Middle East - Anthony Ham [70]
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Fairouz
A Lebanese torch singer with a voice memorably described as ‘silk and flame in one’, Fairouz (b 1935) has enjoyed star status throughout the Arab world since recording her first performances in Damascus in the 1950s. Along with her writers, the Rahbani brothers, Fairouz embraced a wide range of musical forms, blending Lebanese folk tales with flamenco and jazz. For all her experimentation, her lyrics embodied the recurring themes of love, loss, Lebanon and religious praise. During the 1960s and ‘70s her music – and three starring roles in Lebanese films – made her the embodiment of freewheeling Beirut. During the Lebanese Civil War she became at once a symbol of hope and an icon for Lebanese identity, resolutely refusing to sing inside Lebanon while her countrymen continued to kill each other.
Fairouz returned to the Lebanese stage after the war and her 1995 comeback concert in downtown Beirut drew a crowd of 40,000; across the Arab world, 125 million tuned in. That her popularity extends far beyond the Middle East was confirmed in 1999 with a concert in Las Vegas that drew the biggest crowd since Frank Sinatra. Although in her seventies, Fairouz maintains a vice-like grip over the affections of the region – her 2008 arrival in Damascus after an absence of 20 years brought Syria to a stand-still. Her record sales have now topped 80 million.
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The former Led Zeppelin vocalist Robert Plant once said that one of his lifetime ambitions was to reform the Middle Eastern Orchestra, Umm Kolthum’s group of backing musicians.
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If one instrument has come to represent the enduring appeal of classical Arabic music, it’s the oud, an instrument that has made the transition from backing instrument to musical superstar in its own right. The oud is a pear-shaped, stringed instrument and is distinguished from its successor, the Western lute, by its lack of frets, 11 strings (five pairs and a single string) and a neck bent at a 45- to 90-degree angle. Oud-players are to be found throughout the region, but its undisputed masters are in Iraq, where the sound of the oud is revered as a reflection of the Iraqi soul.
But it’s Syria that produced the Arab world’s so-called ‘King of the Oud’, Farid al-Atrache (1915–74). Sometimes called the ‘Arab Sinatra’, he was a highly accomplished oud player and composer, who succeeded in updating Arabic music by blending it with Western scales and rhythms and the orchestration of the tango and waltz. His melodic improvisations on the oud and his mawal (a vocal improvisation) were the highlights of his live performances and recordings of these are treasured. By the time of his death, he was considered – and still is by many – to be the premier male Arabic music performer of the 20th century.
Another outstanding exponent of the art is the Jordanian oud-player Sakher Hattar.
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Al-Mashriq – Music (www.almashriq.hiof.no/base/music.html) offers more links to Arabic music than you can poke a stick at, from Umm Kolthum to traditional folk music with plenty of detours into Arabic pop along the way.
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The other defining feature of classical Arabic music is the highly complicated melodic system known as maqam. The foundation for most traditional music in the Arab world, maqam is based on a tonal system of scales and intervals and is wholly different from Western musical traditions. Master maqam and you’ve mastered the centuries-old sound of the region. Put it together with the oud and you’re somewhere close to heaven.
Each of the minorities in Arab countries also has its own musical traditions. The most high profile is the Nubian music of southern Egypt. The Nubian sound is extremely accessible, mixing simple melodies, soulful vocals, a rhythmical quality that’s almost sub-Saharan African and a brass