Al-Saba’a Al-Kobar fi Al-Mousiqah Al-Arabiya Al-Moaaserah (The Magnificent Seven of Modern Arab Music), Victor Sehab, Risha Publishers, Cairo, 2024, pp.547
On 29 September 1925, Abbas Mahmoud Al-Akkad, the Egyptian journalist and literary critic, wrote an article commemorating Sayyed Darwish, the singer and composer who had died two years earlier. In it, Al-Akkad credited Darwish with introducing “a sense of simplicity and dynamism to [Egyptian] music and singing.”
For Lebanese cultural historian Victor Sehab, however, Darwish’s contribution was far greater.
In his book The Magnificent Seven of Modern Arab Music (Al-Saba’ah Al-Kobar fi Al-Mousiqah Al-Arabiya Al-Moaaserah), Sehab argues that this bohemian composer, who died under mysterious circumstances on 15 September 1923, aged just 32, transformed the course of Egyptian and Arab music in little more than seven years.
He paved the way for modernization, opening the door for figures such as composers Mohamed Abdel-Wahab and Mohamed El-Qasabgi.
The Magnificent Seven of Modern Arab Music is one of many volumes that Sehab had contributed to the Arab library to historize the motion of modern and contemporary Arab music.
Initially published in 1987, with a second edition in 2001, the book was reissued in Egypt this year by Risha Publishing.
It followed Sehab’s 2023 volume dedicated solely to Darwish, marking the centenary of his death. Meanwhile, Egypt now commemorates Darwish each year on 15 September as the Day of Egyptian Music.
Sehab portrays Darwish as “the greatest Egyptian musician,” a composer who liberated Egyptian music from heavy Ottoman influences while integrating European elements and developing new forms of song, without dismissing the work of his predecessors.
While popularly remembered for his association with the 1919 Revolution, Darwish was not merely a committed nationalist who made music a platform for early 20th century political activism. As Sehab points out, much of his music celebrated everyday life and ordinary people.
Among his lasting innovations was the modernization of musical theatre.
Darwish also benefited from the technological shifts of his time, notably the spread of recording in the early 21st century. For the first time, songs could be fixed to a composer’s melody rather than left open to improvisation by performers.
But Darwish is only one of Sehab’s seven. Alongside him are Mohamed El-Qasabgi, Zakaria Ahmed, Riyad Al-Sonbati, Mohamed Abdel-Wahab, and singers Um Kalthoum and Asmahan. All were born between 1892 and 1912 and came of age as the phonograph, radio, and cinema reshaped music production between 1904 and 1934.
El-Qasabgi, born the same year as Darwish (1892), is cast as another revolutionary figure, though a curiously neglected one.
Despite living until 1966 and having a much bigger discography, having composed for Um Kalthoum, Asmahan, Laila Mourad, and others, his reputation never matched his innovations.
Like other cultural and heritage researchers, Sehab fails to put his hand on the reason why El-Qasabgi never received due credit, despite his many innovations and the many talents that he supported.
As early as 1936, he was experimenting with new instrumentation. His 1928 composition for Um Kalthoum reportedly sold a quarter of a million copies, a remarkable figure for the fledgling gramophone market.
While Sehab counts less than 400 songs that could be attributed to El-Qasabgi, he counts over 1,000 songs that could be attributed to Zakaria Ahmed who was born in 1896 and died in 1961.
Sehab highlights not just his prolific output but also his stylistic range and constant experimentation.
Mohamed Abdel-Wahab, the longest-lived of the seven (1902–1991), is credited with further modernizing Egyptian music, adapting European melodies and instrumentation, composing for both classical and modern Arabic poetry, and pioneering music for cinema musicals, some of which he starred in himself, as far back as 1933.
Riyad Al-Sonbati (1906-1981), meanwhile, forged a legendary partnership with Um Kalthoum, producing works of unmatched sophistication.
Um Kalthoum (1898-1975) and Asmahan (1912-1944) are the only women on the list.
Um Kalthoum's career stretched over decades, yielding more than 300 songs and cementing her as the Arab world’s pre-eminent diva.
Asmahan, who died with fewer than 50 recordings to her name, is included for the extraordinary quality of her voice and her stylistic daring, which helped clear the path for future women singers.
Asmahan is the only figure on Sehab’s list who did not begin her career in the shadow of Qur’anic recitation, though like the others she came from a family for whom music was a livelihood.
Sehab’s study is not a set of simple profiles but a sweeping history of modern Egyptian song, anchored in meticulous research. Detailed indexes catalogue each of the “magnificent seven’s” works, though the author concedes that some recordings have been lost to time.
The result is both a compelling read and a reference work: a chronicle of how a handful of artists reshaped Arab music in the 20th century.
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