Warda (aka وردة), is an abbreviation of Warda al-Jazairia (b. July 1940, in Puteaux, France), a French-Algerian singer.

She is well known in the Arabic community, for her Egyptian songs & music. She started singing at only eleven years old, in 1951. She quickly became well-known for her singing of patriotic Algerian songs.

Her father is from Algeria (Souk-Ahras) and her mother is from Lebanon. After the algerian independance (1962), she married an algerian military officer and had couple of children; however her husband barred her from singing in public, which lead her to divorce and go to Egypt to pursue her singing career. There, she met great egyptian composers, among whom the great compsoer Baligh Handy whom she married.

She is one of the only Arab singers able to reach beyond the linguistic and musical boundaries within the Arab World. If her musical background, her very extraction enable her to interpret all kind of Arab folklore remarkably, from countries as different as those along the Arabian Gulf, the Mediterranean or the Atlantic Ocean, her own influence is very conspicuous in Baligh Hamdi's compositions with their Flamenco, Oranese and Shawian songs, traditional Andalusian vocalization and the powerful singing of the Tunisian Sahel.

Among hundreds of songs she has sung, her most famous early Egyptian works include "Akdeb Aleik", "El Oyoun El Soud", and "Aw'ati Btehlaw". In the 1990s, her collaboration with Egyptian composer Salah El Sharnoubi also bore her many hits such as "Batwanness Bik", "Harramt Ahebbak", and "Nar El Ghira".

User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License and may also be available under the GNU FDL.