Arabic music

Arabic music or Arab music (Arabic: موسيقى عربية; Mūsīqā Arabīyya) includes several genres and styles of music ranging from Arabic classical to Arabic pop music and from secular to sacred music.

Arabic music whilst independent and very alive, has a long history of interaction with many other regional musical styles and genres. It is an amalgam of the music of the Arabs in the Arabian Peninsula and the music of all the peoples that make up the Arab world today. It also influenced and has been influenced by ancient Egyptian, ancient Greek, Persian, Kurdish, Assyrian, Turkish, Indian, North African music (i.e. Berber), African music (i.e. Swahili), and European music (i.e. Flamenco). As was the case in other artistic and scientific fields, Arabs translated and developed Greek texts and works of music and mastered the musical theory of the Greeks (i.e. Systema ametabolon, enharmonium, chromatikon, diatonon).Such inter-influences can often be traced in language; for example, the word Shî'ir (poetry in Arabic) bears much similarity to its equivalents in other Semitic languages (such as Shûr in Aramaic and Shîr in Hebrew), and Shîro in Babylonian.[2] Afar music is similar to the music of Ethiopia with elements of Arab music. The Somali oral traditions include an array of poetry and proverbs, much of it devoted to the lives of Sufi saints. Afar oral literature is more musical, and comes in many varieties, including songs for weddings, war, praise and boasting.

History

Pre-Islamic period

The development of Arabic music has deep roots in Arabic poetry dating back to the pre-Islamic period known as Jahiliyyah. Though there is a lack of scientific study to definitively confirm the existence of Arabic music at those times, most historians agree that there existed distinct forms of music in the Arabian peninsula in the pre-Islamic period between the 5th and the 7th century AD. Arab poets of that time - called شعراء الجاهلية or "Jahili poets" which translates to "The poets of the period of ignorance" - used to recite poems with a high musical rhythm and tone.

Music at that time played an important role in cultivating the mystique of exorcists and magicians. It was believed that Jinns revealed poems to poets and music to musicians.The Choir at the time served as a pedagologial tool 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 (i.e. Al-Khansa) who would learn how to play some instruments used at that time (i.e. lute, drum, Oud, rebab, etc...) and then perform the songs while respecting the poetic metre.[5] It should be noted that 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

Al-Kindi (801–873 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. He surpassed the achievement of the Greek musicians in using the alphabetical annotation for one eighth. He published fifteen treatises on music theory, but only five have survived. In one of his treaties the word musiqia was used for the first time in Arabic, which today means music in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, English and several other languages in the Islamic world.

Al-Farabi (872-950) 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.

Arabic maqam is the system of melodic modes used in traditional Arabic music, which is mainly melodic. The word maqam in Arabic means place, location or rank. The Arabic maqam is a melody type. Each maqam is built on a scale, and carries a tradition that defines its habitual phrases, important notes, melodic development and modulation. 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-Andalus

By the 11th century, Moorish Spain 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, guitar, organ and naker are derived from Arabic oud, rabab, qitara, urghun and nagqara'.

The Arabs invented the Ghazal (love song), often used since in Arabic music. Al-Ghazali (1059 - 1111) wrote a treatise on music in Persia which declared, "Ecstasy means the state that comes from listening to music". The oud was popular between the tenth and sixteenth centuries then fell into disuse, enjoying renewed popularity in the nineteenth century.

Influence of Arabic music

A number of musical instruments used in Western music are believed to have been derived from Arabic musical instruments: the lute was derived from the al'ud, 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,the balaban, the castanet from kasatan, sonajas de azófar from sunuj al-sufr, the conical bore wind instruments,the xelami from the sulami or fistula (flute or musical pipe),the shawm and dulzaina from the reed instruments zamr and al-zurna,the gaita from the ghaita, rackett from iraqya or iraqiyya,the harp and zither from the qanun,canon from qanun, geige (violin) from ghichak,and the theorbo from the tarab.

The lute was adopted from the Arab world. 1568 print.

According to a common theory on the origins of the troubadour, a composer of medieval lyric poetry, it may have had Arabic origins. Ezra Pound, in his Canto VIII, famously declared that William of Aquitaine "had brought the song up out of Spain / with the singers and veils..." referring to the troubadour song. In his study, Lévi-Provençal 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.Trend admitted that the troubadours derived their sense of form and even the subject matter of their poetry from the Andalusian Muslims.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 Ramón Menéndez Pidal in the early twentieth-century, but its origins go back to the Cinquecento and Giammaria Barbieri (died 1575) and Juan Andrés (died 1822). Meg Bogin, English translator of the trobairitz, held this hypothesis. Certainly "a body of song of comparable intensity, profanity and eroticism [existed] in Arabic from the second half of the 9th century onwards."

Another theory on the origins of the Western Solfège musical notation suggests that it may have also had Arabic origins. It has been argued that the Solfège 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).