Kamal Sultan documents the latest in an unending string of clashes between pop stars A quarrel between two Arab pop stars -- in this case, Amr Diab and Tamer Hosni -- is hardly out of the ordinary. As far as Diab is concerned, at least until he signed his 2003 sponsorship contract with Rotana, disputes with rival singers and producers have been a more or less regular occurrence. One such -- widely publicised -- was with producer Mohsen Gaber, who objected to Diab using footage of music videos produced by Alam Al-Fann in an as yet never produced biopic documenting the latter's rise to fame. The court case notwithstanding, Diab recently went to Gaber's house to offer his condolences following the death of the producer's sister, Samia Gaber. The tendency of famous singers to clash is not new: through the 1960s, composer-singer Farid El-Atrash and romantic icon Abdel-Halim Hafez were virtually at each other's throats, competing savagely for the same spot on the Spring Festival programme, until the star TV host Tarek Habib brought them face to face and embarrassed them into reconciling. Later, Hani Shakir had an ongoing issue with Lebanese singer Fadl Shakir, who eventually invited him to dinner at his own restaurant in Beirut. Females singers are no different: Syrian singers Asala and Mayyada Al-Hennawi had their fights, too, so did the Lebanese singers Nancy Agram and Haifa Wahbi and Egyptian singers Sherin and Angham. Typically, a singer boasts of their popularity to the media. A rival dismisses the remark as groundless. War ensues. The Diab-Hosni dispute started in 2005 when, in a Nile Variety Channel poll, Diab won singer of the year and Hosni best music video. Claiming he was sick, Diab did not show up at the awards ceremony, but noting that Diab's posters were bigger than his own, no sooner was Hosni there than he threw a tantrum. Organisers made bigger posters of Hosni, Diab fans attacked him, he responded with acerbic comments about Diab... At a Rotana Magazine reception, recently, Hosni -- most popular young singer according to magazine another poll -- refused to show up when he realised that Diab -- the Rotana company's biggest star -- would be there. Magazine editor Hala El-Nasser consequently failed to grant Hosni the title of Prince, though she claims this was due to two other pop singers -- Mohammad Hamaqi and Rami Sabri, contesting it. Diab, she insists, was neither part of the poll nor party to the proceedings. Since then a war of words has broken out on Facebook. Diab's fans claim that the album Wayyah (With him) has sold more than three million copies. Hosni's counter that it is Haish Hayati (I will live my life) that broke all known records in the region. Text messages -- including, reportedly, insults to Hosni by Diab fans, which Hosni reported to the police -- have also been exchanged. Hosni is winning the Facebook war -- with 24 new groups as opposed to 17 for Diab; the two have some 500 groups among them, but Diab's fan club has more 125,000 members while Hosni's has under 1,000. Hosni has been accused of insulting Diab's fans online, but he claims it was one of his fans impersonating; he has no Facebook account, he insists. Be that as it may, in the music industry the feeling is that the dispute has been blown out of all proportion. Composer Helmi Bakr -- an authority on Egyptian pop if ever there was one -- says Diab has avoided a clash while "certain parties" endeavour to see him fall out with Hosni. "In my opinion, this could only be a quarrel between a father and a son, for there is a considerable age difference between the two. One cannot compare a father with a son, and an artist should only be judged by the quality of his art. The same thing happened in the past with Abdel-Halim Hafez, when people tried to pit him against younger singers like Mohammad Roshdi, Moharram Fouad, and Hani Shakir. Each time, however, he managed to divert the course of the dispute, until it was between Moharram and Roshdi who turned on each other, for example." Composer Yehia El-Mugi elaborates: Diab and Hosni have both enriched the world of song, he says. But while Diab is very methodical about lyrics, melody, and harmony, it would be unfair to compare him to the far less consistent Hosni, because there is a considerable difference between them in terms of experience and maturity. Writing in Al-Kawakeb Magazine, critic Fawzi Ibrahim agrees with Bakr: "Beneath the surface, I detect an evil desire to undermine the two singers. I have warned both against falling in this trap. I also asked their friends to stay away from this morass... Certain people suggest that Diab is resorting to underhanded methods to undermine the career of one of the brightest young singers around. This is bad publicity for Diab, both at the artistic and human level, for he cannot end his unprecedented success on that note. At the same time, certain people want to portray Hosni as being disrespectful and pretentious which is not good for him either." The internet campaign, Ibrahim says, seems a little too well choregraphed to be real: "It is as if someone is calibrating it for his own advantage. The only beneficiary could be the recording companies which want to sell more and don't care what happens to Diab and Hosni in the long run." Critic Tarek El-Shennawi takes a more historical approach. In show business, he says, there is always turbulence in the upper echelons. "First, there was Om Kalthoum against Monira El-Mahdiya, then Om Kalthoum against Mohammad Abdel-Wahab. At the end, Abdel-Wahab decided to stop singing and focus on composing. Then we had Abdel-Halim versus Farid El-Atrash. Abdel-Halim was nearly 20 years younger than Farid, but this didn't stop the confrontation from happening. At one point, the president had to intervene in person to end the row. In one Spring Festival, the television could only relay one event live, while both singers had concerts on the same night. President Gamal Abdel-Naser stepped in and ordered the television to relay Farid's concert and record Abdel-Halim's for screening the next day." El-Shennawi says he enjoys both Diab and Hosni, though the age difference between them is nearly 18 years. "In fact, I see the conflict as a sign that both are popular. Diab has been singing for nearly 30 years and he is still number one. This is why his fans call him The Rock, while Hosni has managed within eight years to have people call him The Singer of the Generation. Hosni is always trying to assert that the two are equal, and he is known to have big singers recognise his talent as a songwriter -- Warda and Hani Shakir, for example. I believe that the two are smart and know how to use the media to advance their cause."\ Now that Pepsi has replaced Diab with Hosni on its advertising campaign, however, there is no reason to expect the dispute to subside.
