For centuries, the Middle East has been the crossroads of the world. Many ancient cultures— Egyptian, Jewish, Byzantine, and Islamic—have contributed to the music of the region, and in the 20th century, this has been further hybridised by immigrants to modern-day Israel, and the import of popular culture via radio and television.
The Islamic world can be divided into the eastern countries of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, and Iraq and the north African Arab countries (see AFRICA). The musical traditions and instruments are very ancient in this vast region and there is a thriving Arab classical music culture based on these traditional modes and instruments.
The stringed instruments include the eastern lute (called the ud), and the bowed rabab, or spike fiddle. The rabab has only one or two pairs of strings, and is played with bendings of the notes which can sound like the human voice. Wind instruments include varieties of wooden flute, called the nay, without keys, and many kinds of reed instruments.
Arab classical music has suffered various changes in status as the Islamic religion changed its attitude towards music. In the Middle Ages, music was used as a channel to God by dervishes and sufis, but this ecstatic type of religion was periodically discredited with increasing orthodoxy. Furthermore, some instruments and musical styles became associated with entertainment by slave-girls or the inhabitants of brothels, and the practitioners were regarded as very low caste.
There have, however, been many music scholars in the Arab countries over the centuries and much theoretical writing although the music itself is not written down. Musicians play from memory, improvising round modal patterns, called maqam. Rhythm is described in cycles of constituent feet, but the feet in any cycle can consist of different numbers of time units, and the cycles can be very long—up to 96 feet. This complexity is further exaggerated by the highly decorative sound in performance. Musicians perform elaborate embellishments on each note and a part of each musical form provides a space for the instrumentalist or singer to show off their virtuoso technique.
The principal form is the nawba, which in the eastern Arab countries is a suite of eight movements on a single mode. Some movements are instrumental, others vocal, but the climax is the qasida, in which a solo voice improvises on classical Arab verses.
The theoretical description, however, can give no impression of this complex and beautiful music in performance. There is a wide variety in sound from the intricate subtleties of the lute to the wilder exotic sounds of the reed instruments and the singing voices.
In the 20th century, the Islamic classical tradition has been transferred, not altogether happily, to the new music conservatories. The traditional method of teaching, as in any aural music, was from teacher to pupil on a one-to-one basis, in which the pupil “answered” the teacher’s phrases. In the conservatories, Western fixed pitch instruments like the piano are being added to the ensembles, which limits the possible modes, and some elements of Western harmony are also being incorporated. At the same time, other composers are writing music that is totally Western in concept.
Traditional music in Turkey conforms to the general characteristics of Islamic music, although it does have some special features of its own. When the Turkish Republic was formed after World War I, religious music was banned for a while in the secular state, but was later reinstated. One result of this secularisation is that the Mevlevî, or Whirling Dervish, rituals have become a tourist attraction. The Turkish Sunnite Muslims have preserved a lively tradition in these spinning dances which are supposed to induce ecstasy. The music features the nay flute, the rabab, and percussion instruments.
Another tradition that has barely survived the hostility of both the State and the orthodox Sunnis is ozan, the music of the ashiks, who are of the Alevi sect and believe in the centrality of warmth and equality between men and women. Not surprisingly, this has led to attacks by the male-dominated society but the folk-poets of the sect still sing their songs to the accompaniment of the saz, a long-necked lute, in cafes in eastern Turkey.
A more modern phenomenon is arabesk, which became the café music of the 1960s and 1970s when, because of the absence of traditional Turkish music, Turkish radio was flooded with popular Arab music. Popular Greek music has also crept into Turkey in a similar fashion, creating the taverna sound. Café or cabaret music is central to the life of Turks and taverna songs often reach the top of the popular charts.
However, because of the secularisation and the importance of the tourist industry, Turkish music has probably absorbed more Western influence than that of other neighbouring countries. Some folk festivals preserve the peasant songs, but these have had to compete with the accelerated pace of modernisation and are rapidly becoming the preserve of ethnomusicologists.
Music in Iraq is divided by the very different regional traditions. In southern Iraq, the black indigenous population retains its spirit religion to some extent. Their music for rituals is played on drums and lyre-like instruments.
Among the Bedouin of the west, music plays a central part in the cohesion of their nomadic society. It is frowned upon for musicians to accept money for what is regarded as a social duty: music is performed by all members of the tribes, with the women dancing and playing castanets.
In urban Iraq, in Baghdad and Babylon, music in the 1980s and 1990s has again been made to serve the state’s identity. Music and theatre festivals affirmed Iraq’s status as the hub of the Arab world. The popular song style tended to be virile, with politically assertive lyrics, although, as in any culture that is used for political ends, underground music maintained a counter-voice.
The classical music of 20th-century Iran has its origins in the court music of the Persian kings, and the ancient Persians gave the Arab world many of its musical instruments and, we can suppose, aspects of its musical style. Iranian classical music, however, is still recognisably distinct from Islamic music further west and has elements more akin to Afghanistan and Pakistan to the east.
The two most important stringed instruments are the tar and the sehtar, both long-necked lute-type instruments. The tar has a curious double belly and is used mostly to accompany singers, while the sehtar has a more delicate sound and is usually used as a solo instrument. Another instrument is the santur, a dulcimer with 18 groups of four strings that are played with hammers, the spike-fiddle, and the zarb, or goblet-shaped drum.
Until recently, rhythm was of lesser importance in this subtle and highly ornamented music. But, possibly influenced by Western rock music, rhythm is gaining in importance. Zarb players are emerging from the background to be virtuoso players in their own right, one such performer being the popular Hossein Tehrani.
Sufi, or dervish, ceremonies are also found in Iran, taking place in the zurkhane, or “house of force.” Special physical exercises are performed to the accompaniment of a goblet drum of much greater dimensions than the normal zarb, while singers sing traditional verses in praise of God. This spiritual tradition was adopted by the Russian mystic, George Gurdjieff, who taught it in his own style in Paris and in the U.S. in the 1920s and 1930s.
In orthodox Muslim families, most young boys are taught to recite huge portions of the Koran off by heart and some are able to recite the whole. The text is chanted and is learnt by listening to and imitating an instructor. This early training has a profound effect on the musical idiom as a whole both from the early exposure to subtleties of vocal delivery and to the demands for the training of oral memory.
These feats of oral memory are also exploited in Iran by professional bards, who travel round the courts of lesser chieftains, round the villages, and to weddings and festivals, to narrate heroic tales or love stories, sometimes accompanied by the flute. These bards, unlike reciters of the Koran, are regarded as lower caste and are often Gypsies or itinerant Baluchi.
In Iran, the advent of Western music has had a mixed reception. There was a short period when classical Western musical styles were adopted, but this ended with the political ascendancy of the Ayatollahs. Western popular music was deemed degenerate but its spread has been harder to stem with the growing access to radios and television, even in rural areas.
There are, however, many recordings of classical Iranian music available in the West, and many musicians who carry on their tradition even in exile.
The music of the Jewish people in the Middle East is similarly an aural tradition. The instruments of Middle Eastern Jewish music are similar to those of Islamic music. These include the shawm or oboetype double-reed instrument, the flutes and rababs, but with a greater emphasis on percussion instruments, gongs, and drums. But music has always played an unambiguously important role in Jewish religious life, to the extent that, in areas where the tradition has continued unbroken, as in the Yemeni region of southern Arabia, it is impossible to separate the secular from the sacred. Religious ritual informs the whole of daily life and is accompanied by meditative songs.
The Yemenite wedding music is especially elaborate: the ceremonies last for several days and each part of the ritual is accompanied by processional chants and love-songs that deal with the symbolic marriage of the bride and groom with God. The music is deeply emotional and elaborately ornamented.
In synagogues the world wide, wherever Jewish communities have established themselves after the diaspora, the psalms are sung, as in Christian churches, but also the scriptures are chanted, and have been for centuries, to a series of recitatives, similar to the Gregorian chant still heard in Christian monasteries.
Jewish music in the Middle East was also influenced by the sounds of old Europe. The Jews were expelled from England in 1290, from Spain and Portugal in 1492. Many of the refugees found their way to Palestine, taking with them the flavours acquired in their former homelands. Particularly poignant were Sephardic (Jews from Spain and Portugal) folk songs such as “Raisins and Almonds.”
Jews from Eastern Europe indirectly brought a different sound to the Middle East in later years. They had adopted the instruments of Poland, Russia and the Ukraine, while retaining a carefully nurtured body of music which reflected their religious and secular lives. So these itinerant musicians played fiddles and clarinets and travelled from town to town, playing at weddings and other festivals. The musicians were called klezmerim, meaning instrument of song, and although they were generally rootless and poor, they often had an exalted vision of themselves as the cement which held their fragmented society together. This klezmer music was exported to the U.S., where it has had considerable popular success outside the Jewish community, but it has also arrived back in the Jewish homeland, Israel.
The new state of Israel, founded as a Jewish homeland in 1917 and given independent status after World War II in 1948, has been ambivalent about Yiddish culture but has made klezmer its own by reconnecting it to its spiritual roots. Klezmer in Israel is exclusively Hassidic, but the Israeli klezmer bands have also taken on elements of Middle Eastern music and there is now an annual klezmer festival in northern Galilee. The music can be soulful or wild dance music; the predominant fiddles and clarinets produce a powerful expressive sound, which also owes some of its emotional quality to the influence of Eastern European Gypsy music. The band Sulim, led by the clarinettist Moshe Berlin, is one of the best-known in Israel today.
The first music school in Israel opened in 1910 in Tel-Aviv, and soon afterward Israeli composers such as Itzhak Edel (1896–1973) and Paul Ben-Haim (1897–1984) were writing for the Palestine Orchestra, which was founded in 1936. Israeli musical life received a great impetus from the arrival of Jews fleeing persecution in Germany before World War II, many of whom had trained in some of the best conservatories in the world.
One such was composer, writer, and critic, Max Brod (1884–1968) who was born and trained in Prague in Czechoslovakia. He left there on the last train out before the German invasion. Brod then settled in Israel and composed music that attempts to marry the European tradition with Middle Eastern sounds. His Requiem hebraicum for baritone and orchestra also uses Jewish chant melodies.
Israeli popular music has been strongly influenced by the fact of their continuing struggle to secure their homeland. Much popular music has been patriotic or political in content and the Western trend adopted most noticeably was the protest song of the DYLAN era, with its articulate, intelligent lyrical content. This is also witnessed by the fact that many of the popular singers, such as Mati Kaspi and Dani Litani, are singer-songwriters.
Lebanon has been a cultural melting-pot for centuries. Its religious music includes both Islamic and Christian traditions. The Christian music belongs to the very ancient Maronite church, a branch of the Church of Antioch, and consists of a body of chant preserved from the very early years of the Christian church. The traditional popular music borrows many characteristics from this vocal treasure-house and music festivals have been established, notably at Baalbek, to encourage the preservation and development of a distinct Lebanese sound.
After World War II, Beirut briefly knew a flowering of cultural life and became known as the “Paris of the Middle East,” with music and arts attracting artists and intellectuals from elsewhere. The National Music Conservatory was founded and a Centre for Sacred Music studies and preserves traditional religious music. This cultural period ran into difficulties around 1975 when the civil war sent many people into exile.
However, musicians such as the Lebanese popular singer Fairuz held the national identity together through the many years of instability. Fairuz had a wide repertoire including Mozart, flamenco, Balkan folklore and Latin American rumbas. Fairuz and her dazzling family of musicians were revered in Lebanon, and her son Ziad followed the family tradition with experimental jazz.
Jane Prendergast
SEE ALSO:
AFRICA; GYPSY MUSIC; SOUTH ASIA.
FURTHER READING
Gradenwitz, Peter. The Music of Israel (Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1996)..
May, Elizabeth. Music of Many Cultures (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1980)..
Salvador-Daniel, Francesco. The Music and Musical Instruments of the Arab (Portland, ME: Longwood Press, 1976)..
Shiloah, Amnon. Music in the World of Islam: A Socio-cultural Study (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1995)..
Touma, Habib Hassan. The Music of the Arabs (Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1996).
SUGGESTED LISTENING
Egypte: L’Ardre Chazili; Music of Iran; Music of the Middle East: Arab, Persian, Iranian, and Turkish traditions in the U.S.; Qawwali: Sufi Music from Pakistan; Traditional Jewish Melodies.
