Arabic and English style of music

Introduction

Arabic music or Arabic music science was derived from Greek concepts, works and further adoption of those works by Arabic artists. Arabs were pioneer in most of the scientific fields such as mathematics, chemistry and physics. Therefore, their literary works in those disciplines complemented the music in their societies as it helped in creating unique and different musical instruments each playing a vital role in the overall tune composition. The contemporary music instrument names such as guitar, flute, and rebec have been derived from Arabic words (Crawford, pp. 23-98).

English music on the other hand, has less deep roots in history but contemporary developments in English music have resulted in creation of a broad variety of genres like folk, reggae, hip-hop, jazz, countryside, rhythm & blues rock, rap classical, electronic, Latin American, Avant-Grade, easy listening and international; whereas Arabic music has less varieties. One has choice among classical and traditional music. Egyptian music, Lebanese music, Iraqi music and the geographical classification goes on. The contemporary musical instruments have great contribution in their production from Arabic artists like Al-Farabi who was a mathematician and physicist besides being a musician; therefore, he had command over operating different musical instruments as he understood the science of frequency, pitch and basic ingredients of tune formation. Contemporary English music has focused on usage of electronic musical instruments whereas Arabic music still uses a diverse variety of natural traditional musical instruments such as Oud, Violin, Qanun (dulcimer), Nay, Riqq (Daff) and Buzuq (Crawford, pp. 23-98).

According to my research, almost all of these instruments are natural without involving electrical supplies, whereas contemporary English music instruments such as guitar, drum and keyboards do require electrical supplies. Arabic music has retained spirituality as there is a specific religious or Islamic genre in Arabic music, often referred to as Qawwali practiced in South Asian countries that focus on rejuvenating the spiritual dimension of self and purifying the soul by listening to that music. In contemporary English music we find very rare examples of faith and spirituality related music genres and themes. English music is famous for continuously innovating new modes and instrument developing themes that are transforming the English music industry by reducing cost of production of music (Carlin, pp. 89-105). In Egyptian, Lebanese and Iraqi music genres of Arabic dance are inevitable parts of music and particularly feminine dance. One such class of music and dance is Belly dance that involves a young lady dancing on the tune in a gathering of people listening to Arabic music and watching the lady's dance.

Discussion & Analysis

Arabic Style of Music

Arab music is characterized by the primacy of melody and rhythm over harmony. Although there are some examples of polyphonic texture in Arabic music, typically, textured music is monadic.

From the standpoint of melody in music, Arabic musical system is based on the octave divided into 24 quarter tones. To write Arabic music using Western musical notation, the + and - are used. The + serves to indicate the elevation ...