When a Saudi Arabian music video recently went viral, depicting niqab-clad female singers throwing shapes and chanting lines such as “may men disappear”, the colourful skit was hailed as a challenge to stereotypes. Yet the spotlight barely shifted: the notion of the voiceless Arab female lingers in the mainstream, despite the fact that Saudi does not reflect the Arab world at large. In fact, strong-voiced women have been a lynchpin of Arabic music in its far-ranging forms – from folk songs to commercial pop – across many generations and nations.

“All of the Arabic women I grew up listening to or watching had a very strong character,” says Lebanese singer-songwriter Yasmine Hamdan. She began her music career fronting Beirut’s first electro-punk outfit, Soapkills, in the late ‘90s, and is about to release her second solo album, Al Jamilat (The Beautiful Ones). “It’s normal; Arab women have always been very active at the forefront of culture – as film producers since the 1920s; as singers, dancers, choreographers, writers for much longer than that.”

The most iconic figure in Arabic music remains the Egyptian singer-songwriter and actress Umm Kulthum, known as ‘the Star of the East’. Born into an imam’s family at the turn of the 20th Century, she was studying classical repertoire by her teens, and making her mark as an extraordinary vocal talent by the 1920s. She also starred in several films, including 1937's Nashid Al Amal (The Chant Of Hope), in which she played a divorced single mother working to provide for her daughter; its soundtrack included The University Song, with typical themes of determination, solidarity and national fervour. She presented womanhood at the forefront of national identity, alongside men, singing about politics as well as romantic epics.