Looking inside the mind of a songwriter or a composer is like looking through an endless cave; only a fraction of it is seen. While composing his masterpieces, Mozart usually disliked writing anything down, and often said that most of his music lived “inside his head” – the rest was simply what he was able to translate to paper. “Only a part of his oeuvre has survived: the rest he himself kept from us,” music historian Hermann Abert once wrote. The disconnect between what is written and unwritten, and what is seen and unseen, is what throws a lot of notable songwriters in the shadows. Only the faces and voices of the singers are recognized, but the brains behind these timeless tunes are not always valued. The names of Oum Kalthoum, Abdel Halim Hafez and Layla Murad ring constantly in people’s ears, yet for every ten times their names were mentioned, the name Baligh Hamdi, who composed many of their songs, is mentioned only once or twice. Born in 1931 in Shubra, Baligh Hamdi was one of the brains behind Egypt’s music scene in the 1960s and 70s, alongside notable…
