Mohammed Abdel Wahab

Mohammed Abdel Wahab was Umm Kulthum's great rival long before he became her collaborator. Singer, film star and the most restlessly modern composer of his generation, he spent three decades as the other pole of Egyptian music — until 1964, when "Enta Omri" united them at last, in what the press celebrated as "the meeting of the clouds." He went on to compose ten songs for her, including "Amal Hayati" (1965), "Fakkarouni" (1966), "Aghadan Alqak" (1971) and "Leilet Hobb" (1973). His signature was cosmopolitan ambition: into her long-form tarab he wove the electric guitar, the accordion and Western dance rhythms, while keeping the melodic line firmly inside the maqam tradition. The gamble modernized her sound for the transistor-radio generation and produced some of the most widely heard Arabic songs ever recorded. He outlived her by sixteen years, the last survivor of the golden age he had done so much to invent, and died in 1991.