Warda Al-Jazairia and Egypt: the voice who made Cairo home and became Egyptian

Born Warda Ftouki on 22 July 1939 in France, she died on 17 May 2012 ¹. She began singing as a child at her father's club in France, performing songs of Umm Kulthum, Abdel Wahab and Abdel Halim before recording her own ¹.

Warda came to Cairo in 1960 at the invitation of producer and director Helmy Rafla, who gave her first leading film role in «Almaz wa Abdo El Hamouli» (1962) ¹. In the same years she sang in the operetta «Al Watan Al Akbar», composed by Mohamed Abdel Wahab, alongside Abdel Halim Hafez, Nagat, Shadia, Sabah and Fayda Kamel ¹.

She later spent years away from Egypt and stepped back from singing after her first marriage, returning in 1972 to sing for Algeria's tenth independence anniversary, to music by the Egyptian composer Baligh Hamdi ¹.

Back in Cairo in the 1970s she married Baligh Hamdi, beginning a musical partnership that continued even after their divorce in 1979 ¹. She worked with Egypt's great composers: Mohamed Abdel Wahab, Riad Al Sunbati, Sayed Mekkawy, Kamal El Tawil, Mohamed El Mougy, and later Salah El Sharnoubi and Helmy Bakr ¹.

Among her Egyptian milestones:

• «Awqati Bethlaw», composed by Sayed Mekkawy (1979), a song he had prepared for Umm Kulthum before her death [1][src-1].
• «Batwanes Beek», composed by Salah El Sharnoubi [1][src-1].
• Songs that lived in Egyptian and Arab homes, such as «El Oyoun El Soud», «Khalleek Hena» and «Haramt Ahebbak».

She also acted in Egyptian films including «Amirat Al Arab», «Sawt Al Hob», «Hekayti Maa El Zaman», «Ah Ya Leil Ya Zaman» and «Leih Ya Donia» ¹.

Warda held Egyptian citizenship ¹; according to El Watan she obtained it in the early 1980s, after her separation from Baligh Hamdi ². Although she spent her artistic life in Cairo and died at her home there, she asked to be buried in Algeria and was laid to rest in El Alia cemetery in Algiers ¹² — a voice that lived between two countries and was loved in both.

We chose the name as a cultural tribute to a voice that joined tenderness, strength and longing, and to the Cairo that embraced it. It is the feeling we want at our table: a warm gathering and Egyptian food that takes you home. Read more on our story page, and when you visit, you will find her portrait in the dining room and her photos on the wall.

The name is a cultural tribute; the restaurant is not affiliated with the artist Warda or her heirs and claims no official connection with them.