Middle Eastern music
Also known as Middle Eastern
A broad regional umbrella for interconnected musical traditions across West Asia and North Africa; useful as a discovery tag, but too wide to describe a single fixed style.
Origins and context
A broad regional music umbrella covering Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and related traditions documented in museum and artist-reference sources.
History
This label gathers traditions from across West Asia and North Africa, so its history is really a braid of regional practices rather than one origin story. Museum sources note that Islamic music reached a high point of sophistication in the ninth and tenth centuries, with Persian, Arabic, and Turkish styles later exemplifying the wider sound world; the oud, for example, has deep historical roots and became influential far beyond the region. In modern ears, the genre is often heard through major 20th-century Arabic-song traditions as well as later concert and popular forms. Artist pages for Fairuz, Umm Kulthum, and Marcel Khalife show how central vocal repertories and composer-performer traditions remained while the music kept evolving in new directions.
Notable artists
- FFairuz
- UKUmm Kulthum
- MKMarcel Khalife
Essential listening
- 1
Fairuz
- 2
Umm Kulthum
- 3
Marcel Khalife
- 4
Explore connected genres
Sources and further reading
- Musical Instruments in the Metropolitan Museum: The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin
- resources.metmuseum.org
The oud has ancient roots and influenced later instruments such as the lute.
- Fairuz artist page
- Umm Kulthum artist page
- Marcel Khalife artist page