Kamal Al Taweel

A late Egyptian composer and composer. He was one of the closest friends of the brown nightingale, Abdel Halim Hafez, and the composer Muhammad Al-Muji. He was born in Tanta, but he was educated and came from a large Wafdiya family. His full name was Kamal Mahmoud Zaki Al-Taweel, and his father was Mahmoud Zaki Bey Al-Taweel. After his high school studies, he traveled to Cairo to enter the path of art. The young man, Kamal Al-Taweel, was attached to music since his childhood. He loved singing and composing, and he began improvising some melodies that he took to Sheikh Zakaria Ahmed to hear his opinion on them. Kamal wanted to hear some praise and encouragement from the great sheikh, but Sheikh Zakaria surprised him with harsh advice. He told him to go learn the oud first! The enthusiastic young man thought about the sheikh’s advice and decided to follow it, and he did well. He joined the Institute of Arab Music in Alexandria in 1946. His teacher at the institute was the artist Mohamed Afifi, where he studied the oud, maqams, and musical notes for two years. Then he moved to Cairo and completed his studies at the Institute of Arab Music, graduating from it in 1949. He met Abdel Halim Hafez and an artistic friendship was established between them that lasted for decades, and he was the first to compose music for him Al-Taweel composed professionally throughout his life and did not sing. Rather, he refrained from recording anything with his voice! He worked at Egyptian Radio until 1956 and then at the Ministry of Education until 1965 In the fifties Kamal Al-Tawil introduced himself to the public through the voice of Abdel Halim Hafez, and the two participated in many works that achieved great spread and wide audience, and in general, they are emotional or patriotic songs. One of the most famous emotional tunes by Al-Tawil by Abdel Halim Hafez is “A Day, a Month, a Year,” which says its beginning One day, one month, one year...the wounds soothe and sleep And the lifespan of my wounds is longer than days. It is one of the peaks of Abdel Halim Hafez and one of his most famous songs. Kamal Al-Taweel also provided the soundtrack to the movie “The Return of the Prodigal Son” with the late director “Youssef Chahine,” and from the words of “Salah Jaheen” and the singing of “Magda Al-Roumi,” before he retired from composing to return again courtesy of director “Youssef Chahine” and provided with him the soundtrack to the movie “Al-Masir.” Upon his departure, “Youssef Chahine” re-presented the music of “Al-Masir” in the movie “Alexandria, New York,” which he carried. A special dedication to Kamal Al-Taweel. As for Kamal Al-Taweel’s last creation, it was a poem (Private Lesson) by the Kuwaiti poet Souad Al-Sabah, sung by Najat Al-Saghira. This melody, which was released three or four years before his passing, seems as if it was coming to us from the midst of the last golden age, which exploded in the fifties and sixties of the twentieth century. He retired from art. He died on July 9, 2003.