Sawt Al-Qahera
Egyptian state-owned record label and media producer, custodian of Umm Kulthum's master recordings since a 1964 nationalisation.
- Based in
- Cairo, Egypt
- Founded
- 1964 (as Sawt al-Qahira, succeeding Misr Phone, founded 1959)
- Founder
- Mohamed Fawzy (founded predecessor Misr Phone, 1959)
- Website
- sonocairo.com
Sawt Al-Qahira, known internationally as Sono Cairo, is an Egyptian state-owned record label and media production company headquartered in Cairo. It traces back to Misr Phone, a recording company the singer and producer Mohamed Fawzy founded in 1959; the Egyptian government took the company over in 1964 and renamed it Sawt al-Qahira. A 1977 ministerial decision reorganised it as a joint-stock company under the Radio and Television Union, part of the Ministry of Information, where it remains today under chairwoman Naila Farouk.
The company’s catalogue includes the master recordings of Umm Kulthum, the Egyptian singer whose work is central to twentieth-century Arabic music. A Cairo Economic Court ruling, reported by New Lines Magazine, affirmed Sawt al-Qahira’s exclusive rights to that catalogue against a claim brought by the singer’s family. Beyond music rights, the company now produces radio programming, religious and Quranic recordings, drama series and entertainment content for the Egyptian state broadcasting apparatus; it has largely stopped manufacturing physical records.
