ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses how women were able to gain the public and mediated presence that they clearly had by the mid-twentieth century and has attempted to analyse what sort of 'voice' these women exercised in local society. Taking as its point of departure some common understandings of women musicians in the late nineteenth century, the chapter shows ways in which women actively pursued performance opportunities, both traditional ones and those emerging in the increasingly capitalist music world of the time. The women's own voices, musically and socially, tell a different story of music and social performance. Several types of sources mention or discuss musical performance in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Egypt. However, other accounts describe a different career path emerging in the latter half of the nineteenth century, helping to invent the capitalistic business of entertainment in Cairo that burgeoned in the early twentieth century.
