How much wiggle room does a singer have to personalize their interpretation

[ameer]

Hi all. As my first post in this forum, permit me to ask a beginner's question: to what degree and in what ways can singers personalize their interpretations of nahda music?
For example, I am familiar with several different versions of Ana haweit including Sayid Makawi's version on the oud, Abbas El Balidi's version here, Soad Mohammad's version, even the late Hikmat Shaheen recorded a portion of it; these were performers who, at least in theory, should be familiar with where and how to personalize. What I notice is that while everyone is willing to tinker with the instrumental responses and whether "ertadeit" falls on the second doom of a measure or the end of the previous measure, many of the solos where I would expect to hear improvization or at least something unique e.g. "ma fish kida..." turn out to be identical. Is this a case of looking for improvizations in the wrong places? Or is it a product of more modern times where a defacto standard has evolved and no one wants to deviate too much from it. Can someone point out two drastically different interpretations of the same song that exemplify nahda improvization?

[أبو علاء]

Rather the latter. If you want examples of nahdha singing you'll find them in the nahdha era, not much later when the core concepts (song, singer, composition...) have drastically changed. The dawr itself you chose is hardly representative of nahdh. Pick up any of Muhammad 'uthman, Hamuli, Maslub or (early) Dawud Husni and Qabbani 'adwar that were performed by several singers (Hilmi, Manyalawi, 'abu Dawud, Silim...) and you'll have a better understanding of the question.

[ameer]

Interesting. I guess that explains the unusual number of more recent performances; it's just more paletable to the post-nahda ear.