Music in Egypt - Seven Millennia of Performance. Egyptian Music. Seven Millennia of Performance. Author's Note: Once again I am relying on my readership to aid me in the creation and maintenance of this document. Music is a tricky subject at best, and I must confess that I am neither a theorist nor a musical academe. My experience in music is largely as a performer and a listener. Thus I am prone to missteps in discussions of theory and of musical history. I invite each and every one of you point out where I have been oblique, or forgetful, or just plain errant. I am hoping that you will aid me in adding to this article and make it a useful resource to anyone who wishes to know more about Arabic music. A brief note on spelling is probably in order. When transliterating from the Arabic to the Roman alphabet, I have used the spelling that seems to be in the most common usage. ![]() ![]() For example, although some sources give Omme Koulsoum, the predominant spelling is Umm Kulthum, and so the latter is used in this document. I apologize in advance for any confusion this might create. DCSOverview and Ancient Music. Music has been a part of Egyptian culture probably since its beginning. Tomb and temple paintings show a variety of musical instruments in both sacred and secular environments, and many of the dead were buried with instruments. This leads to the thought that music formed an integral part of not only Egyptian rituals, but also daily life and recreation. Sadly, no written pieces of music have survived, and no system of notation is known to have been developed by the ancient Egyptians. It would seem that music in ancient Egypt was, like so many of the arts at that time, passed down from one person to another in a form of "aural" tradition. The Voice of Egypt: Umm Kulthum, Arabic Song, and Egyptian Society in the Twentieth Century by Virginia Danielson. Order from amazon.com or amazon.co.uk. Buy Umm Kulthum: A Voice Like Egypt on Amazon.com FREE SHIPPING on qualified orders. _____ _____ (C) http:// Egyptian-born voice of Arabs Umm Kulthoum (1898-1975): Late Lady of the Arabic Song Umm Kulthoum is the Arab world's most famous and distinguished singer of. Egyptian Music. Seven Millennia of Performance. Author's Note: Once again I am relying on my readership to aid me in the creation and maintenance of this document. Music is a tricky subject at best, and I must confess that I. She had the musical chops of Ella Fitzgerald, the public persona of Eleanor Roosevelt, and the audience of Elvis Presley. More than 30 years after Umm Kulthum's death, Egyptians young and old still celebrate the. I did not really understand Umm Kulthum's mystique. That's because I grew up in the U.S. listening to Bob Dylan records with my dad, who came here from Syria as a young graduate student. For his part, my dad, Fawwaz. Various universities and institutions are working to extrapolate what ancient Egyptian music might have sounded like based on present- day and known historical forms using recreations of instruments. Instruments known to have existed in ancient Egypt are roughly the same ones as have been created by nearly all civilizations. Lyres, harps, flutes, pipes, horns (not "true" horns as we know them, but instruments similar to the didgeridoo of the Australian Aborigines, the dragon- horn of Tibet, and the shofar of the Hebrew people), and of course, drums, cymbals, and other percussion. As the ages passed, new instruments were added in as they were developed or introduced from other peoples. Given Egypt's importance in the ancient world, one can easily assume that at one time or another, every kind of instrument ever created has been played in within its borders. The Arab musical tradition as it is known today developed between the AD 7th and 1. Centuries in the courts of Islam. The first great renaissance of Arab music occurred in Syria and the surrounding regions during the Umayyad Dynasty (AD 7th- 8th Century). At that time Baghdad, in what is now Iraq, was a central city for musicians and performers, partly due to its ruler, the legendary Haroun al- Raschid. Arabic music, insofar as can be inferred reliably, traces its ancestry in part to the music of the 3rd Century Persians and the early Byzantine Empire (AD 4th- 6th Century). These traditions in turn can trace themselves back in part to the works of the Greeks, themselves great lovers of poetry and song. But both are traced back to the ancient Semitic traditions which may have their origins in the music of the ancient Egyptians. The 1. 0th Century music theorist Al- Farabi translated the major works of the ancient Greeks on music into Arabic: Aristotle's Problems, Themistius' commentaries on the Problems, Ptolemy's Harmonics, and the Elements of Music by Euclid. This increased the effect of the Greeks on Arabic music, but also gave a foundation upon which to build a concrete theory of Arabic music, which Al- Farabi did. Like Euclid before him, Al- Farabi was a mathematician and physicist, and so was able to examine musical structure from the scientific standpoint. But what was more, he was a musician and was perhaps better equipped mentally to study music as an art form and not cold mathematics. He focused not only on the science of sound but also the aesthetics and the enjoyment of music, a subject which the Greeks apparently had ignored. Structure of Arabic Music, or, "I've got Rhythm. The musical forms of the Arab and Islamic world are the predominant form of music in Egypt in its recent history (two millennia is recent to an historian). However, there is some weight to the idea that Arabic musical forms are in fact the product of ancient Egyptian musical forms. Such a discussion is unfortunately beyond the scope of this article. The Arabic forms are the most easily accessible for study and their basic traits have continued relatively unchanged for several centuries. Arabic music, like most other forms of the African tradition, is based largely on variation and improvisation of and upon a central theme. This makes it very similar in structure to jazz, which also has deep roots in African music. My daughter Salma is in the kitchen with my mother. They are making cheese rolls with za’tar, for iftaar. Afterwards I will have Salma sit beside me and work on her lessons. Even though it’s summer, I like for her to spend. Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Film: Umm Kulthum, A Voice Like Egypt. Produced and directed by Michal Goldman, 1997 Book: 'The Voice of Egypt': Umm Kulthum, Arabic Song, and Egyptian Society in the Twentieth Century, by Virginia Louise, Danielson. Central to the musical piece is a complex skeletal rhythm comprised of strong downbeats (dum), rests, and upbeats (tak). This base structure, the maqamat, can be played on a variety of instruments, though the drum and the guitar are the most common. On this framework, the performers build a sequence of unharmonized melodies, varying the original rhythm and improvising new ones. An intriguing side- effect of improvisational music forms is the use of notes not actually present in the formal musical scale used by the artist. Arabic music makes extensive use of what are called microtones, or half- flats and half- sharps, resulting in music that has more notes than many Western forms (though jazz, with its portmanteau technique, is a notable exception). A performance of traditional Arabic music is a union of performer and audience. A silent audience is seen by many Arab musicians as disapproving. Unlike Western audiences, the perfect audience in the Arab world is expected to clap, sing along, and make requests for the performer to repeat sections of the piece. Often, these requests are made during the performance, and a ten- minute composition may turn into a half- hour one as the musicians replay and embellish their melody for an appreciative audience. A performance of traditional music can be quite friendly and informal and hearkens back to the days before recordings when most Arabic music was played in coffeehouses. The Turn of the Century and the Recording Boom. It was the invention of the phonograph and its later descendants that put music in the hands of the people at large. Obviously, before recordings, music was limited to performance only, and depending on the genre, this could greatly limit the audience. Orchestral pieces, for example, were the mostly the province of the rich due to the cost of maintaining facilities and performers and the high ticket prices to cover that cost. With the coming of recorded music, people could listen anytime they wished. In 1. 90. 9, Britain's Gramophone Company created its first record label, "His Master's Voice," whose famous dog- and- gramophone logo still exists as part of RCA. His Master's Voice" began a massive campaign a few years later to record traditional Arabic music as well as the newer forms that were created. In 1. 91. 4, Decca introduced the famous mass- produced "case" gramophone. Although the gramophone was still expensive, and only the richest individuals purchased them, many public businesses would buy them to play for their customers. It became quite common a decade or so later in Egypt for people to travel to the local coffeehouse to socialize and listen to the latest performances by artists such as Umm Kulthum and Mohamed Abdel Wahab. Shortly before this time Arabic music began to change, especially in Egypt. Composers like Sayed Darwish were adopting Western elements into traditional forms, resulting in what was considered to be the first truly Egyptian music in centuries. The new music became more orchestral and modern while still retaining the power and freedom of the older. Many of these pieces are still alive today, being arranged for contemporary artists like Sabah Fakhri and Fairouz. As recording technology became cheaper, so did records and players. More people could purchase them, and did. The gramophone became a household item much in the same way the radio would soon after. The "new" music of Egypt and the Arab world spread, bringing with it a strong cultural identity. The Modern Day. However, the evolution of Arabic music was not one- way. Being one of the oldest musical traditions in the world still existing it naturally had its influence on other forms. Spanish music shows a strong ancestry of Arabic music due to the conquest of Spain by the Islamic empires (8th- 1. Centuries), as does the "Mediterranean" music of Greece and Italy. The effects of Arabic music can even be felt as far as the United States as traditional maqamat surface in nightclub techno music and the Tejano music of the Southwest. Modern Arabic music now fills all genres. There are musicians who perform traditional melodies and there are those that are closer to the Western conventions of pop and "Top 4. Throughout the years the Egyptians have never lost their love for music. If anything, it has intensified, and today Egypt is seen as a major focus for music in the Arab world. Lebanese- born conductor and composer Salim Sahab, now a citizen of Egypt, once said, "No matter how brilliantly an Arab singer or artist shines in his own country, he or she will never fulfill dreams before setting foot in Egypt."Egypt's importance in Arabic music is shown by the fact that many of the great masters of Arabic music were Egyptian: Sayed Darwish, Mohamed Abdel Wahab, Umm Kulthum, Mohamed Al- Qasabji, Zakariyya Ahmad, and Riad Al- Sunbati just to name a few. Egypt has also opened its doors to artists of other countries, some of them persecuted in their own lands.
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