Never has any artist so strikingly represented the soul of a whole people as the singer Umm Kulthum, also known as Oum Kalsoum. This immense Egyptian singer was given the honorific title “Star of the Orient”, and she is today considered one of the greatest singers of all time. Worshipped from Rabat to Bagdad as the muse of the tarab genre, the career of this diva made a vast contribution to the modernization of Arab popular music. The first of this diva’s recordings, dating from 1926 to 1937, have been compiled here by Jean-Baptiste Mersiol, and in the accompanying booklet, radio producer Péroline Barbet-Adda discusses Kalsoum’s unrivalled talents: the singer’s miraculous voice would become the eternal echo of the Arab world’s expression in music, and lead Oum Kalsoum to the avant-garde of feminism in the Orient. Patrick FRÉMEAUX