Guilty as charged.



Guilty and proud of it. Of LOVING Om Koltoum´s music so much and suffering because of it.
You know, for sure, that you´re guilty as charged for the blind love of Om Kolthoum´s music when you leave an early show at a private party where you actually danced two themes of the Diva and run like a wild horse to the extreme end of Manial Roda in order to listen to the end of a conference about her.

You feel tired, full of sweat and in no mood for a long taxi ride till the end of the world (where Om Kolthoum Museum was built!)but you still grab your bags, make-up and still wet dance dresses and head on, courageously, to a conference.

You know that you´re mad about Om Kolthoum when you remain there, outdoors with mosquitos biting every tiny bit of your body, and have the patience to listen to a dutch "expert" who knows as much about the subject as I knew when I started learning Oriental Dance and thought "baladi" was an egyptian ballad for romantic lovers.

From the whole tortuous conference, here´s the only new things I learnt: That Om Kolthoum recorded a patriotic song dedicated to Iraq (called "The people of Iraq")and that there are old recordings of someone, who some experts suppose to be Om Kolthoum at a young age, reciting the "Koran".

The conferencist didn´t speak arabic but is considered an expert on Om Kolthoum. Eh?!(?!) How can you NOT speak/understand arabic and be an expert on Om Kolthoum which musical richness comes, in a great part, from the poetic lyrics she used to sing as well as the interpretation she offered each single word?!

Even then, I didn´t mind...red spotted skin from the mosquito bites, surrounded by kind, old egyptian men who are mad about Om Kolthoum, like me, listening to a boring gentleman throwing common sense information at us as if it was the discovery of the century. In between, we listened to long, LONG, LOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGG old songs from the ORIENT STAR (aka Om Kolthoum) and dreamt away with it.

Guilty as charged for this LOVE that never stops growing...