20 Facts About Farid al-Atrash

Farid al-Atrash, spelled Farid El-Atrache, was a Syrian-Egyptian singer, oudist, composer, and actor.

Farid al-Atrash is widely regarded for his virtuosity on the Arabic oud, and has sometimes been given the epithet "King of the Oud".

Farid al-Atrash's father was Syrian and his mother was Lebanese.

Farid al-Atrash's mother sang and played the Oud, which spurred his musical interest at an early age.

Farid al-Atrash studied at Egypt's music conservatory and became an apprentice of the famous Egyptian composer Riad Al Sunbati.

Farid al-Atrash's sister, Asmahan, was a talented singer, and for a while they worked together.

In 1941, they starred in their first successful movie Intisar a l-Shabab, in which Farid al-Atrash himself composed all the music.

Farid al-Atrash is better known than Asmahan because her career was interrupted by her death in an accident in 1944.

Farid al-Atrash composed musically diverse songs, and was a highly regarded composer, singer and instrumentalist.

In many of his songs, and nearly all of his concerts, Farid al-Atrash would sing a mawal, which is a local folk Egyptian slow voice improvisation of a few poetic lines.

Farid al-Atrash composed all the songs in his movies including the songs sung by other singers, and instrumentals.

Farid al-Atrash endured the death of his sister and fellow performer Asmahan.

Farid al-Atrash found comfort in a relationship with the belly-dancer Samia Gamal, for whom he was motivated to risk all he owned.

Farid al-Atrash continued to work with other film stars in numerous successful movies in which he always had the romantic lead role of a sad singer.

Farid al-Atrash often played out that scenario and sang about it in his romance movies.

Farid al-Atrash was engaged to marry Salwa al-Qudsi at the end of his life.

Farid al-Atrash characterized himself in a fairly idealized version of a modern artist.

On December 26,1974, Farid al-Atrash died in Beirut, Lebanon at Al Hayek hospital, shortly after arriving from London.

Farid al-Atrash composed songs for top Arab singers, foremost his own sister, Asmahan, as well as Wadih El-Safi, Shadia, Warda, and Sabah.

Farid al-Atrash is widely considered to be one of the four 'greats' of Egyptian and Arabic music, along with Abdel Halim Hafez, Mohammed Abdel Wahab and Oum Kalthoum.