Album Review
Chansons À L'Écran (Soundtrack Cuts) 1935 - 1946
Oum Kalthoum
La Voix Du Maghreb
[Compay Segundo is sitting straight-backed on the floor as the music comes to an end. Ever since his death he has been entertained by the new flexibility of his body and now he is happy to discover that even after almost an hour of sitting on a hard surface, his bones do not hurt the way they used to. Joseito Fernandez is seated on a chair. He has been dead for longer than his friend, and these little things do not delight him the way they once did.]
Compay Segundo: I am thinking of a wailing plum.
Joseito Fernandez: Why a plum?
Compay: A plum, Joseito, or a pear, or some other full-bodied fruit. Kalthoum's wail has a classical Arab sound, that is, it rises and quavers and comes down in spirals decorated with hitches and hiccoughs, but no matter how profoundly her voice is raised she always maintains a sense of depth, like the low pitch of a groan, which gives the voice its guts. I am not accustomed to Egyptian music, and so it disconcerts me sometimes -
Joseito: - you mean, she sounds as if she is in pain -
Compay: - well - no - mm - so, it disconcerts me sometimes and yet I always find myself admiring that grunt from the gut which roots the noise to the earth. Its strength is most apparent in 'El Hob Halaotu Bil Kintar.' The song starts with a male voice which is followed first by a chorus of other voices, and then by Kalthoum who overwhelms them all.
Joseito: It might be that they have put the microphone closer to her mouth than to anyone else's.
Compay: That is true. Nonetheless, it is an admirable voice. Oh, look, she died in 1975, one year before you.
Joseito: She's still well-loved in the Arab world, even though she did sing such very long songs.
Compay: Well, they are used to that, the Arabs. You have to respect someone who can keep the same song going for an entire hour and still hold their audience's attention.
Joseito: The longest song on Chansons À L'Écran lasts for only eight minutes.
Compay: These songs were taken from four movies she appeared in, Joseito: Nachid El Amal, Widad, Salama and Fatma. You can't have an hour-long song in a movie otherwise there would be no movie.
Joseito: I know that Compay; I understand movies as well as you do. That eight-minute song 'Qadet Hayati Hayra Aleyk' is my favourite track on this CD because the first part of the eight minutes is taken up by introductory chords from the orchestra. I love those chords. They sound ponderous and expectant in the self-important way of 1930s films.
Compay: They storm on like giants: bom BOM bom ... Yes, this is a good beginning. Some of the other songs start and stop so suddenly that they sound as if someone has picked up the soundtrack, whole, and hacked out these shorter chunks of music with a saw, leaving rough, bleeding stumps at both ends.
Joseito: I wish I knew enough about Arab music to judge the songs themselves. Are they good, compared to the rest of her oeuvre? Are they bad? Are they just so-so? They sound fine to me, but how much do I have to compare them to? Not a lot. A number of them were composed by Ahmed Rami, the same poet who worked with her on almost half of the songs she recorded in her life, so we know that some standard of quality has been carried over from her everyday songs into this film music, and yet, you know, I ask myself in an uncertain voice - how can I be expected to be righteously discerning in the manner of a proper critic?
Compay: Her tone is still a human tone even though she is singing music that seems unfamiliar. You can hear her emotions tremble as if she is on the verge of being undone, and yet her grip on the song is firm and commanding. She plants herself in the centre of the scene. I would have liked to have seen her sing these in the cinema.
Joseito: The booklet is not helpful. The English half has been badly translated. The information is scrappy and sometimes puzzling.
Compay: Even so, this is possibly a better place for a beginner to start than the more classical hour-long songs.
Joseito: What about that Best of Kalthoum compilation we saw when we went into the city last Thursday? The songs there were short, and because they were proper songs, not movie songs, they wouldn't have that chopped-off effect at the end.
Compay: My friend, you are perfectly right, however, I cannot remember the exact name of the CD.
Joseito: Nor can I, but it was something similar to Best of or The Greatest Songs of or Famous Music of.
Compay: Something like that.
