Middle Eastern Music - an overview   --
   
Islamic music started roughly in 610 AD and over a century a new Art form developed drawing upon pre-Islamic Arabian music and from important contributions by Persians, Byzantines, Turks, Berbers, and Moors. In this development the Arabian element acted as a catalyst, with the axis being around the Arabian Peninsula. The further out we go from this area the less the Arabian influence was felt, so the folk music of the Berbers in North Africa, the Moors in Mauritania, and other ethnic groups (e.g., in Turkey) remained alien to classical Islamic music.

There are very fundamental differences between Western music and the music described above. Islamic music is monophonic; i.e., it consists of a single line of melody. In performance everything is related to the refinement of the melodic line and the complexity of rhythm. The notion of harmony is completely absent. Western Music is polyphonic and has a structure based on the Harmony. The notion of Harmony is the combination of several notes and the physiological effect of that combination. To understand this we have to delve into Musical theory a bit. Imagine a length of string drawn taught or a tube with open ends. Twanging the string or blowing a "raspberry" or otherwise blowing across the end of the tube will set the string into vibration or the column of air into vibration. We can see the string form a sort of "bow" or one loop.  If we pluck the string in a different way we could get the string to vibrate in 2 loops and the pitch will be higher. Similarly if we blow harder across the tube the air inside will vibrate in 2 columns rather than one and the note will be higher. The note from this will sound very similar but higher than the 1st note. It will sound effectively the same but higher, a sort of echo. This is called the 1st overtone.  On the piano it will be the note that is an octave higher, i.e. the same shaped key but 12 notes further up. The reason for the note sounding so similar is of course due to the close acoustic relationship. The string can be made to vibrate into 3 portions and this note is not quite so similar but still quite close. This is the 2nd overtone. We can thus take one note, go up one overtone, then onto the 2nd overtone and if we go back one overtone from the 2nd overtone we will end up roughly between the 1st 2 notes. This is roughly the 5th, and I say roughly for a good reason. This overtone would be roughly the 5th note of the Major and Minor scale. This phenonemum was known since time immemorial, but J S Bach made a remarkable discovery. He discovered that if you adjusted the note a tiny bit, you could go up 2 overtones, back one, then forward by 2 and then back by one again and if you kept going you would magically divide the gap between the Octave into 12 equal notes. This then became the Western Musical Scale called Equal Temperament. 

There is thus an acoustic relationship between all the notes albeit slightly out of tune. We would take an arbitrary starting point called Middle C at a frequency of 440 HZ, then create all the 1st overtones foreword and back, call all those C as well, then go back and forth, and making a minor adjustment on all the other notes to create 12 notes per octave. The fact that these notes are all related to each other acoustically means that Harmony is possible. Combining several notes that are closely related creates a relaxing and neutral sound, for example a note and an octave is so neutral that it sounds just a minor enrichment of the one note, a note and the 7th sounds more varied but still somewhat neutral, adding in the 4th note creates a still richer effect. 

You can easily see what I mean if you look at the fretboard of a guitar. Pluck the open string and you will get a note. Pluck at the 12th fret and you will get a note sounding very similar but higher up, the octave. Pluck at the 7th fret and you get the 2nd overtone a note that sounds still similar but quite consonant. Then pluck at the 4th fret and you will get a note that still relates but in a more distant way. Now sing the "open note" then sing the note at the 4th fret, then at the 7th fret and finishing off at the note at the 12th fret. Get different people singing all these notes together and you will get an effect that is simply an enrichment of the original note, that's all. 

Then the term "tone and semi tone" was coined. The gap between adjacant notes is one semi tone and 2 semi tones makes a tone. So advance 1 fret on the guitar and you increase by one semi tone and advance 2 frets and you advance 1 tone. 

The next step in the process is to attempt at some sort of "grouping" of the notes into scales with gaps that are greater than one seni tone. If we don't have gaps bigger than than one semi tone we have the 12 note scale which is called a Chromatic Scale.  It would be like playing the guitar string and advancing one fret at a time. 

The most common scale is the Major scale that takes the following arrangement of gaps 

Note 1 <tone> Note 2 <tone> Note 3 <semi-tone> Note 4 <tone> Note 5 <tone> Note 6 <tone> Note 7 <semi tone> Note 8 which is the octave note so would have the same name again. 

Thus playing 1st note, 3rd note and 5th note together gives us our Major Chord, a rich and harmonious sounding effect. We can create a simple melody out of those 3 notes, Kum by ahh, 1st 3 notes from Z cars, or Oh, when the saints, the words Oh, when and saints corresponding to the 1st, 3rd and 5th notes. The physiological effect is one of harmoniousness and very easy to sing. 

So on the guitar you can play the Major Scale by plucking the open string, then note 2 at the 2nd fret note 3 at the 4th fret, note 4 at the 5th fret note 5 at the 7th fret, note 6 at the 9th fret, note 7 at the 11th fret and finally the Octave at the 12th note. This will be like the 

doh, ray, me, fa, so, la, te, DOH  Scale! Sing these words and make sure that the last DOH is an exact "high echo" of the 1st doh. There you will have the Major Scale which is the most commonest "building block." of Western songs. 

You also have the Minor scale that has 2 versions a melodic and harmonic version. 

You can use any note to start the Scale and the starting point is termed the "KEY." So you can have a scale in C major, starting with C, or E major starting with E or Bb Major starting with Bb. So you can have 11 different starting points. On the guitar fretboard you could create the major scale at any point, you could start at fret 4 as the starting point for your 1st note then advance 2 frets for your second note and so on. 

No go back to the doh, ray, me, fa, so, la, te, DOH  Scale. Sing this several times till you get it in tune (ie the 1st and last doh have got to sound "similar." Then sing this - doh, so, DOH.  This will sound sort of "static", ie you could cycle round this over and over again, with no dramatic effect. It will like the Walking Bass line. Now sing doh, me, so and DOH. Becomes more like a simple "chord." A rich satisfying sound that is fairly static. After having sung that loads of times, now sing doh ray doh ray. You will notice that the ray is trying to pull away from the doh as if edging the thing in that direction. This is because doh and so are closely related, doh and la less so but still close but do and ray are quite far apart accoustically speaking so the tendency will be to push onto the ray. 

So here we have the basic principles of the construction of all our Western songs!  The more distant notes gives the song drama. The effect is always to return to the Home Note, and we can see how a harmonic structure both by way of playing notes together and sequentially creates effects that depend on the harmonic relationship of the notes. This creates a sense of drama in one way in that the intention is to go around the notes and return to the "home note". Take the notes from "God save the Queen" and you will see how strongly the other notes pull towards the home note because of the distant relationship of a lot of the other notes thus pulling the whole thing towards the home note. It then also gives the melody that sense of drama and power and the crashing cymbals and fanfare culminate on the last note "queen" when the fanfare can die down. 

Bear in mind in all this we are talking about EQUAL TEMPERAMENT! This is a sort of "compromise" tuning in order to fit in 12 notes between each octave. It means slightly sharpening each note a bit and then, just about, you get that accoustic relationship between all those notes that makes complex Western Harmony possible. 

Now Middle Eastern Music works on a different level altogether. In performance everything is related to the refinement of the melodic line and the complexity of rhythm. Instead of having an underpinning harmonic framework that gives the melody a sense of direction, with a beginning, middle and end, instead the effect is a continuous development and endless reiteration with embellishments and variations, like the "waves on a shore" analogy. To achieve this one device was  the use of micro tonality (the use of intervals smaller than a Western half step or lying between a half step and a Western whole step) and the variety of intervals used. Because the compromised 12 note "Equal Temperament" scale was not used, there was freedom to vary the nuances of pitch, often slightly varying even the perfect consonances, the fourth and fifth. In fact the division varied from region to region and from over the ages as well. Anything from 17 to 72 divisions would have been used and these were not necessarily even! 

Collections of notes were used called Maqams. The number of notes would generally be 7 and the gap between each one is not restrained by "equal tempremant."  So you can now imagine the guitar string again and the spacing of the frets so as to achieve equal tempremant. The spacing would be to do with that particular maqam. Each maqam has a proper name that may refer to a place (as Hejaz, Iraq), to a famous man, or to an object, feeling, quality, or special event. Emotional or philosophical meaning (ethos, or ta'thir) and cosmological background are attached to a maqam and also to the rhythmic modes. The Arabic term maqam is the equivalent of dastgah in Persia, naghmah in Egypt, and cbat in North Africa. So you can see that there could be infinite ways of arranging the frets! 

In Islamic music the vocal component predominates over the instrumental. It is based on the skill of the individual artist, who is both composer and performer and who benefits from a relatively high degree of artistic freedom. The artist is permitted, and indeed encouraged, to improvise. He generally concentrates on the details forming a work, being less concerned with following a preconceived plan than with allowing the music's structure to emerge empirically from its details. Melodies are organized in terms of maqamat (singular maqam), or "modes," characteristic melodic patterns with prescribed scales, preferential notes, typical melodic and rhythmic formulas, variety of intonations, and other conventional devices. The performer improvises within the framework of the maqam, which is also imbued with ethos (Arabic ta'thir), a specific emotional or philosophical meaning attached to a musical mode. Rhythms are organized into rhythmic modes, or iqa'at (singular iqa'), cyclical patterns of strong and weak beats. 

Medieval Islamic music was principally an individual, soloistic art. Small ensembles were actually groups of soloists with the principal member, usually the singer, predominating. Being an essentially vocal music, it displayed many singing and vocal techniques, such as special vocal colour, guttural nasality, vibrato, and other stylistic ornaments. Although the music was based upon strict rules, preexisting melodies, and stylistic requirements, the performer enjoyed great creative freedom. The artist was expected to bring his contribution to a given traditional piece through improvisation, original ornamentation, and his own approach to tempo, rhythmic pattern, and the distribution of the text over the melody. Thus the artist functioned as both performer and composer.

The absence of the harmonic element in the music is why we Westerners find it hard to appreciate really authentic Middle Eastern music. Seeing it more as "Waves on a Shore" rather than a Drama or storyline with a start and a finish will help us to appreciate the true depth of the music. 

Obviously in the 20th Century Western musical influences came in and one interesting development was by the 19th-century theorists Michel Muchaqa of Damascus and Mohammed Chehab ad-Din of Cairo who introduced the theoretical division of the scale into 24 quarter tones. Western keyboards, saxophones and accordions were modified so that they had 24 notes between each octave. This was an attempt to at least try and close the gap between the Western rigid 12 note arrangement and the infinite variety of tonal arrangements within the Middle Eastern mode. So Western notions of harmony were brought in and thus the 20th Century, headed by Egypt created a new hybrid of music that was rapidly disseminated throughout the Middle East via TV, radio and the phonograph record. The Egyptian Cabaret scene of course generated a vast range of bespoke music and in its heyday huge orchestras were created to play for the top dancers of that era. An interesting hybrid of Western and Middle Eastern values was created. Superstars such as the legendary Um Kalthoum emerged. A Paris newspaper voted her one of the worlds 50 most important women. The people of Egypt and the rest of the Arabic nations loved her, particularly as she came from poor country stock She was a true daughter of Egypt. When she died in 1975 her funeral was one of the biggest seen in Cairo, with over 2 million mourners.

The hybrid nature of Middle Eastern music is really obvious when studied in depth. The idea of a riff or a motto theme is taken from the Middle Eastern side and the idea of exposition, development and recapitulation is from the Western side. This side is very limited but obviously there. The "call and answer" is an idea taken more from the African side and of course the rhythmic side is likewise. 

For any newcomer to Middle Eastern music - well where on earth do you start?

For us we have found that the pure and arbitrary grouping of music into categories does really help to get to grips with it. But PLEASE bear in mind these are arbitrary groupings simply to try to get a toe hold in there somehow. So over the years we have created the following arbitrary groupings that have really helped us:

Egyptian Cabaret music 

Self explanatory and ideal for solo work, vast range available - we have found that you will either love it or hate it - but if you do then there will be the "classics" in there that few could not like - we basically dislike this music but a small handful we really love. Complex linear structure. 

Egyptian Pop music

Taking basic Egyptian darbouka rhythms and setting them into the context of a pop song. Can be very frantic and hard work but the best are really good and essential in any belly dance get together.

Other Egyptian music

Must not overlook Baladi that is a sort of modern "Egyptian Blues." The best can be very soulful - simple arrangements seem to carry off really well. Other things are either pure "traditional" recordings made in the field or else modern acoustic renditionings of reed and percussion arrangements. Hossam Ramsy has played a major part here. A lot of these are excellent drill and training material for belly dancing. 

Turkish Music

Divides roughly into folkloric of which there is masses and then Modern Ballads. Then you have modern Turkish Pop dominated by Tarkan and Mustafa Sandal. If you are into beaty disco style then these are great for you. Some modern pop songs heavily influenced by the vast number of folk tunes and rhythms. 

Lebanese Music 

Modern and bright is really a combination of influences around - well worth trying.

North African

Dominated by Rai where the major players are Khaled , Rachid Taha and Faudel. Plenty of music of this type around - our favorite - there's almost too much to choose from but at least there is a fairly obvious grouping here. 

Modern Ethnic

Various musicians have put together ensembles of traditional instruments - infused themselves in the music of a particular country or region and emerged with often quite remarkable results. SALADIN'S ORCHESTRA-Barbary Coast Blues is our favorite - plenty around but you have to look around quite hard as it is not obvious from the album covers what exactly is the music about. 

American Ethnic Belly dance music 

Groups such as Fat Chance, Gypsy Caravan and Shawaza - Solace are of a large enough scale that they compose and write their own music. Using largely acoustic instruments what is lost through maybe not having that true Soul is more than gained by a freshness, accessability and the sheer fact that the music has been created specifically for the belly dancer. 

The Spanish connection

Alabina and Radio Tarifa are well known groups and give you that fiery and fresh aspect of the Latin Groove

Modern Cross over

No end of this around - more or less anything you can think of - this is where Western musicians often working on their own or in small groups using latest technology put together often quite clubby and beaty material though not to everyone's taste - you will either love it or hate it. But at least here is things happening at the cutting edge and will have that fresh modern feel. Oojami are a good example. 

Regional Modern Pop

The every increasing Westernization of the Middle East means more and more discos in each country rocking away to the latest sounds. In addition to the inevitable imports of Michael Jackson and what not you will get club mixes, remixes and covers by the dozen. Look out for Cous cous - good example of this sort of idea. Kiss Kiss by Tarkan reworked no end of times. 

So what has been left out - lots no doubt. But hopefully these heading may help the newcomer to get to understand something of the wide variety of music out there - once you have found your way around - ignore the above categories and create your own if you want.