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In 1969 Algeria was preparing for the Pan-African Cultural Festival, which people call for short: PANAF. All African nations are invited, and even "friendly" countries from outside Africa: the Soviet Union, Vietnam, Cuba ... a big party for non-biased countries and anti-colonial regimes. Egypt was present, Youssef Chahine was invited as an observer and guest of honor at the festival as well as several names from the press, literature, and cinema. In the festival guide we read a word by Abdel Aziz Al-Ahwani, director of the Dramatic and Musical Arts Institute in Cairo at the time as noted, in which he talks about African music in Egypt, about the Nile and the Egyptian farmer, the musical instruments of the pharaohs, then he mentions the first Arab Music Conference in Cairo in 1932, and about the disappointment of the orientalists who attended and saw the development of Arab music; not a word on Umm Kulthum or Sayed Darwish - nothing.

Capture-d’écran-2017-03-30-à-21.25.45-1.

The PANAF

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The festival lasted a whole month, and South African Myriam Makeba sang "I Am Free in Algeria" and was granted Algerian citizenship, and the image of "Algeria: Mecca of the Revolutionaries" was strengthened, then everyone returned to their countries. In summary: Umm Kulthum was not in the mood of those who were in power at the time, perhaps she was not revolutionary enough, in Boumediene's view, she comes with a full band and a pause on the stage that lasts since the era of kings, she is a witness to the end of kings and expresses in her voice decades of poets and composers. On the other hand, perhaps she seemed royal to the revolutionaries in Algeria, and among the popular musicians here for instance, Umm Kulthum was not a big name. Farid Al-Atrash was, and there is more than one testimony by the oud players and chaabi singers in Algeria about their meetings with him in the cabarets of Paris during the 1940's and 1950's. And they were influenced by his playing, and even in Oran, the founder of contemporary Orani music Ahmed Wahbi was very influenced by Mohamed Abdel-Wahhab. With these threads I tried to pull together I asked more than once: Was it because she was a woman?

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