When I was a young child in elementary school I had a friend, Basheer, who was part of a family who were recent immigrants from the middle east. They left their native home to escape prosecution against their sufi minority status in a sunni-dominant area. One of my fondest memories I had while visiting Basheer 's home involved some of the religious practices his family engaged in, which was entirely new to me at the time. I found their customs, fresh from their homeland as they were recently assimilating, very interesting and eye-opening. The only point of reference I had to Islam, and the greater Arabic and central asian culture in general, came from some pretty biased television and news reports.
I used to spent alot of time at his …show more content…
the instruments are diverse and quite distinct. the body of the music of most islamic music is in percussion and vocalisation, through chanting. The drums a very physical listening experience. the human breath is of vital symbolic importance to many Sufis, represented by their heavy preference on percussion instruments. Vocalisation is about as, to many even more, important than percussion to islamic worship. Chanting is a central part of worship, with spiritual leader directly calling out both to Allah as well as surrounding muslims to gather to praise him. Slightly less vital are string and wind instruments, which provide a majority of the melody to the music.
The modern Arab system of musical tuning is based upon the theoretical division of the octave into twenty-four equal divisions or 24-tone equal temperaments, in contrast to the European equally tempered scale with the octave divided into twelve equal divisions. rarely does a single piece ever cross the spectrum though, in lrge part due to the monophonic nature of arabic melodic …show more content…
During the hippy movement of the 1960s there was a growing interest in "far eastern" culture; drugs, art, religion, fashion and music were all embraced and promoted by such monolithic pop-culture figures as John Lennon and particularly George Harrison of The Beatles, who devoted his life to hinduism, helping spawn the psychedelic art movement with songs like the wonderful Indian-tinged Within You and Without You. The middle eastern sound has been one of the many influences that have shaped western art. many popular western artists since the 1960 's have contained some sort of Arabic influence, whether in the time signatures, minor-keyed chord progressions, subject matter in the title or lyrics, or through imagery on stage or in their album covers or music videos. The examples are endless, the Rolling Stone 's Paint it Black, Led Zeppelin 's Kashmir, The Clash 's Rock the Casbah and some more modern hip-hop like Jay Z 's Big Pimpin '. The genre of heavy metal, which comprises a large part of my personal musical background, also has a surprising amount of middle eastern influence, evident from the heavy use of minor keys and purposeful dissonance.The music video for Slayer 's Seasons in the abyss was shot in cairo and contains a prolonged arabic-inspired intro, the band 's guitar style also popularized the wider use of the minor key scales and the chaotic, note-bending solos