the spotlight. They appeared modern and unveiled. The first entirely Egyptian feature, Laila in 1927 (by and with Aziza Amir), already showed ties with theatre; many great pioneers of cinema have started their careers on stage. In its beginnings, Egyptian cinema was carried by private companies where each star owned their own company. The “actresses-producers”, Aziza Amir (Isis film), Assia Dagher (Lotus film), and Bahiga Hafez (Fanar film) were then notorious personalities in these circles. With the advent of talking cinema in 1932, films were structured around singing, similarly to theatre.