IFAO

While in the Arab world, the totality of Umm Kulṯūm’s repertoire is currently considered as being “classical” both in the sense of its highly regarded status in the artistic hierarchy as well as that of its propaedeutic value; to which extent does it actually qualify as “art music” and what traces of the Nahḍa school has it retained? Starting from the term waṣla, employed throughout her career to identify a song during a concert, the article presents an appraisal of our present knowledge of the singer’s performance policy, which has greatly increased since the internet diffusion of most of her concerts, in addition to the commercially distributed versions of her songs. It suggests that Umm Kulṯūm’s metric (muwaqqaʿ) and non-metric (mursal) improvisations are the forms in which a continuity between her art and the ­aesthetic principles of the former school of court musicians is best observed. Two renditions of Salū kuʾūs al-ṭilā illustrate the successive vicissitudes of the “traditional” learned form known as qaṣīda ʿalā al-waḥda.