Farid Al-Atrash was born in 1917 in a Syrian border town south of Damascus to Princess Alia and Prince Fahd Al-Atrash, the leading family in the Syrian-Druze resistance against the French….
Fearing for his family’s safety, Fahd send Princess Alia, Farid and his sister Amal to Cairo where went into hiding, lived under an assumed name (“Kusa,” Arabic for zucchini) and fell into poverty. Princess Alia supported her family by performing the oud
in clubs; her children followed her into the new family business. Farid, an extraordinary oud player, and Amal a mesmerizing vocalist, rose quickly on the Egyptian music scene, and when they began to act in movies they became stars. Amal adopted the artistic stage name “Asmahan” and Farid developed a persona as “the sad singer.” Farid Al-Atrash acted in many Egyptian films, composing, playing oud and attracting tabloid attention with his frequent high-profile romances until his death in 1974. Watch him sing “Habeena Habeena” and you’ll see why Egypt loved him.
We are revising the AllAroundThisWorld.com site and are currently using a new (better!) site — ExploreEverywhere.com — to tell you all about our curriculum offerings and how to become one of our teachers. That said, if you were on ExploreEverywhere, you clicked to find more information about a song or lesson, and landed here, you’re in the right place! Some links may be broken and a detail or two may be out of date…but close the popup window and enjoy!
