Dorsaf Hamdani

Songs by famous Arab divas from Oum Kalthoum to Fairuz (Tunisia)

The singer Dorsaf Hamdani is today regarded as a master of Malouf, the Arabic-Andalusian music of Tunisia, and as one of the country's greatest voices. At Klangkosmos NRW, she will now present the songs of famous Arab divas from Oum Kalthoum to Fairuz in a purist small formation for the first time in Germany.
Dorsaf Hamdani received singing lessons at the National Conservatory of Music in Tunis from the age of ten. She completed her studies in Tunis with a master's degree in musicology and moved to Paris in 1998, where she obtained a master's degree in music and musicology as well as a doctorate at the Sorbonne. As a young artist, she sang classical Arab-Andalusian music at the opera in Cairo, collaborated with the greatest artists in Arab music and experimented with fusion music. After many years in France, Dorsaf Hamdani has lived in Tunis again since 2020. Like few female artists, she embodies modern female Tunisia and is proud of her diverse identities between the Arab world and Europe. Her mission is to use her artistic means to help combat the current identity crisis in the Arab world - by rediscovering cultural roots through music and supporting Tunisia's young music scene in a variety of ways.
Her great role models include the three great divas of the Middle East: the singers Oum Kalthoum from Egypt, Asmahan from Syria and Fairouz from Lebanon. Dorsaf Hamdani dedicated a very personal album to these three iconic artists back in 2011, which she has now turned into a concert programme.
"My idea was not to simply sing cover versions of these songs, but to create something new from existing material," says Dorsaf Hamdani. "We moved so far away from the original material that the essence was exposed to create a new colour."
Dorsaf Hamdani is accompanied by the renowned multi-instrumentalist, singer, composer and arranger Pierre Clavé.