‎Sayed Darwish‎

‎Sayed Darwish, born in Kom Al-Dikka on 17 March
1892, was canonized soon after his tragically
early death on 15 September 1923 as one of the
pioneers of Arabic music, a leader of the
"cultural renaissance" that swept Egypt at the
turn of the century, and the bard of the 1919
Revolution. His love of music and the material
hardships he faced, writes Pascale Ghazaleh, are
the two main themes that inform most of his
hagiography, intertwining to make up the
phenomenon that is Sayed Darwish. He worked as a
bricklayer, among other things, after his father's
death, when he became his family's sole
breadwinner, and it is this direct experience of
working-class life that makes his songs so
powerful. "In the modern Arab historiography of
music," writes Frederic Lagrange, "Sayed Darwish
has become an icon symbolizing Progress,
Modernity, and the shift from 'Oriental music', an
elitist music made for Pashas and still bathing in
the original Ottoman matrix, to 'Egyptian music',
the first figuralist expression of a people's soul
and their nationalist demands."‎ (قراءة أقل)

‎Sayed Darwish, born in Kom Al-Dikka on 17 March
1892, was canonized soon after his tragically
early death on 15 September 1923 as one of the
pioneers of Arabic music, a leader of the
"cultural renaissance" that swept Egypt at the
turn of the century, and the bard of the 1919
Revolution. His love of music and the material
hardships he faced, writes Pascale Ghazaleh, are
the two main themes that inform most of his
hagiography, intertwining to make up the
phenomenon that is Sayed...‎ (اقرأ المزيد)