At 10pm Cairo time, on the first Thursday of the month, a curious change overtakes much of the Middle East. Traffic in the streets of Cairo gets noticeably lighter. In Casablanca, some 2,500 miles to the west, old men in coffee shops leave their tric trac games. In Baghdad, 800 miles to the east, wealthy Arabs get up from the bridge tables. They are waiting, all of them, for a radio program to begin. It is a five-hour program broadcast eight times a year and it features a woman called Omm Kolthoum,” wrote one critic 16 years after the legendary singer’s death.

On one of those memorable Thursday haflat (concerts), a young man, then only 24 years old, stole the diva’s thunder with his brilliant music. That man was my brother, Baligh Hamdi, and that night he joined the ranks of the nation’s greatest composers alongside men such as Mohammed Al-Qasabji, Riyadh El-Sunbati and Zakaria Ahmed, who were privileged enough to work with the Mother of Arab Song.

Omm Kolthoum’s collaboration with Baligh is seen by many as a turning point in her career, making her appeal even more widespread. When she sang Baligh’s “Serat El-Hob” (Epic of Love), Baligh introduced a more youthful element to her songs. Besides the basics of the classical takht (Oriental music ensemble), he used modern instruments including the oboe, guitar and even a saxophone. Both Omm Kolthoum and Baligh were apprehensive about this change in style — it was new and not entirely accepted — and on the night of the concert, Baligh refused to go to the concert hall and instead stayed at home and listened on the radio.

In her book, The Voice of Egypt: Umm Kulthum, Arabic Song, and Egyptian Society in the Twentieth Century, Virginia Danielson writes that Baligh wrote a new song for the singer “almost every year between 1966 and 1974.” She goes on to say that “Baligh composed new melodies, experimented with choral accompaniment, large orchestras and new instruments including the saxophone.”

Years later, I asked my brother what he thought of the wave of so-called “youth songs” so popular since the mid-1980s.

“Let them sing. It’s better than keeping silent,” he said.

Courtesy Dr. Mursi Saad el-Din Baligh Hamdi with Omm Kolthoum

Let them sing, indeed, at a time when there were too many voices falsely claiming that singing and music were somehow haram. I always remember that sentence whenever we celebrate the anniversary of my brother’s birth or of his departure from this world. Baligh was born in October 1934 and died in September 1993 — hence my tribute this month to this great maker of music and songs.

A master’s researcher at the Higher Institute of Music once claimed Baligh composed nearly 3,000 songs over his career, not counting the music he scored for plays, films and serials. Baligh was also responsible for discovering young talents who owed their fame to him. No other composer can claim the discovery, grooming and promotion of such up-and-coming talents as Mohamed Mounir and Ali El-Haggar.

Our family has always been immersed in music and it was no wonder that when he was asked, at age six, the usual question — “What would you like to be when you grow up?” — Baligh replied, with the lisp he kept all his life, “Mazzikati.” The closest translation would be a “man of music.”

My father was a teacher of physics, and we all know the link between this branch of science and music — between sound vibration and scale. But apart from his profession, my father was extremely fond of music. He had a good singing voice and was surrounded by a group of friends who made their living in the music business. I still remember his phonograph with its classical loudspeaker and hand-cranked records. We also had a piano and a lute. I remember how, as a child of six or seven, Baligh used to stagger onto the piano stool and, with his tiny fingers, punch out the notes.

Thus began the first steps in my brother’s career as one of our nation’s leading composers. He developed his talent when I was in London as cultural attaché from 1945 to 1956. In 1946, my father died, and my mother became responsible for his upbringing. It was then, at an early age, that he decided to study music. It was a tribute to my mother that she encouraged him to do this, as vvvmany senior members of the family, aunts and uncles, were opposed to the idea.

Courtesy Dr. Mursi Saad el-Din Baligh Hamdi (L) with Abdel Halim Hafez

As a compromise, my mother and Baligh agreed that while pursuing his musical studies, he should register at the university. For some reason, Baligh chose to enroll at the Faculty of Law. He reached his third year, then became so involved in his music that he let his academic performance slip. He never made it and forfeited his dignified law degree for what some regarded as a “lowly diploma” in music.

Baligh studied Eastern music at the Institute of Arabic Music and Western music at the hands of independent non-Egyptian music masters in Cairo. He was one of the few, indeed very few, composers who wrote their notes and did their own orchestration.

He was also a gifted songwriter and Baligh’s songs have since been ‘pirated’ in a number of countries, where the music has remained but the words of the songs were rendered in the respective languages. The latest such example is “Khusara, Khusara” (It’s a Shame) which was ‘borrowed’ by an American pop composer who took the song in its entirety and just used it to create the catchy backbeat to the wildly popular “Big Pimpin’” by rapper Jay-Z and rap-metal band Linkin Park.

Closer to home. I doubt that there is a singer in Egypt or, indeed, the Arab world who has not sung Baligh’s songs. It’s always been an honor, but certainly no wonder, that on the anniversary of his birth or demise, Arab radio and TV channels pay tribute to my younger brother, Baligh Hamdi. et