Re: I have always loved Arabic music

Date: 15 Jun 2003 08:25:19 -0700
Newsgroups: rec.music.arabic
Size: 2,058 bytes

meeso <email-address-deleted> wrote in message news:<email-address-deleted>...
> On Sat, 14 Jun 2003 21:02:25 -0600, rhayat wrote:
>
> > I never did figure out why my fellow Americans react so badly to Arabic
> > music.
>
> they don't, they love it as well as you, & without any insight about the
> music itself indeed, you know like the turist thing.
>
> but if so, it will be only a reaction to Arabs not to their music (only to
> the music as something that represent them).
>
This may be true for Americans who haven't spent a lot of time
listening to it, but when *I* listen to Arabic music, I hear a lot
more than it's "Arabicness," if you will. I don't have any knowledge
of this music on a technical level, but the same is true for western
music. I think that by immersing yourself in a particular music, you
can begin to intuitively pick up the conventions involved, even if you
wouldn't be able to articulate them. When I listen to a Riad
el-Sounbatti taksim, I am genuinely moved (and far from just hearing
"Arabicness" I hear the very specific sound of his playing). When I
listen to Oum Kalthoum singing "Ya Zalamny," there are points where I
felt almost drawn out of myself. It's not fundamentally exotic
sounding to me anymore. There are other foreign musics which I may
enjoy at times, Indonesian music, for instance, but I don't feel at
home with them the way I do with Arabic (and also a good portion of
Latin) music.
> however, your difinition to what Arabic music is seems misleading, you
> have described a number of so much different music from so much different
> places which cannot, IMO, br collected in the hand of so-called Arabic
> music.
I agree that much of the music from Algeria and Morocco cannot be
called Arabic (because it isn't!), but wouldn't you at least consider
the Arab-Andalusian music from those countries to be Arabic music?
What else do you object to in the list that was given? Iraq and the
Gulf states generally may have a different sound, but the music is
still Arabic.