Arabic music

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Bayad plays the oud to The Lady. from the Riyad & Bayad, Arabic tale.

Arabic music or Arab music (Arabic: ALA-LC: al-msq al-Arabyah) is the music of
the Arab people.
Arab music, while independent and flourishing in the 2010s[1], has a long history of interaction with
many other regional musical styles and genres. It is an amalgam of the music of the Arab people in
the Arabian Peninsula and the music of all the peoples that make up the Arab world today.

Contents
[hide]

1History
o 1.1Pre-Islamic period
o 1.2Early Islamic period
1.2.1Al-Andalus
1.2.2Influence of Arabic music
o 1.316th to 18th century
220th century
o 2.1Early secular formation
o 2.2Interaction with Western popular music
2.2.1Franco-Arabic
2.2.2Arabic R&B, reggae, and hip hop
2.2.3Arabic electronica
2.2.4Arabic jazz
2.2.5Arabic rock
 3Musical regions
o 3.1North Africa
o 3.2Arabian Peninsula
4Genres
o 4.1Secular art music
o 4.2Sacred music
5Characteristics of Arabic music
o 5.1Maqam system
5.1.1Ajnas
o 5.2Microtones in Arabic music
5.2.1Regional scales
5.2.2Practical treatment
o 5.3Vocal traditions
o 5.4Instruments and ensembles
6See also
7References
8Further reading
9External links

History[edit]
Pre-Islamic period[edit]
Pre-Islamic Arab music was similar to that of Ancient Middle Eastern 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 timecalled shu`ara' al-Jahiliyah (Arabic: )
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 oud 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.
Early Islamic period[edit]
An 8th century Umayyad Fresco from Qasr al-Hayr al-Gharbi, Syria.

Both compositions and improvisations in traditional Arabic music are based on

the maqam system. Maqams can be realized with either vocal or instrumental music, and do not
include a rhythmic component.
Al-Kindi (801873 AD) was the first great theoretician of Arabic music. He proposed adding a fifth
string to the oud and discussed the cosmological connotations of music.[3] He built upon the
achievements of the Greek musicians in using the alphabetical annotation for one eighth.[vague] He
published fifteen treatises on music theory, but only five have survived. In one of his treatises the
word musiqa was used for the first time in Arabic.[4]
Abulfaraj (897967) wrote a book about music. Kitab al-Aghani is an encyclopedic collection of
poems and songs that runs to over 20 volumes in modern editions.
Al-Farabi (872950) wrote a notable book on music titled Kitab al-Musiqi al-Kabir (The Great Book of
Music). His pure Arabian tone system is still used in Arabic music.[5]
Al-Ghazali (10591111) wrote a treatise on music in Persia which declared, "Ecstasy means the
state that comes from listening to music".
In 1252, Safi al-Din developed a unique form of musical notation, where rhythms were represented
by geometric representation. A similar geometric representation would not appear in the Western
world until 1987, when Kjell Gustafson published a method to represent a rhythm as a two-
dimensional graph.[6]
Al-Andalus[edit]
Main article: Andalusian classical music
By the 11th century, Islamic Iberia had become a center for the manufacture of instruments. These
goods spread gradually throughout France, influencing French troubadours, and eventually reaching
the rest of Europe. The English words lute, rebec, and naker are derived from Arabic oud, rabab,
and naqareh.[7][8][vague]
Influence of Arabic music[edit]
See also: Islamic contributions to Medieval Europe
A 12th century Arabic painting of musicians in Palermo, Sicily.

A number of musical instruments used in classical music are believed to have been derived from
Arabic musical instruments: the lute was derived from the oud, the rebec (ancestor of violin) from
the rebab, the guitar from qitara, naker from naqareh, adufe from al-duff, alboka from al-
buq, anafil from al-nafir, exabeba from al-shabbaba (flute), atabal (bass drum) from al-tabl, atambal
from al-tinbal,[9] the balaban, the castanet from kasatan, sonajas de azfar from sunuj al-sufr,
the conical bore wind instruments,[10] the xelami from the sulami or fistula (flute or musical
pipe),[11] the shawm and dulzaina from the reed instruments zamr and al-zurna,[12] the gaita from
the ghaita, rackett from iraqya or iraqiyya,[13] geige (violin) from ghichak,[14] and the theorbo from
the tarab.[15]
The music of the troubadors may have had some Arabic origins. Ezra Pound, in his Canto VIII,
famously declared that William of Aquitaine, an early troubador, "had brought the song up out of
Spain / with the singers and veils...". In his study, Lvi-Provenal is said to have found four Arabo-
Hispanic verses nearly or completely recopied in William's manuscript. According to historic
sources, William VIII, the father of William, brought to Poitiers hundreds of Muslim prisoners.[16] Trend
admitted that the troubadours derived their sense of form and even the subject matter of their poetry
from the Andalusian Muslims.[17] The hypothesis that the troubadour tradition was created, more or
less, by William after his experience of Moorish arts while fighting with the Reconquista in Spain was
also championed by Ramn Menndez Pidal in the early 20th century, but its origins go back to
the Cinquecento and Giammaria Barbieri (died 1575) and Juan Andrs (died 1822). Meg Bogin,
English translator of the female troubadors, also held this hypothesis, as did Idries Shah. Certainly "a
body of song of comparable intensity, profanity and eroticism [existed] in Arabic from the second half
of the 9th century onwards."[18]
One possible theory on the origins of the Western Solfge musical notation suggests that it may
have had Arabic origins. It has been argued that the Solfge syllables (do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti) may
have been derived from the syllables of the Arabic solmization system Durr-i-Mufassal ("Separated
Pearls") (dal, ra, mim, fa, sad, lam). This origin theory was first proposed by Meninski in
his Thesaurus Linguarum Orientalum (1680) and then by Laborde in his Essai sur la Musique
Ancienne et Moderne (1780), while more recent supporters include Henry George Farmer[19] and
Samuel D. Miller.[20]
16th to 18th century[edit]