Arabic pop usually consists of Western styled songs with Arabic instruments and lyrics.
By the 1970s several other singers had followed suit and a strand of Arabic pop was born. Across the Mediterranean, Moroccan singer Zohra Al Fassiya was the first female performer to achieve wide popularity in the Maghreb region, performing traditional Arab Andalusian folk songs and later recording numerous albums of her own.ĭuring the 1940s and 1960s, Arabic music began to take on a more Western tone – Egyptian artists Umm Kulthum and Abdel Halim Hafez along with composers Mohammed Abdel Wahab and Baligh Hamdi pioneered the use of western instruments in Egyptian music. Both have been popular through the decades that followed and both are considered legends of Arabic music. Egyptian performer Umm Kulthum and Lebanese singer Fairuz were notable examples of this. Al-Andalus įemale singers were some of the first to take a secular approach. 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. In 1252, Safi al-Din developed a unique form of musical notation, where rhythms were represented by geometric representation. Īl-Ghazali (1059–1111) wrote a treatise on music in Persia which declared, "Ecstasy means the state that comes from listening to music". His pure Arabian tone system is still used in Arabic music.
Ībulfaraj (897–967) wrote the Kitab al-Aghani, an encyclopedic collection of poems and songs that runs to over 20 volumes in modern editions.Īl-Farabi (872–950) wrote a notable book on Islamic music titled Kitab al-Musiqa al-Kabir (The Great Book of Music). He identified twelve tones on the Arabic musical scale, based on the location of fingers on and the strings of the oud. He published several tracts on musical theory, including the cosmological connotations of music. He joined several others like al-Farabi in proposing the addition of a makeshift fifth string to the oud. Maqams can be realized with either vocal or instrumental music, and do not include a rhythmic component.Īl-Kindi (801–873 AD) was a notable early theorist of Arabic music. Among the notable songs of the period were the huda (from which the ghina derived), the nasb, sanad, and rukbani.Īn 8th century Umayyad fresco from Qasr al-Hayr al-Gharbi, Syria.īoth compositions and improvisations in traditional Arabic music are based on the maqam system. The compositions were simple and every singer would sing in a single maqam.
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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. The choir at the time served as a pedagogic facility where the educated poets would recite their poems. It was believed that Jinns revealed poems to poets and music to musicians. 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. 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. Pre-Islamic Arabian Peninsula music was similar to that of Ancient Middle Eastern music. 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. 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. Pre-Islamic Arabia was the cradle of many intellectual achievements, including music, musical theory and the development of musical instruments. History Pre-Islamic period (Arabian Peninsula)