Muhammad Sultan and the moment of discovery of music

More than two weeks ago, the Egyptian artist passed away. Muhammad Sultan (1937-2022), following a heart attack, to write the end of the era of great composers, as the last pillar of the previous generation. Returning to Sultan’s biography on the sly, away from the emotions that governed the first days of his departure, he reveals to us an important talent, whose luster has been darkened many times for various reasons, in particular that he has not worked with popular names in which the audience see first-class performers and ahead of the others.
From adolescence it became clear that the son of the city of Alexandria had an inclination towards composition and musical composition. A tendency that his father, a strict policeman, tried to repress by forcing him to enter the Naval College, which he abandoned after a year, then studied law, graduating in 1960, and abandoned the academy towards his musical obsession.
The first stages of translating this obsession began in adolescence, when he visited the musician Muhammad Abd-alwahab In his home in Alexandria I listen to his melodies. At the time, Abdel Wahhab expressed his admiration for what he heard. But the door through which Sultan entered the art world was not music, but acting. How the late director, Youssef Chahine discovered him at the Equestrian Club and introduced him to the public in the film ‘Salah El-Din’, then he participated in the film ‘Zizi Family’ with the late Souad Hosni, after which he ha presented ten cinematic experiences. However, music remained, despite everything, the most important and largest obsession of his life.
And through his strong relationship with the late musician Farid al-Atrash, especially after featuring his acting in the film ‘A Day Without Tomorrow’, he met his life partner and his wife, singer Fayza Ahmed, and she gave him he asked to compose for her, and it was a bold step from a singer of her size Fayza Ahmed To deal with a young composer who doesn’t have a stage name in the music world.
Fayza Ahmed believed in the young composer and his talent as she was on a journey in search of a composer of her own, away from the great composers who were busy with other singers and singers. Sultan presented his first tune, “Bring the Jasmine and Sprinkle Roses on the Two Rows”, with Fayza Ahmed, to start a friendship and affection between the two, until the rumors started haunting the big star, leading to their marriage.

After the marriage, Sultan introduced many of Faiza Ahmed’s melodies, so they formed a duet that achieved great successes, with works such as “Mal Alia Mal”, Muwashah “Ya Hilala”, “Take My Love”, “Sit with Me “, and “Stay Two Witnesses” and “You Miss Me”, “A Message from a Woman” and “The Sweetest Path in My World”. These great successes made Muhammad Sultan one of the most important composers of the seventies and early eighties.

In addition to composing for Fayza Ahmed, he has worked with other artists, including Mayada El Hennawy (“We’re Back to the Beginning”, “Akher Time”), Hani Shaker (“Let me love you” and “I wish you were with me”), and Asala (“I forgive you a lot”).
And just as his marriage to Faiza Ahmed shaped his musical biography, this marked his personal life up until his departure. The couple separated, then remarried during Fayza Ahmed’s illness, where he stayed with her until her departure, then living alone, either at her home or in the famous Strand Café in the Bab Al-Louk area. where he used to play backgammon on a daily basis, or sit alone with himself and his memories.