Thread: Azza Balba Interview (Singer)

Thought some of you might appreciate this recent interview with singer Azza Balba. It's worth reading for fellow Egyptian and Arabic music lovers...she covers a lot of ground about where art, music, and politics collide!

"Azza Balba is an Egyptian singer well known in the early ‘80s, but who was driven into obscurity because of her insistence on singing politically charged songs, especially those created by the team of composer singer Sheikh Imam and poet Ahmed Fouad Negm. The Tahrir Square uprisings of January 2011 brought Azza back into view, for she sang to appreciative crowds in the Square. Afropop’s Banning Eyre interviewed her in her Giza apartment in Cairo in August, 2011, shortly after she had returned from London, where she sang in a concert called “A Night in Tahrir Square” held at the Barbican Center. For the most part, we spoke in French, which Azza knows well having performed a lot in France, when she could not in Egypt."

Interview: Azza Balba

As long as I'm pulling clips for the songs she's talking about in the article, I may as well link them, in case anyone would like to hear them but isn't sure how to find them.

"The Haha Cow," first the originators' version, then Azza performing it:





The "Good morning to the flowers..." song:





Azza's song "The Dream":



I'm guessing this was late 1980s to early 1990s?



If you want to look for more clips in Arabic, the relevant names are:

Sheikh Imam الشيخ امام
Ahmed Fouad Negm احمد فؤاد نجم
Azza Balba (Balbaa, Balba', etc.) عزة بلبع

This is also a nice summary with some links to music: The Poetry of Ahmed Fouad Negm and Compositions of Sheikh Imam | Alwan For The Arts. I won't like the clips by other artists, but if anyone needs help finding them, just ask.

BTW, I'm not sure if something got lost in editing, but Tamer Hosni did make an (in)famous appearance at Tahrir Square. As far as I know, Amr Diab chose to lay low the whole time, but Tamer initially took it upon himself to support Mubarak and publicly denounce the opposition, and when it became apparent that the tide was turning, he tried to switch to the protesters' side. There's a notorious video of what happened when he went to Tahrir Square to lend his support to the cause, and was turned away by an angry mob who saw through his self-serving change of heart (search "Tamer Hosni crying Tahrir Square" if you're curious). Because Amr Diab mostly kept his mouth shut, many people probably will forget his lack of support, but I'm not sure she's right about Tamer. His career seems to be permanently damaged.