Thirty years ago, September 12, 1993, the musician Baligh Hamdi, who sat on an unassailable musical pedestal, passed away as a result of liver disease, after living a tumultuous life with a huge amount of successes, emotional turmoil, and tragic events that followed the mysterious death of a Moroccan woman in his home. After that, he was forced to leave Egypt, for which he continued to compose and for its people, so that those who follow the flow of his works would think that he does not eat, drink, or do anything except produce the melodies that are sung in the evening, so that Arabic speakers everywhere wake up the next morning to hear them and sing. They enjoy it, and they put it in their memories.
What people know is that Baligh was born in the Shubra neighborhood in Cairo, in 1931, but the great poet, Abd al-Rahman al-Abnoudi, told in a television interview that Baligh Hamdi Saeedi was originally from Sohag, that is, al-Abnoudi’s neighbor who comes from Qena. He wonders about the meaning of critics’ talk about “eloquent Egyptian Hamdi,” or their saying that Egyptian singing is eloquent. Did they infer this as a melody for Shadia’s “O My Beloved, O Egypt” and “Umm al-Sabireen”? Or is there something in his musical soul that pointed him to sources other than those from which other composers drew their melodies? Al-Abnoudi believes that Baligh was guided to Egyptian sources, meaning “Nilotic”, meaning that he lived on the banks of the Nile, bathed in its water, and climbed its palm trees. In addition to the indigo, Baligh was able to get rid of the Arabic or Turkish stereotypes that preceded him. Al-Abnoudi takes as a practical example of his point of view the song “Adawiya”, which Al-Abnoudi wrote under the influence of Upper Egypt, and wonders: How is its melody so eloquent, even though it contains strange words such as: By God, this image of yours is worthy of adornment of geraniums, or with my hands the flutes and my heart with nails? He adds that he did not succeed in it with ordinary success, but rather with exceptional success, to the point that Muhammad Rushdi became famous through it, and its strange Saidi words became echoed on every tongue, in the entire Arab world. Here he comes to mentioning the advantages that Baligh Hamdi possesses over other composers. If we look closely at the song’s path, we will find a purely Egyptian opening: “Oh night, oh moon, and the mango has been sweet on the stone,” and it includes the vowels, the divisions, and theatrical dialogue, as in his asking the girl: “Your name.” What is your response to me?” She says: “Adawiya.” He concludes that Baligh has the ability to embody the emotional spirit in the Egyptian tune. For example, he grabs the word “Nasi” in the song he composed for Najat Al-Saghira, from the words of Muhammad Hamza, and plays with it until he brings out from within the listener all the perceptions he knows of this word. This is a stable nature in him, as he takes any written words, and begins to play its introduction, and says: I know that Abdul Rahman wants the melody like this, just as he did when he composed for Shadia “Oh, my brown color.” This takes us to the fact that working with him is a special pleasure, as he composes a sentence, and quickly discovers a simpler way of doing it, and closer to the soul, so he runs after it and repeats it several times, and when the person finishes hearing it, he knows why he did all this.
The most important discovery, according to Al-Abnoudi, is that Baligh imprinted a fair number of singers with his character, such as Mohamed Rushdi and Abdel Halim Hafez, from the song “You betray him,” 1957, all the way to “Any Tear of Sadness,” and “My Beloved Who Are You.” And he had a large share in Warda’s voice. In fact, he imprinted it with his own character, in addition to the singers who we can venture to say were his invention, Afaf Radi, for example, and Ali Al-Hajjar, and most important of all is that Baligh did not say throughout his life, and it is impossible for him to say: I presented so-and-so, or I made so-and-so, One of his virtues is that he used to hide after the tune was successful. Why? Because, simply put, he considers that he has become the king of the people, and goes looking for another tune.
