A taqtūqa is a genre of light Arabic vocal music sung in regional or colloquial Arabic

Arabic language

Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...

. It was associated with female vocalists around the turn of the 20th century, and became very popular during the first decades of the 20th century, as the gramophone

Phonograph

The phonograph record player, or gramophone is a device introduced in 1877 that has had continued common use for reproducing sound recordings, although when first developed, the phonograph was used to both record and reproduce sounds...

 and cinema

Film

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

 grew in popularity.http://books.google.com/books?id=TF-5mvvS13oC&pg=PA52&dq=taqtuqa&sig=GRyZWR22ZVTh4Rgw6-Gt2m2Tncw

The famous Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum recorded taqtuqas early in her career; her first was "Illi Habbik Ya Hanah" (Joy to Him Who Loved You), composed in 1925 by Zakariyya Ahmad

Zakariyya Ahmad

Zakariyya Ahmad was an Egyptian musician and composer. He composed many pieces in a traditional Egyptian folk style. His works include solo pieces and film scores, and he composed for Umm Kulthum beginning with a taqtuqa written in 1925.His father was Egyptian and his mother was Turkish.-External...

.http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2000/470/herit2.htm