Revolutionary Art: A Blade at the Throat of Tyranny and Vulgarity
- Category: Articles
- Written by Raha Arezou
- Published: Sunday, 07 September 2025
At a time when our nation and its people are trapped in the claws of the Taliban, jihadists, and ISIS; at a time when the hungry are forced to sell their two- and three-year-old children for a crust of bread; at a time when treacherous exiles lounge abroad in luxury, prescribing hollow “resistance” to those who suffer; at a time when hundreds die each day in Gaza from famine and the bombs of Zionist criminals; at a time when Afghan women are stripped of their most basic human rights; in such an age of terror, poetry, music, film, painting, and every other art form must become a sword. A sword to smash the heads of traitors and collaborators, a nightmare to rob them of their sleep. Anything less, and neither the art nor the artist has meaning.
Today, only that poem, that song, that film has value if it speaks to the suffering of the people, breathes courage into them in this suffocating darkness, and calls them to rise against the oppressor. As the Hungarian revolutionary poet Sándor Petőfi believed:
“Without doubt, true poetry speaks to people’s hearts. Let us strive with all we must to make it the dominant form of poetry! If the people (stories) prevail in poetry, their triumph in politics will not be far behind - and this is the noble duty of the century. Every noble person who is sick of seeing a handful of people drowning in indulgence at the cost of millions of martyrs must take up this task.”
Mahmoud Darwish, Ghassan Kanafani, Abdol-Elah Rastakhiz, Anis Azad, Rim Banna, Umm Kulthum, Seyed-al Sokhandan, Shamloo, Davood Sarmad, Khosrow Golsorkhi, Ahmad Khorramabadi, Saeed Soltanpour, Khaled Al-Habr, Marcel Khalife - these are the luminous examples of revolutionary art. They were artists who not only gave voice to the pain of the toiling masses and praised their steadfastness, but who stood beside their people and their homelands, even to the point of death. Neither gold nor prison could turn them from the path they had chosen.
But tragically, during the twenty years our homeland lived under the boots of the American occupiers, and now, as their Taliban lackeys grind our soil under the club of religion and ignorance, art, literature, and music have fallen into the swamp of vulgarity. Poets, writers, singers flung this “pearl” before the feet of warlords, mafiosi, and collaborators. Instead of serving the people, most of these so-called “intellectuals” rushed to embassies and presidential palaces to grace the gatherings of the powerful. Farhad Darya, Samay Hamed, Rahnaward Zaryab, Partaw Naderi, Amir Jan Saboori, Abdul Bari Jahani, Aryana Sayeed, Waheed Qasemi, Golnoor Bahman, Mujib Mehrdad, Seyed Reza Mohammadi, Kazem Kazemi, and others sank so deep in this mire that they sang praises of men like Massoud, Dostum, Abdullah, and their ilk, and shamelessly accepted ministerial chairs, advisory posts, and spokesperson titles in the puppet governments of Karzai, Ghani, and Abdullah. And now, with a few weak poems and hollow pop songs, they parade as “dissidents” and “defenders of the people.”
In a land where music itself has been declared forbidden, where nearly every poet and composer without conscience numbly sings only of “the grapes of your lips,” we see it as a revolutionary duty to keep alive the memory of poets and artists who fought, resisted, and stood with dignity. We must learn from their steadfastness and make it our compass. For this reason, we present a translated summary of “The Voice of the People: When Umm Kulthum Sang for Palestine” from Palestine Chronicle, so that we may better known Umm Kulthum, the great Egyptian singer who sang for Palestine and its people.
The Voice of the People: When Umm Kulthum Sang for Palestine
“I believe that the true beginning of Palestine’s liberation is the rise of the fedai, the freedom fighter with a Kalashnikov, a rifle, a grenade, who crosses barbed wire and smashes the artificial borders imposed by Israel.”
Umm Kulthum
Fifty years after her passing on February 3, 1975, Umm Kulthum - “El Sitt,” the Great Lady of Arab Song - still holds a place of reverence among generations of listeners. Her career spanned five decades and more than 300 songs that defined eras, transformed styles, and sparked artistic revolutions. Her music, rooted in the participatory tradition of tarab, was often romantic in tone but always a mirror of the struggles and aspirations of the Egyptian and Arab people.
This was truest with Palestine. After 1967, she used her soaring voice to rally support for the Palestinian cause, raising funds for the resistance, but her connection with Palestine stretched back to before the Nakba of 1948. Her voice and solidarity remain alive in memory, just as Palestinian musicians today stand alongside their people in collective struggle.
Umm Kulthum’s most famous political song, “Asbaha Endi Al’aan Bandoqiya” (“I Now Have a Rifle”), was written by the revolutionary Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani.
Nowhere is her presence more deeply felt than in Gaza, where her music still fills the cafés, barbershops, taxis, and streets. Oud player Siraj Al-Sarsawi recalls:
“Whenever we found a moment of calm during war, we would go straight to the beach and find peace in Umm Kulthum’s songs. At six in the evening, Radio Ajyal had a special program for her, and we heard her everywhere.”
Listening to Umm Kulthum in Gaza, he says, has a power “much stronger” than streaming her online: “When her voice comes from the loudspeaker of a vegetable market, a barbershop, a taxi, it offers another kind of joy.”
“Beautiful Memories” in Music and Politics
Umm Kulthum was born in the village of Tamay al-Zahayra in the Nile Delta. From an early age, she sang alongside her brother, cousin, and father, a local sheikh.
With a confident voice and full memorization of the Qur’an, she joined her father’s religious chorus and performed across the province. The great music master Abu Al-Ela Muhammad soon discovered her talent and became her mentor. In the early 1920s, she moved with her family to Cairo, where she rapidly rose to fame, signed recording contracts, and became a cultural phenomenon. Collaborating with Qasabji, Sunbati, Abdel Wahab, and other masters, she steadily secured her place as one of the most celebrated voices in the world.
Her music soon reached Palestine, then under British colonial rule. Palestinian newspapers advertised her songs and tours. She first performed in Palestine in 1931, giving concerts in Haifa before traveling on to Syria and Lebanon.
Umm Kulthum passed away in Egypt on February 3, 1975, and three million people attended her funeral.
Researcher Nader Jalal has shown that her July 1933 concert at the “Bariziana Café Theater” in Jaffa drew listeners from Gaza, Lydda, Ramleh, and Nablus. After one performance, she is said to have kissed the head of Palestinian child prodigy and oud player Rawhi Al-Khammash. Reports describe Umm Kulthum as a commanding, uncompromising figure who personally directed rehearsals and exerted deep influence over composers and lyricists.
She returned twice more, in 1933 and 1935, performing sold-out shows in Haifa, Jaffa, and Jerusalem. Memoirist Wasif Jawhariyyeh wrote of her first Jerusalem concert that the crowd was “astonishing,” with many nearly fainting from excitement.
Later, she became president of Egypt’s Musicians’ Union and, after the 1952 revolution, held influential posts in Nasser’s government. Her repertoire expanded to include patriotic and anti-colonial anthems, with songs like “Lil-Sabr Hudood” (“Patience Has Its Limits”) and “Aatini Hurrity” (“Give Me My Freedom”) becoming rallying cries for liberation.
The defeat of 1967 deeply affected her. She toured extensively, raising funds for armed struggle, believing her mission had gone beyond music: “to liberate our beloved occupied lands, to cleanse Palestine of the stain of Zionism, and to return Palestinians to their homeland.”
Her funeral in 1975 drew millions, and her voice still transcends borders and generations. Yet today’s Egypt is far from the days when singing for solidarity was part of a living, breathing movement — even as Egyptian workers still yearn to share in the Palestinian struggle.
As Siraj Al-Sarsawi reminds us: “These songs of Umm Kulthum were born in a time of war, bound to the destiny of Abdel Nasser, to Arab nationalism, and to the republic that once included Syria.”
After her passing, Sheikh Imam and other revolutionary artists carried this torch forward, keeping the Palestinian cause at the heart of their work. Yet today, that message stands on the edge of erasure, threatened by indifference, censorship, and the slow suffocation of revolutionary memory.
Reem Anbar, whose family is in Gaza, says:
“Umm Kulthum gave me beautiful memories that have stayed with me from childhood to this day, memories of our house, now destroyed, along with our books and her music cassettes.”
For Gazans, memory itself becomes an act of resistance. To recall the past is to refuse erasure, to insist on a future. And in that struggle, the glimmer of hope still carries Umm Kulthum’s call for the right of return, a promise that remains unfinished, but alive.
In 1975, he released his first revolutionary work and soon joined the fight against Israeli occupiers. The theme of most of his songs became the memory of fallen comrades and the heroic resistance of Palestinians and Lebanese against domination.
That same year, he founded the group Al-Firqa and turned his art into a weapon of struggle, touring across Lebanon, the Arab world, and Europe to spread the voice of resistance. His music blends with the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish, Samih Al-Qasim, Tawfiq Ziad, and Yousef Harb, poetry that, fused with his melodies, becomes a bullet aimed at tyranny.
In the 1980s, Al-Habr was among the vanguard fighters of the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance. What he witnessed left an indelible mark on his life and music. For decades, he has sung for Palestine and Lebanon, his songs a fierce cry against the shameful silence of decadent Arab rulers before the genocide of Palestinians. He still stands on the frontlines of committed art.
