"All Arabs agree," reads The Rough Guide to World Music. "Umm Kulthum is indisputably the Arab world's greatest singer." The name Umm Kulthum may not strike a chord to Western ears, but she was a ...

(Abdel Majid BZIOUAT/AFP/AFP) It took Egyptian actor Mona Zaki more than a year's preparation to take on the hardest role of her career -- the iconic singer Umm Kulthum, a legend in the Arab world.

Half a century after her death, Umm Kulthum's singular voice still echoes through busy streets in Egypt, across time-worn ...

I did not really understand Umm Kulthum's mystique. That's because I grew up in the U.S. listening to Bob Dylan records with my dad, who came here from Syria as a young graduate student. For his part, ...

Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum died 50 years ago this week. She remains arguably the most influential Arab singer in and outside the Arab world. In Paris, there were three days of concerts to pay homage.

In my recent salon class on global divas, I featured a song called “Ala Baladi Elmahboub” which translates as “to my beloved country” from a 1936 Egyptian classic film called Widad. Umm Kulthum (her ...

It took Mona Zaki more than a year's preparation to take on the hardest role of her career -- portraying Umm Kulthum, the Arab world's most iconic singer — Abdel Majid BZIOUAT It took Egyptian actor ...