“Put it in my music”: The singer who inspired Robert Plant to change his vocal style
I imagine Robert Plant was deemed a threat to the Soviet Union during the Cold War because his voice alone could’ve struck Sputnik out of orbit. With his lion’s mane and skin-tight pantaloons, he brought a drama to rock ‘n’ roll vocals akin to The Phantom of the Opera colliding with Elvis Presley’s hip-snaking prognosis of pop culture’s sultry future. As the 1960s came to an end, Plant became music’s big ticket event.
It is important to consider the likes of Elvis, who came before him when you consider the way he pushed high-pitched hollering into the future. Nobody had sung like Plant before. At least nobody that the West had heard much of. But for Plant, inspiration was always timeless, and it came from everywhere. With his pal Jimmy Page in tow, the duo actively set off to North Africa in search of something fresh when times were getting a little tired in Led Zeppelin.
It is from this region that his beloved favourite, the Egyptian songbird, Oum Kalthoum, hails. His obsession with her style and sound typifies the way he sought more than your average rockstar. He wanted to expand the role of the frontman and take singing seriously. Kalthoum was the perfect guide for that bold venture. As it happens, he even tried to imitate her for the emblematic Led Zeppelin anthem, ‘Kashmir’.
Just as Elvis had done a few blue moons prior, she stirred something within a young Plant—something that he thought was missing from his own brand of rock ‘n’ roll. In fact, in the dramaticism and mystic control of Led Zeppelin’s back catalogue, you can almost pinpoint the moment he began to channel her into his own sound.
Who was Oum Kalthoum?
Born in 1898, the Egyptian singer-songwriter, actor, and all-around trailblazing renaissance woman rose to fame in the mid-1920s and quickly became known as ‘The Voice of Egypt’ or perhaps even grander, ‘The Fourth Pyramid’. Hailing from humble beginnings in a religious household in the countryside, she joined the family vocal ensemble when she was 12 years old.
Initially, the family disguised her as a young boy to quell anxieties over the scourging remarks that such a public performance might bring. However, in time, her voice would soar above the rest of the impossible and talent like that was impossible to wrap in the robes of a Bedouin. She was then noticed by an artist eternally on the edge of fame known as Mohamed Abo Al-Ela. He recognised her ability and taught her a classic Arabic repertoire. This was the start of her journey to Cairo, where she would flaw the orchestras with power untold.
As Plant recalled of his singing hero: “The way she sang, the way she could hold a note, you could feel the tension, you could tell that everybody, the whole orchestra, would hold a note until she wanted to change.” This ability for the voice alone to rise above the grandeur of instrumentation was a huge inspiration to Plant, who would have to shoulder a share of the spotlight from the colossi, Jimmy Page and John Bonham.
As he adds: “When I first heard the way she would dance down through the scale to land on a beautiful note that I couldn’t even imagine singing, it was huge: somebody had blown a hole in the wall of my understanding of vocals.” In essence, it changed his thinking. “When I first heard Om Kalthoum,” he reflected, “It was a very important day for me, because it opened, it just enriched my life so much. Even though I hardly understand a word she’s singing, because it’s in Arabic, I had to take some of the effect it had on me and put it into the music.”
This sense of emotional defiance empowered by the greatness of a voice unleashed is central to how Oum Kathloum became one of the most famous African vocalists of all time and a hero to many musicians. As Bob Dylan also opined: “She does mostly love and prayer-type songs, with violin and drum accompaniment. Her father chanted those prayers and I guess she was so good when she tried singing behind his back that he allowed her to sing professionally, and she’s dead now but not forgotten. She’s great. She really is. Really great.”
