Cairo: Algerian singer Warda, one of the Arab world’s widely popular crooners in the past five decades, died Thursday night in Cairo of a heart attack, state media reported. She was 72.
Born in France to an Algerian father and a Lebanese mother, Warda started her career in Lebanon. She was catapulted to fame in the early 1960s when she came to Cairo to star in a musical film.
But she was banned and deported from Egypt years later after allegations that she had an affair with the then War Minister Abdul Hakim Amr, one of the powerful officials in the era of late Egyptian president Jamal Abdul Nasser.
The ban was lifted in the early 1970s during the rule of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.
Warda married celebrated Egyptian musician Baleegh Hamdi who composed a large number of her classics. They divorced in 1979.
She was also renowned for Egyptian and Algerian patriotic songs. As an actress, Warda starred in five films, mostly musicals, and two hit TV soap operas.
“She was one of the pillars of the modern Arab singing,” Egyptian musician Helmi Bakr, said. “Her voice was unrivalled,” added Bakr, who composed some of her popular songs.
Warda infuriated Egyptians in 2009 when she took the side of the Algerian football team in the wake of violent rioting in a World Cup qualifying match against the Pharaohs in Sudan. The violence plunged Egyptian-Algerian ties in their worst political crisis.
Algerian President Abdul Aziz Bouteflika has ordered a plane to fly to Cairo on Friday to carry Warda’s body to Algeria where she will be buried, reported Egyptian media.
