Morsi Gamil Aziz

Morsi Gamil Aziz was the lyric voice of Umm Kulthum's late partnership with composer Baligh Hamdi. Born in Zagazig in the Nile Delta, he became one of Egypt's most sought-after colloquial lyricists, writing hundreds of songs for the country's leading singers; for Umm Kulthum he supplied a run of 1960s landmarks — "Sirat el Hobb" (1964), "Fat el Maad" (1967) and "Alf Leila wa Leila" (1969), the night-drunk masterpiece that gave her final era its anthem. Where Ahmed Rami whispered, Aziz painted: his verses pile up sensuous images of nights, moons and gardens, casting love as a festival, a whole world lit up around two people. He also had a craftsman's ear for the refrain, coining hooks an audience could seize on first hearing and demand again — exactly what Baligh Hamdi's populist melodies needed. His name remains bound above all to her long nights: the phrase "a thousand and one nights" now belongs as much to his song as to the old tales.