Fatma Shaddad
Qatari musician and actress
Fatma Shaddad (Arabic: فاطمه شداد; 1962 – 23 November 2020) was a Qatari musician and actress. Best known for forming the country's first all-female band, she has been described as a pioneer in Qatari folk music.
Biography
Shaddad was born in Qatar's capital city Doha in 1962 to an Afro-Arab family originally brought as slaves from the Horn of Africa (Indian ocean slave trade). Her interest in singing stemmed from her childhood. Her father led an amateur band, Al-Shadadiya Folk Band, and often held training sessions in the family home, where Shaddad listened in and memorized the songs. Following her father's death, the task of managing the band fell to her mother. In the 1980s, Shaddad suggested that the band members ask their daughters to join her in establishing a band, to which they agreed, resulting in the formation of Qatar's first-ever female band. Her band performed at venues throughout Qatar and had its music broadcast on Qatar Radio beginning in 1986. Early on in her career, she was subjected to both verbal and physical harassment by some members of the community, as it was seen as a societal taboo for women to sing in the presence of men.
Some of her early inspirations to which she credited her musical style were the Qatari artists Halima Bint Marzouq and Asmaa Al Hareb.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 10, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q126572355. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1962, 2020 and 1986.
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This entry incorporates text from “Fatma Shaddad” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.