Warda: clip “Ya Lahbab” |
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Collection title
Collection EPTV
First broadcast date
05/04/2005
Abstract
Warda, the Diva of the Arabic song , was born in July, 1940.
The audience discovers Warda through a TV show broadcast by the RTF in 1951, when she was only 11 years old.
Mohamed Abdelwahab proposes to compose songs for her, which she considers a tremendous honor, and thus becomes her “Godfather'.
In 1959, Riad Sombati, a famous Arab composer, who had heard her only once on Egyptian waves, as she was performing “Djamila” at the Festival of Damascus, was seduced by her voice; he decided then to take her under his wing. He invited her to Cairo where he composed many songs for her.
Warda starred in two films: “Sawt el Hob”(the voice of love),and “Hikayati maa ezzaman”(my destiny).
Broadcaster
EPTV - 1st national channel
Primary theme
Music and songs
Map locations
- Algeria - Centre - Algiers
Context
Warda: Ya Lahbab
Yvan Gastaut
This extract, broadcast on Canal Algérie in 2005, was produced by the Algerian government’s National Office of Culture and Communication, directed by Jaffar Gacem. It features the famous singer Warda performing Ya Lahbab, a song composed by Redouane Bouhireb in 2001: different generations of women go through the preparations for a wedding ceremony, mixing tradition with modernity, set in the somewhat prettified background of the Algiers Kasbah.
Ouarda Ftouki, otherwise known as Warda al Jazairia (“the Algerian rose”) was born in 1939 at Puteaux, a Parisian suburb. Her father was Algerian and her mother Lebanese, crazy about music. Originally from Souk Ahras, her father Mohamed Ftouki, was a nationalist activist and ran a home for workers at Boulogne-Billancourt. In the late 1940’s he became the owner of an Arabic music cabaret in the Latin Quarter: the “Tam Tam” (meaning “Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco”). It was in this establishment that, at the age of 12, Warda started singing, rapidly becoming a household name. In the middle of the Algerian war, backed by her family and committed to independence, she sang songs glorifying Algeria.
Not only did she give concerts in Arab countries, but she donated a portion of her income to the FLN
[1] which was not without consequences: a person well-known in the Arab world, Warda became a thorn in the side of France. In 1958, when Tam-Tam closed, she was forced to emigrate to Rabat and then Beirut.
The end of the war in 1962 was a turning point for her: she moved to Algeria and got married. But the marriage was a failure: her husband refused to let her sing. Just as “her” country was taking its first steps as an independent nation, she was not allowed to appear in public. After ten years of silence, President Houari Boumedienne asked her to appear during the 1972 commemorations of Independence. She agreed, accompanied by an Egyptian orchestra, and was acclaimed as one of the stars of the official ceremonies. Her husband was furious, the marriage ended.
Warda decided to move to Cairo where the stars and actors in the Arab world were thriving. Her career moved forward, both as a singer and on film. Re-married to the composer Baligh Hamdi, she adopted the timeless style of “Oriental diva”: long dress, wig full of abundant curls, static posture and handkerchief in her hand. Modelling herself on the older Oum Kalthoum, she sang love songs which sometimes lasted over an hour.
In 1976, she added a song praising the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to her repertoire, El Ghala Yenzad with the result she was harassed in Sadat's Egypt. But in the long term it did not alter her popularity.
Her presence in many films and television series during the 1970’s and 80’s put the finishing touches to her fame, particularly among the Egyptian public. Now a star, her every move was watched and reported in the columns of the Cairo tabloid press.
In the 2000’s she was just as famous, her concert in Rabat in 2009 was watched by tens of thousands. Having performed more than 300 songs and sold over 20 million albums worldwide, Warda al Jazairia died in Cairo on May 17th 2012, right in the middle of the 50th anniversary of Algerian independence. Her death caused a wave of emotion across the Mediterranean world. Her remains, repatriated to Algeria, were buried in the El-alia cemetery in Algiers, in the square of the mujahideen.
Bibliography – Site-ography
- Naïma Yahi, « Les femmes connaissent la chanson » in Driss El Yazami, Yvan Gastaut, Naïma Yahi (Sous la direction de), « Générations, un siècle d’histoire culturelle des Maghrébins en France », Editions Gallimard, 2009, pp.140-145.
[1] Front de Libération National – the Algerian independence party, with armed and revolutionary factions
