A Lebanese diva shines at the Palace

“You couldn’t say she’s less than a diva. She’s very special to everyone,” explained Bilal, one of the hordes of concertgoers who poured into the lobby of the Emirates Palace auditorium a clear hour ahead of this charity engagement. “As soon as you’re saying Magida el Roumi... it’s like you’re saying Andrea Bocelli or Pavarotti.” And yet, in the West, she’s scarcely known at all.

Here’s a primer. El Roumi came to prominence in the early Seventies when she won a Lebanese TV talent show. From the start of her professional singing career, she offered a potent blend of classical and pop styles, delivered with a stirring side order of nationalism. Poets wrote for her, most notably the Syrian love-lyricist Nizar Qabbani; the greatest Arabic songwriters and arrangers shaped her sinuous, disco-inflected sound. And to match that dramatic music was a stormy life story: divorce, bereavement, a turn to the consolations of faith, a comeback. Such careers seem drawn from some mystic well of universal archetypes – the chanteuse with a thousand faces.

Yet, the capacity audience at the Emirates Palace had come to see just one. And at first sight, it isn’t clear why el Roumi should command such adoration. She’s shy, oddly reticent. As she slipped out in front of her 30-piece band, she seemed almost apologetic. The crowd stood and applauded and she floated her way through the thunderous Ya Bladna, demurely acknowledging the pounding handclaps, at times offering the ghost of a shimmy, her arms hanging limp by her sides. Her voice was unforced, conversational.

During her next number, something of the strange mutability of her sound became apparent: slinky bossa nova rhythms and a wonderfully twangy pop-orchestra electric guitar gave way to rattling, skeletal percussion. Strings swooped and darted like something from an Isaac Hayes soul epic. And el Roumi’s voice began to lift in shuddering melismas, falling away with infinite world-weariness.

During Ghanni Lel Hob, her Seventies roots were revealed in further detail. The band locked into what was unmistakably a disco beat. A wah-wah guitar percolated away beneath bongos, and el Roumi’s voice climbed to a racking intensity. Though still almost motionless, her onstage persona had shifted slightly: chorus followed crashing, tear-stained chorus, and she hovered between Dancing Queen excess and the stalking grandeur of fado.

Throughout the show, her sharp band negotiated the swerves and tempo-changes of her material with aplomb. A sextet of sad-eyed, tuxedoed backing singers provided a funereal backdrop for the increasingly animated star – funereal, that is, until three of them locked arms and began a synchronised jig across the stage, tumbling to and fro like sailors on a pitching deck.

At one point, a fez was delivered to the star. She put it on for a number which exhibited as well as anything the strange breadth of her style. A sparkling jazz melody laid over a near-dubbish rhythm section gave way to one of the singer’s Olympian choruses, surging like something out of the Elvis comeback special. Then – a great and inexplicable touch – an African woodblock melody floated in.

More startling still was her sudden blast of operatic singing in Amb Bihlamak, a piercing, imploring aria. She rolled it out for the encore, too, draped in the Lebanese flag, laden with flowers, the audience standing and clapping along. It was madly incongruous, moving, in short, fabulous and all that connotes. No, you couldn’t say she’s less than a diva.