Arabic music

Arabic music or Arab music (Arabic: الموسيقى العربية – ALA-LC: al-mūsīqá al-‘Arabīyah) is the music of the Arab world.

Arab music, while independent and flourishing in the 2010s, has a long history of interaction with many other regional musical styles and genres. Many European scholars claim that Arabic music has Persian origins. It is an amalgam of the music of the Arab people in the Arabian Peninsula and the music of all the peoples that make up the Arab world today. As was the case in other artistic and scientific fields, Arabs translated Greek texts and works of music and developed the musical theory of the Greeks (i.e. Systema ametabolon, enharmonium, chromatikon, diatonon).

History

Pre-Islamic period

Pre-Islamic Arab music was similar to that of Ancient Middle Eastern music. Most historians agree that there existed distinct forms of music in the Arabian peninsula in the pre-Islamic period between the 5th and 7th century AD. Arab poets of that time—called shu`ara' al-Jahiliyah (شعراء الجاهلية) or "Jahili poets", meaning "the poets of the period of ignorance"—used to recite poems with a high notes.