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Artist
Samira Tawfik
12+ albums
arabicmiddle eastarabic popbedouinbedouin music
about
Samira Ghastin Karimona, better known by her stage name Samira Tawfik (Arabic: سميرة توفيق surname also spelled Tewfik, Tawfiq, Toufiq or Taoufiq) (born 25 September 1935) is a Lebanese singer who gained fame in the Arab world for her specializing in singing in the Bedouin dialect of Jordan. She has also acted in a number of Arab films. She struggled for success in Lebanon, due to the highly popular competing acts of Fairuz, Sabah and Wadi al-Safi, but she excelled after basing herself in Jordan in the 1960s and 1970s. There, the Jordanian Broadcasting Authority (JBA) employed her with the request that she sing in the Bedouin dialect. The JBA trained her to sing in the local dialect in order to make her music genuinely sound Transjordanian. Her first song played by Jordanian radio was her first hit, Maskin Ya Qalbi Yama Tlaawat. Samira performed her first concert at a Jordanian village called Ainata and the following day was invited to perform at an event attended by King Hussein. King Hussein became a fan of her Bedouin tunes and mawalil. She became the representative of Jordanian music to the Arab world by singing with the rustic, Bedouin dialect. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.
