PARIS
Last hurrah
Don’t miss your chance to pay tribute to Egyptian icon Umm Kolthum
Following last year’s exhibition devoted to Dalida, the French capital is currently hosting a tribute to another Egyptian diva, and this time it’s the biggest diva of the lot. Such was the popularity of Umm Kolthum that when she died, on 3 February 1975, her funeral in Cairo was attended by over four million mourners, one of the largest gatherings in history. The event descended into pandemonium when the crowd seized control of her coffin.
The show at Paris’s Institut du Monde Arabe, which closes on 2 November, attempts to document the fervour and passion aroused by the singer through an assemblage of sound and visuals. Foremost is the voice itself, present here in multiple recordings and film clips, all being broadcast simultaneously in different parts of the pavilion, overlapping like the sound of muezzins drifting across rooftops in the Cairo chorus to prayer.
That city’s Umm Kolthum Museum has loaned several spangly dresses and other personal artefacts, including a pair of her trademark Christian Dior spectacles and one of the chiffon scarfs that she’d mangle in her hands while performing.
Best of all is a recreation of the singer’s 1960s living room, complete with sofa, chairs and a vintage television set on which screens an interview with the lady on the occasion of a visit to Paris. “What do you like best about Paris?” asks the interviewer. “The obelisk,” answers Umm Kolthum. “Why?” asks the interviewer. “Because it’s ours,” comes the reply. The Arab couple on the sofa beside me cheered.
Institut du Monde Arabe, 1 rue des fossés Saint-Bernard, Place Mohammed V, Paris, +33
(0)1 4051 3838, www.imarabe.org
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