If you asked me about a year ago: Is it possible for Mai Farouk to become a star in the Egyptian singing scene? My answer would come, and without any moment of hesitation: “Its audience is impossible to bypass the Egyptian Opera House.” This audience does not usually cut the entrance ticket for it specifically, but it is basically a lover of heritage, and the rapture that has become almost lost outside the walls of this building, which has become for it in the collective memory. Conditional association with everything that is authentic and sober. From time to time, if this scrutinizing audience glimpsed a departure from this traditional taste and aroma, you will find it the first to chase it and expel it outside the walls.
These guards are what we usually call the “hearing ones.” They want to have fun, not just listen.
Mai Farouk is one of the most important elements of the heritage guardian team. Certainly, seasoned opera goers have the ability to choose, and often prefer one singer over another, when the bet becomes the most proficient in providing accurate details in the art of performance, but the matter remains confined to a few thousand connoisseurs, these No matter how sincere they are, they do not, in the end, form an audience capable of supporting an artist to make a star out of him. The house is like an art academy that receives talents from childhood and refines them, and adopts those who deserve it, and the artist maintains his position within those borders, and he cannot jump away from the walls.
Mai started the journey when she was an eight-year-old girl in the choir of Maestro Salim Sahab, who is able to capture real talents and pick the fat from the lean, so that the fat becomes precious through his guidance.
Mai repeated many heritage songs with her voice, but – as usual – what sparked people’s hearts was her singing of Umm Kulthum.
From time to time, she presented “tarts” of series, such as “The Night and Its End”, but she remained in the artistic record as an opera singer, re-presenting the masterpieces of melodious melodies; Especially the “Kalthumiya” ones.
Such people often spend their lives in the shadows, even if they achieve some success, such as Abdo Sharif, the Moroccan singer who was associated with the songs of Abdel Halim Hafez, and Safwan Bahlwan the Syrian, who now sings not only like Abdel Wahhab; Rather, when you meet him, he makes you feel as if he is talking to you, as if the great musician Muhammad Abdel-Wahhab, who left our world more than 30 years ago, has returned to the world, even the features of his face and the expressions of his hands during the dialogue, take you back to the time of Abdel-Wahhab, with his flesh, flesh, and tone of voice. Also from Morocco, someone who fits this description is Fouad Zabadi, the lover of the great singer Muhammad Abdel Muttalib. These, and many others, usually complete their journey within the limits of that circle, a success surrounded by walls that do not exceed it, inside the opera house and other concerts that are limited only to what we call them the description of the elite.
May Farouk, after she reached the age of forty, was preparing another way for her. She became one of the most important voices that participate in most of the Entertainment Authority’s concerts, the last of which is “Jeddah”, and then she moves to sing, to five other provinces. We watched the thousands of Saudi audience sing along with her, achieving the utmost level of identification. The Entertainment Authority usually sets an ambitious plan, so that the singer’s share continues to rise, as it charts a path to brilliance for each talent that it selects, and it is not concerned with the passport, as much as it is stopped by the sincerity of feeling and the privacy of expression.
I recently saw Mai in an interesting conversation with Mona El Shazly, as she recalled dozens of songs that shaped our feelings, even old advertisements that we remembered with her voice. Mai Farouk was freed from the power of Umm Kulthum. I followed her singing her masterpiece, “You Are My Life.” Mai will not live in anyone’s robes, even if he is a lady of Arabic singing. Within one year, she achieved stardom in the Arab street, and the step that I see is very close to her own songs, in which she sees her features and her time. A capable and chaste voice that possesses all the elements of feeling and privacy. I bet that, in a matter of months, she will be a trump card at our concerts with her own songs!
