Warda

Born around 1939 in Paris as Warda Flouki to a Lebanese mother and Algerian father, she spent her early years in the city’s Quartier Latin, where her father ran Le TAM TAM, a venue devoted to Arabic music. Performing there from a young age led to an invitation, at fourteen, to appear on a local radio broadcast aimed at Arabic children. In 1956 the family’s expulsion from France, prompted by the father’s backing of the Algerian Liberation Movement, took them to Beirut. There she secured engagements at Tanyos, the well-known nightspot, and adopted the stage name Warda Al Jazaira to distinguish herself from another singer sharing her original name. Composer and arranger Mohamed Abdel Wahab heard her at Tanyos and assumed direction of her professional path. In 1959 she relocated to Cairo on the summons of composer Riad Al Soumbati, who supplied her with many successful songs. Three years afterward Egypt’s President Nasser asked her to perform on “Al Watan Al Akbar,” a piece created for the wider Arab world and featuring the era’s leading Arabic vocalists. By then she had become a major figure across North Africa and the Middle East. She took a role in the musical film Almaz Wau Al Hamoly, then in 1963 settled in the newly independent Algeria, wed a senior army officer, and withdrew from performance to devote herself to domestic life. She reentered the public sphere in 1972 at the Algerian president’s request to sing during the tenth-anniversary celebrations of national independence. Despite her husband’s objections she chose to restart her career, a decision followed eventually by divorce. Back in Egypt she collaborated again with Mohamed Abdel Wahab and with other prominent composers, among them Baligh Hamdy, whom she later married. Her popularity reached new heights as she cut numerous hit recordings, toured Arab audiences globally, and appeared in several successful films. In 1997 the Hemisphere label issued Warda, a collection of her latest successes that gave non-Arab listeners an uncommon opportunity to hear her warm, passionate voice.