Music Part II: History

By Lucero Dorantes

Pre-Islamic period

The development of Arabic music has extremely deep roots in Arabic poetry dating back to the pre-Islamic period known as Jahiliyyah. Though there is a lack of scientific study to definitively confirm the existence of Arabic music at those times, most historians agree that there existed distinct forms of music in the Arabian peninsula in the pre-Islamic period between the 5th and the 7th century AD. Arab poets of that time - called شعراء الجاهلية or "Jahili poets" which translates to "The poets of the period of ignorance" - used to recite poems with a high musical rhythm and tone.

Music at that time played an important role in cultivating the mystique of exorcists and magicians. It was believed that Jinns revealed poems to poets and music to musicians. The Choir at the time served as a pedagogic facility where the educated poets would recite their poems. Singing was not thought to be the work of these intellectuals and was instead entrusted to women with beautiful voices (i.e. Al-Khansa[citation needed]) who would learn how to play some instruments used at that time (i.e. lute, drum, Oud, rebab, etc...) and then perform the songs while respecting the poetic metre. It should be noted that the compositions were simple and every singer would sing in a single maqam. Among the notable songs of the period were the "huda" from which the ghina' derived, the nasb, sanad, and rukbani'

Early Islamic period

Arabic maqam is the system of melodic modes used in traditional Arabic music, which is mainly melodic. The word maqam in Arabic means "station" and denotes a melody type built on a scale and carrying a tradition that defines its habitual phrases, important notes, melodic development and modulation. Both compositions and improvisations in traditional Arabic music are based on the maqam system. Maqams can be realized with either vocal or instrumental music, and do not include a rhythmic component.

Al-Kindi (801–873 AD) was the first great theoretician of Arabic music. He proposed adding a fifth string to the oud and discussed the cosmological connotations of music[citation needed]. He surpassed the achievement of the Greek musicians in using the alphabetical annotation for one eighth. He published fifteen treatises on music theory, but only five have survived. In one of his treaties the word musiqa was used for the first time in Arabic, which today means music in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, English and several other languages in the Islamic world.

Al-Farabi (872-950) wrote a notable book on music titled Kitab al-Musiqi al-Kabir (The Great Book of Music). His pure Arabian tone system is still used in Arabic music.

Al-Ghazali (1059–1111) wrote a treatise on music in Persia which declared, "Ecstasy means the state that comes from listening to music".

In 1252, Safi al-Din developed a unique form of musical notation, where rhythms were represented by geometric representation. A similar geometric representation would not appear in the Western world until 1987, when Kjell Gustafson published a method to represent a rhythm as a two-dimensional graph.

Al-Andalus

By the 11th century, Moorish Spain had become a center for the manufacture of instruments. These goods spread gradually throughout France, influencing French troubadours, and eventually reaching the rest of Europe. The English words lute, rebec, guitar, organ and naker are derived from Arabic oud, rabab, qitara, urghun and nagqara'.
The Arabs invented the Ghazal (love song), often used since in Arabic music.

Influence of Arabic music

The lute was adopted from the Arab world. 1568 print.
A number of musical instruments used in classical music are believed to have been derived from Arabic musical instruments: the lute was derived from the Oud, the rebec (ancestor of violin) from the rebab, the guitar from qitara, which in turn was derived from the Persian Tar, naker from naqareh, adufe from al-duff, alboka from al-buq, anafil from al-nafir, exabeba from al-shabbaba (flute), atabal (bass drum) from al-tabl, atambal from al-tinbal, the balaban, the castanet from kasatan, sonajas de azófar from sunuj al-sufr, the conical bore wind instruments, the xelami from the sulami or fistula (flute or musical pipe),the shawm and dulzaina from the reed instruments zamr and al-zurna,[10] the gaita from the ghaita, rackett from iraqya or iraqiyya, the harp and zither from the qanun,canon from qanun, geige (violin) from ghichak, and the theorbo from the tarab.
The music of the troubadors may have had some Arabic origins. Ezra Pound, in his Canto VIII, famously declared that William of Aquitaine, an early troubador, "had brought the song up out of Spain / with the singers and veils...". In his study, Lévi-Provençal is said to have found four Arabo-Hispanic verses nearly or completely recopied in William's manuscript. According to historic sources, William VIII, the father of William, brought to Poitiers hundreds of Muslim prisoners.Trend admitted that the troubadours derived their sense of form and even the subject matter of their poetry from the Andalusian Muslims. The hypothesis that the troubadour tradition was created, more or less, by William after his experience of Moorish arts while fighting with the Reconquista in Spain was also championed by Ramón Menéndez Pidal in the early 20th-century, but its origins go back to the Cinquecento and Giammaria Barbieri (died 1575) and Juan Andrés (died 1822). Meg Bogin, English translator of the female troubadors, also held this hypothesis, as did Idries Shah. Certainly "a body of song of comparable intensity, profanity and eroticism [existed] in Arabic from the second half of the 9th century onwards."
One possible theory on the origins of the Western Solfège musical notation suggests that it may have had Arabic origins. It has been argued that the Solfège syllables (do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti) may have been derived from the syllables of the Arabic solmization system Durr-i-Mufassal ("Separated Pearls") (dal, ra, mim, fa, sad, lam). This origin theory was first proposed by Meninski in his Thesaurus Linguarum Orientalum (1680) and then by Laborde in his Essai sur la Musique Ancienne et Moderne (1780), while more recent supporters include Henry George Farmer and Samuel D. Miller.

Sixteenth century

Bartol Gyurgieuvits (1506–1566) spent 13 years as a slave in the Ottoman empire. After escaping, he published De Turvarum ritu et caermoniis in Amsterdam in 1544. It is one of the first European books to describe music in Islamic society. In India, the Islamic Mughal emperors ruled both Muslims and Hindus. The greatest of these, Akbar (1542–1605) had a team of at least fifty musicians, thirty-six of whom are known to us by name. The origins of the "belly dance" are very obscure, as depictions and descriptions are rare. It may have originated in Pre islamic Arabia Examples have been found from 200 BC, suggesting a possible pre-Islamic origin.pagan Arabs used to bellydance for Hubal the moon God and some Godess like Allat .

Early Modern Music in Cairo

Though, according to Edward William Lane, no man of sense would ever become a musician, music was a key part of society. Tradesmen of every occupation used music during work and the schools taught the Quran by chanting. Their music was derived from Greek, Persian and Indian traditions. According to Lane, the most remarkable peculiarity of the Arab system of music is the division of tones into thirds. The songs of this period were similar in sound and simple, consisting of only a few notes.
Male professional musicians during this period were called Alateeyeh (pl) (Egyptian: [ʔælæˈtejːæ]), or Alatee (singular) (Egyptian: [ʔæˈlæːti]), which means “a player upon an instrument”. However, this name applies to both vocalists as well as instrumentalists. This position was considered disreputable and lowly. However, musicians found work singing or playing at parties to entertain the company. They generally made three shillings a night, but earned more by the guests giving more.
Female professional musicians were called Alawim (pl) or Al’meh, which means a learned female. These singers were often hired on the occasion of a celebration in the harem of a wealthy person. They were not with the harem, but in an elevated room that was concealed by a screen so as not to be seen by either the harem or the master of the house. The female Alawim were more highly paid than male performers and more highly regarded than the Alateeyeh as well. Lane relates an instance of a female performer who so enraptured her audience that she earned to fifty guineas for one night’s performance from the guests and host, who were not considered wealthy.

Female Harem

Slavery was widespread around the world. Just as in the Roman empire, slaves were often brought into the Arab world from Africa. Black slaves from Zanzibar were noted in the 11th century for the quality of their song and dance. The "Epistle on Singing Girls", written by the Basra Mu'tazilite writer al-Jahiz in the 9th century CE, satirizes the excessive money that could be made by singers. The author mentions an Abyssinian girl who fetched 120,000 dinars at an auction - far more than an ordinary slave. A festival in the 8th century CE is mentioned as having fifty singing slave-girls with lutes who acted as back-up musicians for a singer called Jamilia. In 1893, "Little Egypt", a belly-dancer from Syria, appeared at the Chicago world's fair and caused a sensation.

Male instrumentalists

Musicians in Aleppo, 18th century.
Male instrumentalists were condemned in a treatise in 9 CE. They were associated with perceived vices such as chess, love poetry, wine drinking and homosexuality. Many Persian treatises on music were burned by zealots. Following the invasion of Egypt, Napoleon commissioned reports on the state of Ottoman culture. Villoteau's account reveals that there were guilds of male instrumentalists, who played to male audiences, and "learned females," who sang and played for women. The instruments included the oud, the kanun (zither) and the ney (flute). By 1800, several instruments that were first encountered in Turkish military bands had been adopted into European classical orchestras: the piccolo, the cymbal and the kettle drum. The santur or hammered dulcimer was cultivated within Persian classical schools of music that can be traced back to the middle of 19 CE. There was no written notation for the santur until the 1970s. Everything was learned face-to-face .