Arabic music
Arabic music (Arabic: الموسيقى العربية, romanized: al-mūsīqā al-ʿarabīyyah) is the music of the Arab world with all its diverse music styles and genres. Arabic countries have many rich and varied styles of music and also many linguistic dialects, with each country and region having their own traditional music.
Arabic music has a long history of interaction with many other regional musical styles and genres. It represents the music of all the peoples that make up the Arab world today.
History[edit]
Pre-Islamic period[edit]
Pre-Islamic Arabia was the cradle of many intellectual achievements, including music, musical theory and the development of musical instruments.[1] In Yemen, the main center of pre-Islamic Arab sciences, literature and arts, musicians benefited from the patronage of the Kings of Sabaʾ who encouraged the development of music.[2][3] For many centuries, the Arabs of Hejaz recognized that the best real Arabian music came from Yemen, and Hadhrami minstrels were considered to be superior.[3] Pre-Islamic Arabian Peninsula music was similar to that of Ancient Middle Eastern[4] music. Most historians agree that there existed distinct forms of music in the Arabian peninsula in the pre-Islamic period between the 5th and 7th century AD. Arab poets of that time—called shu`ara' al-Jahiliyah (Arabic: شعراء الجاهلية) or "Jahili poets", meaning "the poets of the period of ignorance"—used to recite poems with a high notes.[2]
It was believed that Jinns revealed poems to poets and music to musicians.[2] The choir at the time served as a pedagogic facility where the educated poets would recite their poems. Singing was not thought to be the work of these intellectuals and was instead entrusted to women with beautiful voices who would learn how to play some instruments used at that time such as the drum, the lute or the rebab, and perform the songs while respecting the poetic metre.[2] The compositions were simple and every singer would sing in a single maqam. Among the notable songs of the period were the huda (from which the ghina derived), the nasb, sanad, and rukbani.
Genres[edit]
Franco-Arabic[edit]
Franco-Arabic music is a form of music which is similar to modern Arabic Pop. The genre was popularized by artists such as Dalida from Egypt, Sammy Clark from Lebanon and Aldo from Australia. Franco-Arabic music includes a variety of languages, including Arabic, Italian, French Arabic and English.[46]
Sacred and Art music[edit]
Sacred music[edit]
Arabic religious music includes Jewish (Pizmonim and Baqashot), Christian, and Islamic music. However, Islamic music, including the Tajwid or recitation of Qur'an readings, is structurally equivalent to Arabic secular music, while Christian Arab music has been influenced by Syriac Orthodox, Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Anglican, Coptic, and Maronite church music.[49]
Art music[edit]
Secular art musical genres include maqam al-iraqi, andalusi nubah, muwashshah, Fijiri songs, qasidah, layali, mawwal, taqsim, bashraf, sama'i, tahmilah, dulab, sawt, and liwa.[50]
Research and documentation of Arabic music[edit]
Even though musical traditions in the Arab world have been handed down orally, Arab scholars Al-Kindi, Abulfaraj or Al-Farabi and later Safi al-Din published treatises in Arabic music since at least the 9th century AD. In 1932, the first Congress of Arab Music was held in Cairo, where scholarship about the past, present and future of Arabic music was presented both from Western as well as Arab experts. The results were later documented, both in writing as well as in the form of audio recordings.[56]
Research on Arabic music is a focus of departments of ethnomusicology at universities worldwide, and the global interest in World music has led to a growing number of studies and re-issues of historic recordings by independent researchers or private companies.[57]
Making use of digital archives for texts, pictures and sounds, detailed information on the history of Arabic music is also made accessible over the Internet. The Lebanese foundation AMMAR, for example, is committed to the preservation and dissemination of traditional Arab music and has published a host of historical documents.[58]