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Egypt · Famous People · Hard

Who was the early 20th-century Egyptian composer and singer, nicknamed 'the Sheikh of the Musicians', who was the first to incorporate Western instruments and polyphony into Arabic orchestral music?

Sayyid Darwish (1892–1923) revolutionized Arabic music by blending Egyptian folk idioms with Western classical orchestration, and his song 'Biladi Biladi' — adapted from a speech by Mustafa Kamel — was adopted as the national anthem, though Darwish himself died aged 31 before ever hearing it in that role.

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