Shafiqa

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Shafika or Shafika Al-Tantawiya (Arabic: شفيقة)^[1] (1957 - 5 May 2011) was an Egyptian singer. She was one of the singers who was called the Umm Kulthum^[2] of popular songs. Her cassette tapes in the 1990s achieved the highest sales rate of her era.^[3]

Shafika Mahmoud Riad Atta was born and named Al-Tantawiya to distinguish her from Shafika Al-Qebtiya. She was born in the Al-Qurashi area in the second district of Tanta city in Gharbia Governorate. Her parents were the accordion player and leader of the "Layalina" band, Mahmoud Riad Atta, and he named her Shafika after her grandmother. Her parents played the accordion for her at home,^[4] and as a result, Shafika grew up passionate about music and loved singing, in addition to her beautiful voice that made everyone encourage her and delight her. She made her father a teacher, companion and leader for her outside the home, after he took her to his outside world, so she accompanied him to parties, evenings and weddings. He discovered Shafika's talent early, to present her on stage when she was no more than 13 years old. She began her artistic career in Tanta with the Layalina band led by her father Mahmoud Atta, the author Ahmed Hosni and the composer Amin Gad, who was famous for Sandoubi in the early nineties.^[5]

Shafika married five times and did not have children. Her first husband was Hoda Al-Rashidi,^[6] the second was Shokoko, whom she met in Zagazig during a wedding, the third was "Mustafa Rashad" and the fourth was from the family of the musician Hassan Esh Esh. As for the fifth, he was from Alexandria and his name was Mohamed Hosni, who caused her to retire in 2004. He got all his money and she returned from retirement after he took everything from her in 2008.^[7]

She started singing at the age of 13 in Tanta in 1970, where she stood on the stage of the "Layalina" troupe in Tanta,^[8] which was led by her father Mahmoud Riad Atta, and its affairs were managed by "Lulla", achieving great success. The girl who can hardly be seen from the stage can make the audience dance for hours to the rhythms of her cheerful voice and overwhelming presence. Shafika's success was not limited to weddings and Tanta parties. She released her first album in 1980.^[9] Her voice became the loudest in Egypt. The album was on cassette tapes and achieved overwhelming success, so much so that distributors called her "The Cassette Sultana". As soon as her tapes were put on the shelves, fans would snatch them up. She was then requested at parties and weddings in the governorates and Arab countries, and some Asian countries, specifically Thailand, where she achieved great fame. In the nineties, Ahmed Fakhry, the owner of the Western Audio Company, produced a collection of cassette tapes for her. At that time, she was at the height of her fame, and everyone was eager to hear her voice.^[10] She even held about 7 or 8 concerts a day, and she was paid 10 thousand pounds for each concert. Her net daily income reached 40 thousand pounds.

Shafika's cassette tapes achieved great sales, so much so that her fame went beyond the Arab world, as Shafika was distinguished by her strong, resonant voice, and her songs filled with melancholy, singing, and sultanism, which made the audience give her several titles, such as "The Fourth Pyramid, the Pyramid of the West, the Sultana of Cassettes, and the Umm Kulthum of the People."^{[citation needed]}

Sales were strong until 2004, when she decided to try her hand at production herself. It seems that the artist was not as familiar with the market conditions as she was with singing, as the cassette market had completely collapsed at that time, which exposed her to a huge loss, which made her think that the conditions of art were not guaranteed, as what she earns today with the right hand, she wastes with the left, and thus she found no escape from retiring and thinking of another field in which to invest her money, so the good people suggested that she open a fish restaurant in Alexandria, a project whose consequences were not much different from her thinking about artistic production.^{[citation needed]}

Three years she spent away from singing, during which she lost a lot of money. The fans who loved Shafika and bought her songs’ tapes did not come to her restaurant with the same enthusiasm

She returned to singing in 2007, performing at weddings and parties in Alexandria.^[11]

Another reason behind the loss of her money and her need for help from those around her at the end of her life was her marriage to “Shafiq”, the owner of a famous kebab restaurant in Alexandria. This person used her money to buy land and expand his shops. Some of those who knew her said that she did not have children, despite being married more than once.^[12]

Shafika left Tanta and decided to settle in Alexandria, and established a seafood restaurant, which was her second experience as a businesswoman, but it was not crowned with success, like her experience in production. After returning from retirement, she continued singing for another 3 years, specifically until 2010, when she was struck by illness, targeting her heart that knew nothing but love for her family, neighbors, art and its people, so she suffered a heart attack, after which she was transferred to the hospital, and remained in "intensive care" for a long time, but her condition was deteriorating daily, until she passed away in May 2011.^[13]

• Shafiqa discography at Discogs
• Shafiqa's channel on YouTube
• Shafiqa on iTunes
• Shafiqa at IMDb