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Egyptian Rhythm: The Heavenly Melodies

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On reflection, what were striking to the book were its clear and concise references elucidating hard and common facts. Standing on its own or as a companion to Moustafa's book Egyptian Harmony, Egyptian Rhythm is well researched and could fit easily into a school or public library for all manner of ages. Vibrant, the book shows a living and breathing culture of the Egyptians, often shown in modern and popular culture as an enslaving race, as a peaceful culture dedicated to the understanding of nature and its laws. Egyptian Rhythm is not just a guide on the `music of the Ancient Egyptians' - though it does certainly covers that - it is a guidebook to music itself not just as a hobby or business but as it relates between oneself and the world. "Rhythm means flow" Moustafa writes, this book explores that flow, the science of nature and of echoing its harmonies.

This book, like others from Moustafa Gadalla continues a tradition of retaining excellent chapter headings and an in depth index. Preface, is followed by explaining a few musical references and their standards and terminology, an Egyptian Dynastical Chronology, and lastly two maps of Egypt and its surrounding countries. Coupled with the text this book has an easy practical application.

The first part of this book - five in total plus appendices, glossary, selected bibliography, and a detailed brake down of notes and sources - explores the cosmology of music by asking of meaning which the Ancient Egyptians saw as the harmony of the spheres. Music like other concepts the Ancient Egyptians held strong to was that it flowed, not just into a sheltered system of memory repetition as it is nowadays, into other facets of their life. Moustafa presents with facts and research how music/spheres influenced their daily, weekly and yearly cycles.

The second part explores at core root beliefs of harmony, its application, representation and symbolism of the practiced musicians of Ancient Egypt. Modern musicians can easily find common symbolism and harmony not just in a purely mathematical/geometrical or memorized form but as it applies beyond the music to certain rhythms in life. The tetrachord, unison, the octave all have meaning beyond their direct musical implementation, and as such every page has an epiphanous quality more so in the hands of a musician than student, though if you're familiar with Moustafa's books the concepts behind the music will not be alien to you.

The third part takes formation of music and rhythm and explains the patterning used in Ancient Egyptian music, from song structure to scale harmony, the `how to?' of how such a culture implemented techniques frequently derived as of coming from Greece and heavily accredited to the Western World. A sceptical mathematician could check Moustafa's research (he clearly provides the maths & harmony) and be left wanting.

Part four clearly shows the vast quantities of instrument types used with the examples of what few instruments are remaining, current numbers have little part in explaining how broad the range of Ancient Egyptians' instruments was. From the Lyre to the Kanun (yes, Canon) Kithara (Guitar) and Clappers, four sections explain the four main groups; Stringed instruments (both open & stop types), Wind instruments, and Percussion instruments. The references to existing instruments and the level of detail researched on each would be hard pressed to find in any encylopedia.

The final part rounds off the implementation of music into daily applied life, in festivals, or simply public activities. Again as with the other chapters, clear illustrations from hieroglyphs and paintings show the Ancient Egyptians not just as drum beating primitive culture, but one that had and still has a high value to their belief and representational performance that exist purely fragmented in our own society's today.

Note should be made of the appendices. A small chapter in itself, Moustafa explores five topics that go to answer critics or academics further on the topic of music and its dilution from Ancient Egypt.

Westerners may have difficulty with agreeing with elements of Moustafa's exploration into music but the quality and consistency of explored facts without a selfish bias makes it impossible to denounce. Whether for musicians seeking meaning behind the concept of sound or for students of Ancient Egypt, or to a friend of family member, Egyptian Rhythm is an uplifting book of a vibrant and diverse culture that has respect and practise with the laws of nature and its observance.

Iconoclastic Egyptologist Moustafa Gadalla's Egyptian Rhythm: The Heavenly Melodies is an amazing and impressive study of the intricacy of ancient Egyptian music, from the 24x7 Egyptian Musical Chart to its religious aspects and daily uses in life. Very highly recommended reading, Egyptian Rhythm details the theory and practice of the ancient Egyptian musical system, and is presented in depth for scholars and serious music study students, as well as the non-specialist general reader with an interest in ancient Egyptian culture and tradition.

An informative book on a missing piece of the history of music and music theory, but lacking a larger perspective because of the author's polemic attitude toward his own explanation of ancient Egyptian culture. The author appears to occupy something of a minority position, and he cites other authors on music and Egyptology mainly to refute them, citing only himself in favor of his ideas. Although I confess to having a certain sympathy with his opinions, the flaw in the book is that it gives the impression of being possibly full of jumped-to conclusions and wishful thinking, and the reader has to simply take the author's word for authority. Many of his conclusions are drawn from a combination of his reading of ancient Egyptian sources and his knowledge of still-existing traditional music of Egypt, and you would really have to know both of these fields to judge his work.

The most valuable and practical section of the book is Part III, chapters 9 through 12, which describe 2 microtonal tuning systems and various other musicological details. Whether these are accurate or not, they are emphatically interesting, and they fit well with other sources I've read that discuss tuning issues in medieval western music and other non-tempered musical styles in various parts of the world, most specifically in maqam and raga. They could well be genuine, or they could be informed historical fantasy - I can't tell from this book. However, if true, they fill in a gap in ancient music history, and if fantasy, they point toward a reasonably possible explanation of this gap. The gap has to do with the incomplete links between ancient Greek music theory and the European music theory of the middle ages from Boethius on, and the possible (but to my knowledge un-documented) influence of the Muslim communities of medieval Spain on the music of medieval Europe. Gadalla maintains that the Muslims received their musical knowledge directly from Egypt when the Arabs conquered it, which is a reasonable hypothesis (from my point of view, anyway). Ditto for the ancient Greeks, including Pythagoras, who has quite a reputation as an ancient music theorist based on very slender evidence, but Pythagoras is indeed said to have studied in Egypt. Gadalla also claims an Egyptian influence on Hindustani classical music, another very interesting hypothesis which is at least worth considering (Arab influence we know about already, but Gadalla would say this was 2nd hand, passed on from the Egyptians). Of course the whole field is complicated by the fact that music notation whether modern or ancient is undecipherable without musical training, that music practice has been historically passed on directly from teacher to student and that ancient written materials only refer to musical knowledge and are seldom explicitly didactic, and that there can be a whole lot of cultural evolution in a century or two of musical style, even with very strong traditions and prohibitions on innovation, just as there is with oral history.

There is one curious apparent "wrong note": Gadalla claims the Dorians to be Egyptian, in his explanation of Egyptian influence on Greek musical culture. He cites Herodotus, who did ascribe an Egyptian origin to them. However, modern historical and archeological opinion seems to be that the Dorians were an early iron age warrior tribe from somewhere north of the Mediterranean who worked their way SOUTH into Greece, displacing the earlier Mycenaean culture and founding Sparta, later conquering Crete as well. Also, Gadalla equates the modern "Dorian Mode" with the same mode in ancient Egyptian music, apparently believing that there is a historical continuity. This is a bit of musical naivety, I believe. According to Knud Jeppesen, ("Counterpoint: The Polyphonic Vocal Style of the Sixteenth Century") the application of the term "Dorian" and the first three other "Greek Mode" names (Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian) were a medieval mistake and do not correspond to the ancient Greek modes (for those who don't know, "Aeolian" and "Ionian" were added in the 16th century, and "Locrian" in the 19th) which they were presumed to replicate. Thus Gadalla's extended discussion of the Dorians and their music appears to have some mistaken assumptions at its root, and the emphasis he places on his argument makes this reader wonder how many other faulty assumptions may be lying unquestioned under the rest of his book.

There is an extended, and interesting, discussion of the Egyptian concept of correspondences between the planets, the days of the week, and the seven tones of the diatonic scale. However, Gadalla allows to pass without comment that the Egyptians' view of the planets is an archaic visual one that lists the planets, including sun and moon, in order of their apparent visual distance from the earth, from a geocentric bronze age point of view, and that the correspondences based on this order are somewhat metaphorical. A writer with a broader perspective might have at least commented on the dissonance between the ancient Egyptian ideas and the Copernican view, in order to speak to the modern reader and avoid the impression of occultism.

On page 69 he describes a dual-scale system "based on the fact that each natural tone has a mirror image ... at a ratio equal to the Egyptian comma." Three sentences later he throws in this nonsensical zinger: "In western terms, the twin scales are called 'plagal' and 'authentic'!!" (The twin exclamation points are Gadalla's.) This could conceivably be so but I have not yet read any mention of such a relation of plagal and authentic modes in medieval European theory. This needs a serious footnote, which should be available if this is fact and not fantasy, but like every other such assertion in the book, there is no source quoted.

Bottom line: a very interesting read for anyone interested in ancient music and music theory, but undocumented and un-foot-noted, so file it under "interesting and stimulating ideas to be taken with a grain of salt."

Must read for Tribal Musicians and dancers!!!

This is a great overview/introduction to egyptian music. Covering scale basics, instruments, dances, and historical/modern points of interest.

Strictly form a practicing musician stand point I was very happy with the information in this book. Well written. Well laid out and easy to read and digest.

It's going to have welcome home in my ethno musical referance library.

No one was able except M. Gadalla of a thorough understanding of the Egyptian spirit. Being of an Egyptian origin himself, he could trace the musical instruments available to the modern Egyptian people and track their diversity, origin and functions. Further, being originally a civil engineer he is versed in numbers and numerology thus identifying the meaning of numbers. Plato preceeded him in their significance to the Egyptians. But unlike Plato who was Greek, Gadalla grasped the Egyptian spirit and tries to fetch for a unifying theme which relates music to religion to mathematics and astrology. This book adds up to the other masterpieces of Gadalla. For someone seeking to read for a professional rather than an amateur here is one book indeed.
Assem Deif, prof. of mathematics