Their words

“Every time I sing I feel I am walking into a fearsome examination, and that the listeners are those examiners who show no mercy, make no allowances, and grant no resit to those who fail.”

Source: Umm Kulthum, signed article «حينما أغني» ("When I Sing"), Akhbar al-Yom, 25 November 1944; full text reproduced in the As-Safir archive, «ثلاث مقالات للست.. أم كلثوم تكتب!», 30 January 2015, issue 12985. English translation from the Arabic made for this entry (no published English version).

Context Writing under her own byline in 1944, she contrasted the child who sang at weddings without fear with the woman who had come to face every audience as a tribunal.

Umm KulthumEgypt · 1904–1975

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