Abdulhaleem Hafiz (The Nightingale)

Music is an international language that everybody understands; using the right notes, time, and rhythm you can even make an alien feel what you express through music. Music in the past had meanings and expressions behind them. The authors of “The Bollywood Reader” Rajinder Dudrah and Jigna also agree to this, and say that music today is only categorized under ‘Entertainment.’

After reading the Bollywood Reader and knowing about the importance of the song-and-dance-sequences in Bollywood movies, I remembered Abdulhaleem Hafiz, one of the most amazing singers in the 20th century that touched the worlds’ emotions through his songs and movies.

Abdulhaleem came from a very poor family in Egypt, and was rejected when he came up with his songs “Ya Helo Ya Asmar” (The Olive Skin Beauty), because the people did not accept this new genre of music that was very emotional and deep in 1951-1952, and plus they did not respect him because of his social class. He then succeeded in 1953 when he re-sang the song and “Safeeni Marra” (Confront Me Once) in 1953 on the day of declaring the Republication of Egypt, and gained some recognition. The song was a great success in 1953. He then became an actor in 1955, to make drama movies, with lots of music, and embedded music video clips that expressed his deeper emotions.

During the 1950s, Arabic movies had lots of songs embedded through them, just like Indian movies. However, they were more realistic, and not as funny, but more emotional. I personally believe that these were somehow more important than the movie drama itself because of the feeling that was added to the movie. Songs were used to express deep, emotional, happy and sad feelings that couldn’t have been described through the camera and the script. The ideal way to express those feelings was through these songs which would typically last 4-5 minutes each. These songs later become very popular love songs, for example, some of the most popular Abdulhaleem songs: “Betlomoony Leeh?” (Why do you blame me?) and “Awwel Marra” (First Time), which were happy love, yet deep, love songs who are the top hits, and first introduced in his movies. Some songs extracted from the movies were stretched longer and were deeper than ones in the movie; this is because 1) people went to concerts to listen to some songs, and expected songs to be long with more music than words (and a full orchestra) in the 1950s, and 2) because songs used to be longer than 10 minutes, and it was the expected genre. Lets compare a song called “Ahwak” (I Admire You), from the movie “Banat AlYoum” (Today’s Girls):


You can read the lyrics in English here. Reading them might not be so emotional, but try reading along.

Film:


Concert:


Abdulhaleem was diagnosed with Schistosomiasis and he knew his farewell was very close. As the symptoms increased people observed that his songs became sadder, and mainly about farewell. The emotion he put in his songs were so real to the point they touched whoever heard it. I believe that this is what made him famous: his disease, and motivation to keep singing, and the wonderful music he has left us today.



Abdulhaleem Hafiz, 1929 – 1977.