Cairo: Algerian singer Warda, one of the Arab world's widely popular singers in the past five decades, died on Thursday night in Cairo after suffering 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.
She was banned and deported from Egypt years later on allegations she had an affair with then War Minister Abdul Hakeem Amr, one of the powerful officials in the regime of the late Egyptian president Jamal Abdul Nasser.
The ban was lifted in the early 1970s during the rule of President Anwar Sadat.
Warda married celebrated Egyptian musician Baligh Hamdi who composed a number of her classics. They divorced in 1979.
She was first introduced to a wider audience in Egypt when she took part in a pan-Arab song in 1960 titled The Greater Nation. In the song, she sang the part about Algeria, earning her the monicker Aldjazairia, or The Algerian.
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."
The late Egyptian singer and composer Mohammad Abdul Wahab once said Warda had "a broad voice with special abilities that other singers lack."
"I feel safe when she sings my tunes," he said.
Breakthroughs
Warda lived in Egypt on and off for more than 40 years, and it was in Egypt that she earned both her cinematic and singing breakthroughs that won her fame across the Middle East. She had at least five lead roles in Egyptian films, and some 300 songs to her name.
Warda sang in all Arab dialects, and although better known for her love songs, she also sang nationalistic songs for Algeria and the larger Arab world.
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.
Warda had a liver transplant ten years ago, which forced her to give up performing for a number of years.
Her son told an Arab newspaper on Sunday that his mother was planning to record a new song in Algeria soon. Her last album, titled The Years I Lost, was released in 2011.
Algerian President Abdul Aziz Bouteflika has ordered a plane to fly to Cairo yesterday to bring Warda's remains to Algeria where she will be buried, Egyptian media reports said.
— With inputs from AP
