بليغ حمدي

بليغ حمدي

June 24, 2008, 7:34 pm
Filed under: Egypt

♬ Zouba

Baligh Hamdi was from Egypt.

Born Abdul Hamid Hamdi Morsi on October 7, 1932, he showed promise as a musician, even at an early age. He had mastered the oud by age 9, and by age 12 he had applied to the Institute of Music Fuad I, but was not admitted due to his young age.

From here, the Google translator gets a little dodgy…

He apparently started his music career while he was attending law school, when an advisor from Egyptian Radio asked him to sing on a radio programme. Eventually he went on to work with Oum Kolthoum (who apparently no one can agree upon a correct spelling of her name) and Abdel Halim Hafez. He conducted and arranged the live recording of Abdel Halim Hafez’s live recording of Mawood, featuring Omar Khorshid (a portion of which was featured on the Sublime Frequencies release Radio Morocco). Baligh Hamdi also worked with Algerian born singer Warda, who he married to for several years.

He moved to Paris in 1985, where he collborated with artists from around the world, including Indian musician Magid Khan. He returned to Egypt in 1993, but died soon after on September 12, at the age of 61.

Over at the great Waxidermy site, they have two more songs from this record posted here (although the names of the songs are Gada and Sahar), as well as a track from the album with Magid Khan here.

Also, you can find a few clips of Baligh playing live, as well as songs performed by Warda, on YouTube at this link.

Thanks to Hany Zaki for the invaluable information, and the picture.

Catalog number 31-73097 Soutelphan of Cairo, Egypt. No release date given.

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UPDATE: 08/13/21 Sublime Frequencies has released a compilation of Baligh Hamdi’s recordings entitled “Baligh Hamdi: Instrumental Modal Pop of 1970’s Egypt“.

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