Record companies

The first company to record in Egypt, in 1903, together with its Zonophone label. Campaigns followed in Alexandria and Cairo in 1904 and in Bilād al-Shām from 1905.

It courted Yūsuf al-Manyalāwī away from Beka and made him its leading singer of the Arab East. Its labels show the cherub of the Concert and Monarch records and, later, the dog of His Master’s Voice.

Gramophone discs carry numbers that let researchers date a recording to the month. In America, the same recordings were sold to Arab emigrants under the Victor label.

Sources: Min al-Tārīkh 041, Against Oblivion, 2018

Odeon reached Egypt around 1904–1906, soon after Gramophone. Some of its discs carry the words “Arabian Celebrity Record”.

Its recordings are much harder to date than Gramophone’s: for many of them, the year a singer died is still the best clue. One of its discs keeps a story of the cinema: in the film Wedād, “ʿAlā balad el-maḥbūb” was sung by ʿAbduh al-Sarūjī, and Umm Kulthūm recorded it herself after the song’s success.

Sources: Min al-Tārīkh 041, Min al-Tārīkh 042, the labels

One of the two local exceptions among the international companies. Buṭrus and Jibrīl Bayḍā founded it in Beirut; old labels still read “the Bayḍā cousins, Beirut – Syria”, and it began with the voice of Faraj Allāh Bayḍā.

It played on being the Arab company: the brand of the gazelle against the foreign dog of His Master’s Voice. It opened branches in Berlin, where its discs were pressed, and in Cairo, then across Egypt, and recorded in Damascus, Baghdad, Tunis and Marrakesh. Most of its sales seem to have come from the great Egyptian singers.

Sources: Min al-Tārīkh 041

Yūsuf al-Manyalāwī first recorded around 1905 for the German company Beka, on Samāʿ al-Mulūk, a label dedicated to him. Singers often signed exclusive contracts: Manyalāwī recorded only with Samāʿ al-Mulūk, then only with Gramophone.

Sources: Against Oblivion, 2018, Min al-Tārīkh 042

One of the companies that appeared early, alongside Beka, and soon went under. Its black and gold labels read “Reproduced in Hannover”.

Sources: Min al-Tārīkh 042, the labels

The Turkish company of the Blumenthal brothers, one of the many small companies that made only a few oriental recordings.

Sources: Min al-Tārīkh 042, Against Oblivion, 2018

During the First World War, Gramophone’s German branch kept Arabic matrices stored in Hanover and issued them under its own name, Polyphon. Collectors prize these Polyphon discs of Manyalāwī or ʿAbd al-Ḥayy Ḥilmī, which are Gramophone recordings under a German label.

After the war Polyphon stayed independent and made its own recordings, on a bright blood-red label: Amīn Ḥasanayn and Abū al-ʿIlā Muḥammad among others.

Sources: Min al-Tārīkh 042

The other local exception. During the First World War, when the foreign companies recorded little, this Cairo company, run by a man of Armenian origin who announced the singers himself at the start of the records, recorded newcomers. It was the first to record Sayyid Darwīsh, and it recorded Naʿīma al-Maṣriyya.

Its sound was poorer than the big companies’. It came back in 1927 with electrical recordings.

Sources: Min al-Tārīkh 042

Pathé came to the Middle East after the First World War. Its discs needed their own needle and sound box, while listeners already owned machines made for the other companies’ records, and it almost failed to sell.

Sources: Min al-Tārīkh 042

The other British company entered the region only in the 1920s, and came with electricity: in 1927 the first electrical, static-free recordings reached the Middle East.

Sources: Min al-Tārīkh 041, Min al-Tārīkh 042

Its blue labels, printed “Made in England”, carry recordings by Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Wahhāb and Aḥmad Sharīf.

Sources: the labels

A national company whose recordings were all made in Aleppo. In the 1930s it recorded singers from the Gulf, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Kuwaytī among them in 1938, accompanied by the violinist Ilyās Fannūn.

Sources: Min al-Tārīkh 051

Many discs were recorded during the Congress of Arab Music held in March 1932 at the Arab Music Institute in Cairo. In AMAR’s collection some carry printed His Master’s Voice labels with a catalogue number; others are yellow “Private Record” pressings with the names written by hand. They include the last recordings of Dāwūd Ḥusnī.

Sources: episode 105, episode 079, the labels

Some discs in the archive were never meant for sale. Their labels are forms filled in by hand: “Not for sale”, “Unverkäufliche Musterplatte” (unsaleable sample record), a title and a date in ink, or a plain paper label with the singer’s name written in green.

Sources: the labels