Music

Arabic music

Arab music 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.

Genres

Franco-Arabic

Franco-Arabic music is a popular form of West-meets-East style of music, similar in many respects to modern Arabic Pop. This blend of western and eastern music was popularized by artists such as Dalida (Egypt), Sammy Clark (Lebanon), and Aldo from Australia. Although Franco-Arabic music includes many forms of cross-cultural blending between the West and the Middle East, musically the genre crosses over many lines as is seen in songs that incorporate Arabic and Italian, Arabic and French and, of course, Arabic and English styles or lyrics.

Arabic R&B, reggae, and hip hop

There has also been a rise of R&B, reggae and hip hop influenced Arab music in the past couple of years. These songs usually feature a rapper in a traditional Arab pop song (such as Ishtar's song 'Habibi Sawah'). The Moroccan singer Elam Jay developed a contemporary version of the Gnawa genre that is fused with R&B which he named Gnawitone Styla. Another variation of contemporary Gnawa played in Morocco is introduced by Darga. Based in Casablanca, the group fuses Gnawa with Reggae. Political Reggaeartists such as TootArd from the occupied Syrian Golan Heights from Haifa (Originally from Iqrith) started gaining popularity in Palestine in 2011 after the YouTube premiere of a song about the Arab Spring (mainly the Tunisian revolution), called "The Green Revolution", sung by them and an ensemble of Palestinian artists, most notable among them being Mahmoud Jrere of DAM. Notable is Shadia Mansour, a Palestinian British rapper known as "The First Lady of Arab Hip Hop. Much of her music focuses on the Palestinian cause.

Also there is the Moroccan pop introduced by the Moroccan singer Oussama Belhcen who's mixing between the American and the Moroccan music in his songs. 

However certain artists have taken to using full R&B and reggae beats and styling such as Darine. This has been met with mixed critical and commercial reaction.As of now it is not a widespread genre.

Arabic electronica

Electronic dance music is another genre to come out into popularity. Often, songs in this genre would combine electronic musical instruments with traditional Middle Eastern instruments. Artists like Richii popularized this style with songs like "Ana Lubnaneyoun".

 

Hanine - Arabia

Arabic jazz

Another popular form of West meets East, Arabic jazz is also popular, with many songs using jazz instruments. Early jazz influences began with the use of the saxophone by musicians like Samir Suroor, in the "oriental" style. The use of the saxophone in that manner can be found in Abdel Halim Hafez's songs, as well as Kadim Al Sahir and Rida Al Abdallah today. The first mainstream jazz elements were incorporated into Arabic music by the Rahbani brothers. Fairuz's later work was almost exclusively made up of jazz songs, composed by her son Ziad Rahbani. Ziad Rahbani also pioneered today's oriental jazz movement, to which singers including Rima Khcheich, Salma El Mosfi, and (on occasion) Latifa adhere. We can also find a lot of jazz music in Mohamed Mounir's songs starting from his first album Alemony Eneeki in 1977, and he is considered to be the King of Arabic Jazz and Arabic Music generally.Another notable performer of this genre is the Palestinian singer Reem Kelani who blends jazz with Arabic music, both in her own compositions and in her arrangements of traditional songs.

 Awel Mara - Abdel Halim Hafez

                                                Bektob esmak ya habibi - Fairouz

Arabic Jazz has met many new kinds of composition since the end of the 20th century:

• Modal forms with Anouar Brahem and Rabih Abou Khalil
• Mixed electric sound experiences with Dhafer Youssef
• New pop jazz styles with Titi Robin and Toufic Farroukh
• Other acoustic youth experiences with Hamdi Makhlouf, Amine & Hamza M'raihi and Jasser Haj Youssef

Arabic rock

Rock music is popular all around the world, the Arab world being no exception. There have been many Arab rock bands along the years that fused rock, metal and alternative rocksounds with traditional Arab instruments.^[

Arabic rock has been gaining a lot of attention lately in the Middle East with bands like Cairokee, JadaL, Autostrad, El Morabba3 and Akher Zapheer of Jordan, The Wanton Bishops, Mashrou' Leila and Meen of Lebanon, Massar Egbari, Sahara, Wyvern and Cartoon Killerz of Egypt, Khalas, and Chaos of Palestine and Acrassicauda of Iraq. The band Hoba Hoba Spirit from Morocco is also gaining popularity, especially in the Maghrebi region. Rachid Taha, an Algerian musician, plays a fusion of rock and raï.

 Cairokee feat. Tarek El-Sheikh - Fix

Characteristics of Arabic music

Much of Arabic music is characterized by an emphasis on melody and rhythm, as opposed to harmony. There are some genres of Arabic music that are polyphonic, but typically, Arabic music is homophonic.

Habib Hassan Touma submits that there are five components that characterize Arabic music:

1. The Arab tone system; that is, a musical tuning system that relies on specific interval structures and was invented by al-Farabi in the 10th century
2. Rhythmic-temporal structures that produce a rich variety of rhythmic patterns, known as awzan or "weight", that are used to accompany metered vocal and instrumental genres, to accent or give them form.
3. A number of musical instruments that are found throughout the Arab world that represent a standardized tone system, are played with generally standardized performance techniques, and display similar details in construction and design.
4. Specific social contexts that produce sub-categories of Arabic music, or musical genres that can be broadly classified as urban (music of the city inhabitants), rural (music of the country inhabitants), or Bedouin (music of the desert inhabitants)..."
5. An Arab musical mentality, "responsible for the esthetic homogeneity of the tonal-spatial and rhythmic-temporal structures throughout the Arab world whether composed or improvised, instrumental or vocal, secular or sacred." Touma describes this musical mentality as being composed of many things.

 

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