Mohamed Abdel Wahab

[nomos]

Thought I'd share a bit of a treasure trove that I happened upon.

A while back, I bought an Abdel Halim Hafez album. (It was after the 'Timbaland Steals Arabic Music' thread - see 'Big Pimpin').

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Suitably amazed, I looked for old recordings on ebay and spotted these badman Cairophon 45s and 78s...

... along with sound clips of his (older) contemporary, Mohammed Abdel Wahab, "the most prolific Arabic composer of his time, responsible for more than a thousand songs."

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THEN, after a bit more searching, I discovered this lovingly compiled, 1995-style open directory full of recordings, along with biographical info, discographies, some scans (in Arabic), and a few annotations. The tracks are all low bit rate. They run from crackly 78s to fairly polished material from the 60s or so - some film music, orchestral pieces, solo oud, live performances, vocal and instrumental. I bookmarked and then forgot about it until today - just starting to wade through it. It's all new to me.

 

[nomos]

The attached 27 pages copied as "picture" (Gif) so they can be printed on any computer
with or without Arabic chacters describe the "Artistic" history of the singer/composer
Mohamed Abdel Wahab. They are very comprehensive.

The attached 20 files are the 10 cassette tape library issued by the Ministry of Culture and the company "Sawt El-Qahirah" in 1988 to comemorate Mohamed Abdel Wahab. They are told in the voice of Professor Dr Youssef Shawqy and technical direction of Ibrahim Hossny. Each of the cassettes was in two sides, A and B. The cassettes have been transformed into MP3 files by Emile Farah of Abbotsford (near Vancouver), BC, Western Canada in MArch 2007. They are here, as files 1, 2, ..etc each with A and B sides. Enjoy this rich history and plenty of songs.

http://www.cs.hunter.cuny.edu/~saad...del Wahab History/Abdel Wahab Career history/

 

[sufi]

oooh nice!

that is going to be many happy hours of listening
what you pasted up above موال = mawal - top style which i posted about before, nice!

here's another similar (kinda 2003 style) archive - http://music.cdbpdx.com/ArabicMusic/ (login/pw here ), havent been thru all of them but farid al atrache and esmahan are big stars from m abdelwahab era

thanks p!

 

[nomos]

lovely, thanks sufi i spent ages on youtube listening to that collection. the label art is great as well.