Cairo was once a cosmopolitan, multi-ethnic city shared by Muslim and Coptic Egyptians with Jews, Armenians, Greeks and Arab speakers from across the Levant. Raphael Cormack paints a vivid picture of the city in the early 20th century with a focus on the women who stepped out of traditional roles and onto the stage where they performed as singers and actresses. Solid research in Egyptian periodicals of the era enabled the author to construct a plausible chronicle and make a case for those women as early feminists. The sideways glance into the recordings they made reveal parallels to the blues coming from Black American during those same years.
