The Music of the Arabs [Hardcover]

Habib Hassan Touma (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2003

Encompassing a history of more than 2000 years, the music of the Arabs is unique among the world's various musical cultures. This book presents an overview of Arabic music throughout history and examines the artistic output of contemporary musicians, covering secular and sacred, instrumental and vocal, improvised and composed music. Typical musical structures are elucidated, and a detailed bibliography, a discography (mainly covering the last 50 years) and a guide to the Arabic alphabet for English speakers are also provided. The paperback edition (00331635) includes a CD of seven traditional Arabic pieces performed by contemporary Arab musicians.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This comprehensive book on Arabic music by a composer and musicologist now living in Germany is part technical treatise, with many musical examples; part history; and about half cultural description. Concerned that traditional Arabic music is in danger of being lost because of pressures to Westernize, Touma earnestly chronicles the presence and use of music in the contemporary Arab world, with detailed reports on song styles, musical instruments, art music, religious music, and popular music. He approves of musicians who preserve tradition while offering a distinctive voice of their own, such as composer Munir Bashir and singer Umm Kulthum. A bibliographic essay discussing sources in Arabic, French, German, and English ends the book. A specialized work by an expert; for large music collections.?Bonnie Jo Dopp, Montgomery Cty. Dept. of Public Libs., Md.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: German

Product Details

• Hardcover: 238 pages
• Publisher: Amadeus Press; Expanded edition (March 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0931340888
• ISBN-13: 978-0931340888
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,067,454 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent book, June 17, 2006

By 

Mr. N. Coutya "Oud Player" (London) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Music of the Arabs Book/CD (Paperback) (Paperback)

Thanks God that the book doesn't mention Farid or Abdel Wahab, because Arabic music did exist before them, or before they changed it into Casino-like belly dancing arabesque musique rather than a decent creative music that didn't need their foreign and stupid influences such as Rumba and Tango, things that were cut and paste from the hollywood of the twenties, and that are so out of date now.

This book focuses on the Arabic music as a traditional inherited music, and does an excellent job at describing it.

33 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Music of the Arabs -- a short review, March 6, 2000

By 

"mimikanun" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Music of the Arabs (Hardcover)

Touma's Music of the Arabs does not cover the subject. Although he states early on that he doesn't plan to cover folkloric music, nevertheless his photos seem mainly to focus on that area. He spends a lot of time on Iraqi maqam, which is quite different from mainstream Arabic music and not well known to most Arabs. He barely mentions the greatest artists of modern urban (traditional) Arab music such as Umm Kulthum, Muhammad Abd al-Wahhab, Baligh Hamdi, Farid al-Atrash, Abdel Halim Hafez, and others; people wishing to get an overview of Arab music in the twentieth century will be somewhat misled by this book. Also, the CD that is meant to go with the book similarly focuses on non-mainstream traditional Arabic music. I suspect the man has a bone to pick and is purposely slanting his book away from what most Arabs would think of as typical Arab music. (I have written a extensive and detailed review of this work for "The Near Eastern Music Calendar." Furthermore, I am a musician who has played Arab music professionally for more than 20 years.)

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Indispensable, September 13, 2009

By 

Fernand Raynaud (California, USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Music of the Arabs (Hardcover)

As you can see, this is a complex and contentious topic. If you want to get your bearings, there is simply no better introduction to the subject in English, and that's not all good news. It would be silly to expect a small book like this to cover all aspects, let alone all personalities, be they "authentic" or not. This is certainly in the spirit of the great musicologists like D'Erlanger, who wanted to save Arabic music from itself, and in opposition to the inferiority complex that created the bizarre "arabic orchestra", in which legions of musicians play a single melodic line on as many western instruments as could be dragged onto the stage. It also sheds some light on why attempts to create pieces like symphonic "oud concertos" might sound silly and contrived.

At the same time, there is a touch of madness and bias to such polemics. Imagine a little book called "Music of the Europeans", and you get a taste of the problems. Touma also forgets that Western Art Music is in crisis. The old orderly image of "classical music" is failing because we are finding that there is no viable "contemporary classical music". Mozart and Beethoven were products of their economic/social context, and those norms no longer work. If you want to talk about the music we listen to, you have to include John Lennon, Andrew Lloyd Webber ... AND Farid El AlTrash.

Having relied on rote oral transmission from master to student, especially defenseless against distortions for having no system of notation of its own, Arabic music has been constantly evolving (or decaying) over the centuries, and changing under the influence of foreigners. At one point Touma makes the following tragic admission: "Most Arabs today, however, whatever their level of education might be, no longer know true Arabic music." The sad thing is that the author of this book is no exception. It's as good as it gets, yet it is full of errors that reveal more than a translation (from German) problem. The reference to "Early Persian Magicians" to denote Zoroastrians in the first chapter is symptomatic. Touma then incomprehensibly uses the term "Maqam", which is a mode, a scale or tone row, to denote a Taqsim, which is an is improvisation form that USES a Maqam. The material covered is wide, and nobody will spot all the errors, but it happens that I can also see that the very important Ajam Maqam is notated incorrectly. The criticism that some reviewers level, that it arbitrarily ignores some important figures in 20th century Arabic music, is also not without basis. Farid El Altrash was not just a crooner, he did more to restore interest in the classical Taqsim and the essential Oud (lute) than anyone "modern" before him. The fact that all the Arabic TV stations now regularly broadcast high quality Taqsim music is Farid's legacy. Ignoring him completely was NOTa wise editorial decision on Touma's part. You can be sure all the other material in this book is likewise a bit stilted and peppered with little mistakes.

Still, books such as this, that aim to return to historical foundations, are invaluable. The controversy (and the errors?) make the field all the more interesting. The exposition of the Maqam phenomenon, the specific Arabic mode/scale system with ties to the "modes" of ancient Greece, is cursory but tries to be complete. You should be acquainted with this stuff if you have any interest in music as a general human phenomenon. It's wonderful that the current interest in "world music" can support efforts such as this. The technical level of the analysis gets quite deep, and the layman may wish to skip some passages. The interested reader can start here, then listen to a wealth of examples on youtube under Oud and Taqsim, and the professional can further study a detailed presentation of the Maqam system on sites like maqamworldDOTcom.

Armed with the not inconsiderable body of knowledge in this volume as a start, you can be better prepared to join the fray and meaningfully argue whether Farid El Altrash was a tacky movie musical actor with a fast wrist, or a genius imbued with the tradition of centuries, and whether other Oud players like Nasseer Shamma are brave innovators, or if they should stop equivocating and just play the guitar. You can also ponder whether Munir Bashir, who left Iraq to practice a more authentic Arabic music, was right on track, or just spinning a self-serving tale.

The CD is of course arbitrary in its selections, but a very welcome bonus, especially for readers new to the subject, and for whom no amount of reading can substitute for hearing "what it sounds like". The long Bashir selection is a great illustration of the aforementioned Taqsim genre that is central to traditional Arabic Art Music. The book-CD package is a fine value, printed on thick paper that is rarely found in paperbacks, and if you have any interest in Arabic music, this is the one to start with. You will keep coming back to it for reference, and, as your knowledge deepens, to quibble and rage ;-)