An old LP cover versus a new CD. Warda
Featuring the LP ‘Ma Endakch Fekra‘ from 1977, of the French-Algerian singer Warda (Warda Al-Jazairia).She was born in 1940 in an Algerian immigration family in Paris. Her father is Algerian, her mother Lebanese. She learned a lot of Lebanese songs through her mother. At the age of 11 in the early fifties she was on the French radio for some years singing Arabic songs. In the late fifties she leaves, as a result of the Algerian war for independence, for political reasons with her parents to Lebanon. There her singing career took off, but she quit singing abruptly when she married an Algerian soldier in 1963 on his explicit request. Housekeeping and serving the family has to be the priority, he tells her. She disappears from the stage for 10 years, until the Algerian president Houari Boumedienne asks her to sing at the celebration of 10 years of independence of Algeria. She agrees and performs, what results in a divorce. Since then she never quit performing. She married a well-known Egyptian composer Baligh Hamdi and quickly becomes one of the most famous Arabic singers of the 20th century. She has often been called ‘the new Oum Khalsoum’, according to Warda an unjust comparison. Her singing and that of Oum Khalsoum are individual and not comparable, she thinks. Warda also enjoys great success as an actress in tv-series and movies.
In addition some tracks of the album ‘Tootya’ of Toufic Farroukh that has been released this year, with vocals from the Lebanese singer Rima Kcheich.
