The first time I realised something was missing from Egypt’s religious soundscape, it was not in a mosque or a shrine, but on TikTok. A short video showed a woman in her fifties sitting among a family gathering, chanting a famous poem in praise of Imam Hussein. Her voice was strong, luminous, and entirely unselfconscious — the kind of voice that fills a room and holds it.
What made the clip extraordinary was not only the beauty of her performance, but its rarity: a woman, seated at the centre of a mixed gathering, leading devotional…
