Sunday, August 19, 2007

Sheikh Imam's only love song

Most of us are used to Sheikh Imam and Fouad Najm as being the Johnny Cash's of Egypt. There was another side too, as always. Imam had fallen in love once and had written this song to express himself to her. Ultimately he was to be disappointed, though he did not realise at the time. A song about love which is far, yet close... Imam was not only a being of the political realm. He had other things happening in his life and love was certainly one of them...

7 comments:

alzaher said...

ما لا يعرفه كثيرون عن الشيخ إمام أنه بدأ أصلا كمطرب عاطفي وكان له وقت مخصص في الإذاعة المصرية ولكن وبعد النكسة إتجه مع أحمد فؤاد نجم إلى الأغنية السياسية والنقدية
أي بإختصار إختار الشيخ الأغنية الملتزمة على الشهرة والأضواء وهذه نوعية من الفنانين أنحني لها إحتراما

Maysaloon said...

al Zaher, thanks for that. I will translate it for English readers below:

"...what many do not realise is that Sheikh Imam was originally a musician concerned with romance and had a slot within the Egyptian state radio. However after the 1967 shock, he became increasingly focused on politics and criticism, "the committed song". Sheikh Imam voluntarily chose this "committed song" rather than fame and fortune.."

Ibn Bint Jbeil said...

i don't know if i would say it's his only onoe...

i've heard many of his songs that are love songs.

Maysaloon said...

Good point IBJ, alzaher pointed it out earlier so I think that was a mistake on my part to call it his only love song! Perhaps it's the only one where he was really in love?

alzaher said...

by the way, wassim, this song was his first collaboration with negm and that was in 1962 thanks to common friend of both of them

Maysaloon said...

hmm, has anybody written a book about these guys? There should be one if there isn't already.

alzaher said...

you can review negm's diaries named "alfaoomy" and there's a book about imam's life and works called
الأغاني في المغاني
i don't recall the author's name