>>The hands of the Chinese, the mouths of the arabs, the minds of the French.<<
SO stolen as a tagline!!
Three quick observations.
First, this would be considered old-fashioned by most of the Arab world, the same way pre-rock-n-roll popular music, much less pre-rock-n-roll classical music, is considered old-fashioned by most of the Western world.
Second, Arab music is based on a musical scale (IIRC it’s called the double harmonic) which is more subtle than the 12-tone-equally-tempered scale used in the West since the mid 1700s. This is not simply because the Arab scale represents frequency ratios more similar to those found in nature, but also because there are ratios that are neglected in the major/minor distinction in the West. A significant example of this is what we call the ‘blues third,’ which at 11/9 is about halfway in ratio width between the Ptolemaic major (5/4) and minor (6/5), and provokes an emotion that is about halfway between happy (major) and sad (minor). Getting used to listening to the Arab-scale-based music is like spending your whole life eating nothing but Midwestern food, and then discovering kebab, kibbeh, and curry, but the aural expansion is well worth it.
Third, one of the problems of contemporary popular music is that everything that can be done in 12-tone-equal-temperament has been done, so that there is no such thing as a “new sound” available. This leads to only one of three options: live in the past musically (old people do this, and I say this as an old person), stop worrying about melody or harmony (most of the drivel that passes for music today does this), or...expanding the melodic universe to include the notes that aren’t on a piano or fretted guitar. That is what I predict will happen in the next generation, an amalgam of Arab-Asian-African-Euro/American sound. The foundation for it has already been laid, beginning with the rise of worldbeat/ethno-pop in the 1980s. All it would take would be a Lady Gaga to begin to promote it, and for all her clown-act style she has the musical background to do it—Paul Simon tried, but he is perceived as too esoteric for the masses to accept.
Muslim music reminds me of sentences without periods, streams of thought that aren’t phrased in, like poetry that never begins nor ends, and then I go find something good to listen to, or read.
Arabic music? It makes my ears bleed.
“Misirlou” by Dick Dale
Technically, has Greek origins, but became Arabisized and made it to Dick Dale through his Lebanese heritage.
I’m sorry. If Barry Manilow music didn’t cure the world of terrorism, Arabic music ain’t gonna do it.
I would rather slam my pe_ker in a car door.
1st. Neither one of the fools know a thing about music.
2nd. I carry myself better than they will ever carry a note.
3rd. They sound like a goat....A dying goat.
4th. You don’t swing your head side to side when singing, unless you can’t sing and you are making up the notes as you go along.
5th....Scmitar sounding man, on the string...Stop...You can’t match the sound of two cats getting it on.
Be a professional and pick up a snappy tune....
get a load of the original wacko yusuf islam aka [cat stevens] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoPEmyZx8hQ
Don’t. Because Arab music sounds like a garbage can full of beer bottles falling down an elevator shaft. I’d rather pierce my eardrums with safety pins.
Misirlou--Dick Dale & the Deltones (1962)