Umm Kulthum: Artistic Agency and the Shaping of an Arab Legend, 1967-2007 (Music / Culture) - Hardcover

Lohman, Laura

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0819570710 ISBN 13: 9780819570710

Publisher: Wesleyan University Press, 2010

Synopsis

In 1967 Egypt and the Arab world suffered a devastating defeat by Israel in the Six-Day War. Though long past the age at which most singers would have retired, the sexagenarian Egyptian singer Umm Kulth m launched a multifaceted response to the defeat that not only sustained her career, but also expanded her international fame and shaped her legacy. By examining biographies, dramas, monuments, radio programming practices, and recent recordings, Laura Lohman delves into Umm Kulth m's role in fashioning her image and the conflicting ways that her image and music have been interpreted since her death in 1975.

About this title

Review:

"A strong-willed talent, Umm Kulthum made her choices wisely and imposed these to lasting effect, as evidenced most recently by the publication of this impressive book." --Richard Henderson, The Wire: Adventures in Modern Music

"This is only the second serious book in English on the great Egyptian singer (the other is Virginia Danielson's The Voice of Egypt, published in 1997). While Danielson's book was a scholarly biography, this work looks at how Umm Kulthum's reputation has endured and grown from the latter part of her life to the present."--Edward Fox, Saudi Aramco World

"Laura Lohman's book represents a new and welcome critical analysis of the career of Egypt's most famous musical icon, the legendary singer Umm Kulthum."--Daniel J. Gilman, Ethnomusicology

"Lohman has sifted through a vast body of scholarly and popular literature to produce an exceptionally well-documented and clearly argued examination of one of the great musicians of the twentieth century. ... Kulthum emerges as a strong and sophisticated shaper of her media identity at a time when radio and television were in their infancy."--James Ruchala, Journal of Folklore Research

"(A) well-written, well-researched, and well-documented account of an interesting and highly relevant topic. ... The book offers a very welcome glimpse into the huge bulk of written sources to Umm Kulthum's life and afterlife; it interrogates wisely from the perspective of recent research in stardom and in the constructed nature of star images, and still it bears the marks of respect for the particular cultural context. ... (W)armly recommended for research and study."--Søren Møller Sørensen, Danish Yearbook of Musicology

About the Author:

LAURA LOHMAN is an assistant professor in the Department of Music at California State University, Fullerton.

About this edition

• Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0819570710
• ISBN 13: 9780819570710
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256