Sayed Mekawy

When Umm Kulthum premiered "Ya Msaharni" in 1972, its composer stood for both the newest and the oldest thing in her art. Sayed Mekawy, blind since infancy, was raised in Cairo's Sayyida Zaynab quarter on Quran recitation and the call to prayer, and he carried that ancient vocal training into modern song so naturally that Egyptians came to call him the sheikh of composers. He made his name with popular songs, with "Al-Layla al-Kebira," the beloved puppet operetta written with Salah Jahin, and with his Ramadan broadcasts as the mesaharati — the dawn-caller of the fasting month, whose voice he became for a generation. For Umm Kulthum he wrote a single song, but it counted: "Ya Msaharni," to Ahmed Rami's words, was among the very last works she premiered — a melody of earthy, neighborly warmth about the beloved who keeps the singer up all night. After decades of grand qasidas and orchestral romance, Mekawy gave her a song that sounded like the Cairo alleys where her audience actually lived, and she sang it as a late homecoming — the seal, in baladi flavor, on half a century of premieres.