Ali El Haggar - Background

Background

El-Haggar was raised in a musical family and during his early childhood his father, late singer and composer Ibrahim El-Haggar, taught him the principles of Arabic music and in particular singing. He was exposed to different types of Arabic songs including the works of Om Kolthom, Mohmmed Abdel-Wahab, Zakaria Ahmed, Sayed Darwish and others. His father helped his son to get an in-depth understanding of different musical forms, but also wanted his son to get fully absorbed by a specific singing type in order to keep his own identity. El-Haggar said "My father exposed me to music in its different manners and schools, but as well he advised me to sing only like myself without imitating any other singer no matter what is the degree of his talent and regardless of how much do I like this singer". El-Haggar also learnt to recite the Quran which helped him in articulation and organizing inhalation, two important factors in singing.

El-Haggar studied at a faculty of Fine Arts. El-Haggar was often asked about the relation between music and fine arts and how far studying fine arts affected him as a singer: “While I'm singing I do imagine the music pieces as if they are geometric shapes and lines; I can see some types of music are like straight lines, others resemble curved lines, and sometimes some music pieces reminds me of broken lines. Also, I can observe some songs of mine as complete portraits”.

In 1976 El-Haggar got together with the late Salah Jaheen. At that time Jaheen had already written his famous quartets Robayat and was searching for a singer capable of singing them. Having confidence in El-Haggar's ability, Jaheen decided to offer him the opportunity to sing the complete quartets with music by the late Sayed Mikkawy.