Omar Khorshid

Who was Omar Khorshid?

Omar Khorshid. Movie star and famed guitarist of the Middle east, he composed the music for thirteen films. In 1971 won the Premier Prix at the Film Festival of Tachkand for his music for the film Ebnati El Aziza. Khorshid is renowned as one of the greatest guitarist of the Arab world and has accompanied all its leading singers including Umm Kulthum, Abdel Wahab, and Abdul Halim Hafez.

The Freak of Araby is an album by Sir Richard Bishop, released on May 26, 2009, on the Drag City record label. It includes covers of several songs written by Omar Khorshid.

The late Omar Khorshid remains an iconic legend of the Arab world, though he’s received criminally little international acclaim. Born in Cairo in 1945, the glittering age of Egypt's cultural reinvention, Khorshid was soon to become one of its luminaries and most well-known, if short-lived, voices. He is regarded as the greatest guitarist the Arab world has ever known. By the mid 60s Khorshid was established with his group Le Petit Chats, an Egyptian beat group modeled after the prevailing influence of Elvis and the Beatles. It was at this time that one of the reigning figures of contemporary Arabic music, Abdel Halim Hafez, asked Omar Khorshid to join his orchestra. With Baligh Hamdi composing, Hafez with Khorshid in place would create some of the most innovative modern sounds in the Arabic musical canon.