After featuring the Sultana of Tarab Music, the Prince of the Arabic Violin, the Master of the buzuq, Hajja Zeinab El Mansouria, the rich music of Yemen, Arab songs of satire and resistance, and the music of Tunis, we proudly introduce Fatheyia Ahmed, the singer of two regions—Egypt and Bilad al-Sham—episode two.
Music is a powerful force for healing and reconnecting us with our roots and shared humanity in a world of numerous challenges.
From Ocean to Gulf: Heritage Music of the Arab World is a new series by Ahram Online, in partnership with the AMAR Foundation (Foundation for Arab Music Archiving and Research). Focusing on the early years of recording in our region—which reflected a modern, cosmopolitan repertoire and coincided with the Renaissance era that flourished in Egypt between the mid-19th century and the 1930s—this initiative aims to introduce audiences to the iconic figures of Arab music whose contributions have enriched our intangible cultural heritage and inspired generations worldwide.
Fatheyia rehearsing at the radio studio with composer Ahmad Sidki playing the oud. Archive: Ashraf Ahmad Sidki’s page
Radio Days
The inauguration of the official radio station in Cairo took place on 31 May 1934. It followed earlier local radio initiatives in Egypt and came two years after the launch of the first musical film, Unshodat el Fouad (The Song of the Heart, 1932), starring the singer Nadra and directed by Mario Volpe and Stephan Rosti. These events marked a new era in musical practice and dissemination that affected Fatheyia and her contemporaries.
Fatheyia was among the very first female performers to sing during the inauguration of Egyptian Radio, alongside Um Kalthoum. She continued presenting musical performances and long-form songs for many years until her retirement in 1962.
Singing to an invisible audience
Professor Fahd El-Faras, a music researcher and former head of the Music Education Department at the Faculty of Education in Kuwait, refers to The Egyptian Radio Magazine (page 15, issue no. 156, 1938), where Fatheyia reflected on this new experience. She explicitly mentioned her surprise at discovering that she would be singing without an audience present in the studio to applaud and respond to her performance.
Given this situation, she decided to wear an evening dress and asked the musicians to wear formal black suits so that they could mentally imagine themselves performing before a live audience, allowing her to sing with full emotional expression.
In the same magazine (page 9, issue no. 165, 1938), it was also noted that one of her singing habits was to hold a long gold chain, spinning it around her index finger, then stretching and folding it in an artistic motion that followed the melody and rhythm — almost as if it were a maestro’s baton.
(link to audio track: Amanan Auyha el Qamar by Fatheyia Ahmad)
Moheb Gamil recounts in his book on Fatheyia Ahmed, published in Beirut in 2017, the repertoire she performed during this period. It included monologues composed by Mohamed Qasabji, qasāʾid by Sunbati during the 1940s, and various works by Zakariya Ahmad, as well as a series of mawāwīl that remain among the main achievements of her career. During this phase, Fatheyia also performed selected works by Sayed Darwish and Abul Ila Mohamed, alongside collaborations with rising composers such as Ahmad Sidki (1916–1987), Ahmad Abdul Qader (1916–1984), and Mohamed Afifi (1913–2003).
After the 1952 revolt, national songs again gained popularity, and Touha had her share through numerous songs composed by Zakariya Ahmad, Mohamed El-Mougi, and Mahmoud El-Sherif, among others. It is worth mentioning that Fatheyia also performed and recorded for the BBC and likely other radio stations in the Levant. Many of these recordings circulated through personal cassette recordings and were sold at specialist cassette shops in Syria and Iraq. Little information is available about Touha’s live performances or their venues during this period.
Touha’s microphone. Personal archive
The discontents of the microphone
Radio programming in the 1930s allowed Fatheyia performance slots of up to 20 minutes of live singing, gradually orienting her toward contemporary composers while periodically revisiting her earlier repertoire of qaṣīda and mawwāl. Over time, this shifted toward the emerging norm of prerecording.
By the 1960s, her appearances on radio had become markedly fewer. As illness worsened, she withdrew into isolation at home. Esmat Al-Nemr, an avid listener and physician, cites a reflective article published by Al-Kawakeb magazine in 1968 that captured a sense of forgetfulness and shifting public aesthetic tastes — changes that clashed with Fatheyia’s belief in the diminishing authority of the voice.
The article revealed a deep bitterness toward a musical economy empowered by microphones and mass circulation:
“Few from this generation still remember Fatheyia Ahmad, who was among the pioneering singers more than thirty years ago. She grew disillusioned with the field when singers with no real vocal ability imposed themselves through the microphone, which conceals every flaw in the voice.”
Fatheyia’s life in photos.
Various archival sources, including Sayed Ali Ismael, Amer Nadrous, Fahd El-Faras, Moheb Gamil, and others.
Voice of mastery
Fatheyia’s repertoire encompassed a wide range of musical forms. In addition to theatrical works, she performed genres such as the taqtūqa, monologue, qaṣīda, and mawwāl. Unlike many of her contemporaries during the interwar period, her repertoire avoided songs with decadent or frivolous lyrics.
She demonstrated exceptional command across all these forms, excelling particularly in the mawwāl and qaṣīda. Her performances were marked by confidence, emotional depth, and a profound understanding of musical modes and modulation, delivered with remarkable mastery.
Fatheyia’s precision and control in maqām modulation were notably organic, even when compared with better-known singers of her time. Her ornamentation remained faithful to nineteenth-century ṭarab traditions, unfolding with a natural flow reminiscent of classical recitation.
According to Professor El-Faras, her voice was resonant and expansive in range, with clear and precise diction. She avoided exaggeration and vocal showmanship, instead prioritising meaning and expression, and moved smoothly between maqāmāt. Her vocal ornaments were distinctive yet restrained, always used at the appropriate moment.
El-Faras further notes that in a 2006 interview broadcast on Kuwait Radio, the late Professor Ratiba El-Hefny, former director of the Cairo Opera House, confirmed that Fatheyia regularly sought the guidance of prominent Arabic language teachers to ensure accuracy in pronunciation and intonation. This practice reflects her deep commitment to her art and her insistence on presenting it in its most correct linguistic, musical, and vocal form.
For El-Faras, these qualities explain Fatheyia’s exceptional ability to meet the demanding artistic and technical challenges of the qaṣīda as both a literary and vocal genre. Similarly, her performances of the mawwāl were delivered with such emotional intensity and expressive depth that she was described as the unrivalled queen of the mawwāl.
Being Wild
Professor Dalal Abu Amneh is a Palestinian neuroscientist, interdisciplinary artist, and vocalist. For her, Fatheyia’s voice has never been just a voice—it has been a phenomenon, a force of nature that shaped her early formation as a classical Arab singer.
“Through her expansive range, daring improvisations, and fearless movement between delicacy and power, she taught me how to be wild in singing. Fatheyia revealed that the Arab classical voice carries both masculine and feminine energies, and that true mastery emerges when a singer embraces this fullness. From her, I learned how to unleash emotion without losing musical discipline, how to free the voice while honouring the structure of the maqām, and how to expand the expressive possibilities of the classical Arabic song,” Abu Amneh explained, adding that she chose to perform Fatheyia’s “Ya Tara” to introduce her artistry to a new generation. One such performance took place in France, accompanied by the Philharmonie de Paris.
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