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Artist
Samira Toufic
12+ albums
arabiclebaneseLebanonsyriabedouin music
about
Samira Ghastin Karimona ( سميرة غسطين كريمونة; born 25 December 1935), better known by her stage name Samira Tewfik (Arabic: سميرة توفيق, surname also spelled Tawfik, Tawfiq, Toufiq or Taoufiq) is a Lebanese singer who gained fame in the Arab world for her specializing in singing in the Bedouin dialect of Jordan. 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 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 mawawil. 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.
