Egyptian Music essays

Egyptian Music essays There are no specific words to describe the beauty of Egyptian music. Although I have lived there all my life, I only took notice of the ingenuity around two years ago; when I started playing the guitar. Egypt is located in the heart of the Middle East. It has always been the doors from Africa to Asia and vice versa, therefore, a strategic point on the map. From this, Egypt has been under constant invasion throughout her millennia life, for both her strategic point and wealth. However, it also brought in different cultures into the existing one, and blended in perfectly. So, in time Egyptian culture became a mix of different backgrounds, and that affected its music greatly. Being the latest occupants of Egypt, music from the vast Arabian Desert is probably the main style and influence in music today. If you listen to Egyptian music today, you will hear a distinctive beat that is almost in every song, sort of like the 16 beat of western music. Conversely, it does not mean that Egyptian music is based upon rhythm; it is actually the melody that is most important and professionally done. One can only describe the melody as an arabesque painting. In arabesque, there are many fine delicate curves that branch out and are interwoven through each other, but if you look closely, you will find a centre to the picture where all the curves seem to originate from. To understand melody, one must know about scales and instruments used. Though traditional Western music uses only whole-step and half-step intervals, Arab melodies often incorporate quartertones to create such intervals as quartertones, three-quarter tones, five-quarter tones, and one-and-a-half tones. By combining a number of these intervals to form scale like segments, and further combining these formed segments, a type of melodic mode may be created on which Arab improvisations or compositions are based. To implement this on an instrument, especially a stringed one, it has to be ...