This section of Racy’s “Making Music in the Arab World” could be just as applicable to the non-Arab musician. In the chapter titled simply, Music, he begins the section titled “The art of accompanying” with When called for, musical accompaniment plays a crucial role in the evocative process. Basically, an accompanying performer must be musically [...]
Tagged Aesthetics, Arabic aesthetics, Arabic MusicIn tarab music, the ability to play or sing in correct pitch is another requisite for creating ecstatically effective performances. Essentially, few theoretical works describe the ecstatic role of intonation, despite the abundance of treatises and text-books that deal with tuning and modal scales. Furthermore, in such sources melodic intervals are most often presented in [...]
Tagged Arabic Music, Microtonal Music, Microtones, scalesAnother interesting blurb from A.J. Racy’s Making music in the Arab world: the culture and artistry of ṭarab Notably, the aesthetic of individuality is consistent with timbral specialization within the traditional ensemble. The takht specifically is a collection of khāmāt ṣawtiyyah, “sound timbres,” that are individually distinguished as well as imbued with ecstatic connotations. Incorporating [...]
I’m still in the middle of A.J. Racy’s Making music in the Arab world: the culture and artistry of ṭarab and it is rich and dense with information. I’m particularly enjoying the section on public performance, but especially this passage: In turn, the singer needs to develop a general sense of who his listeners are [...]