Music of Egypt - encyclopedia article about Music of Egypt.

Musicians of Amun, Tomb of Nakht, 18th Dyn, Western Thebes.

Egyptian music has been an integral part of Egyptian culture since ancient times. The ancient Egyptians credited the god Thoth with the invention of music, which Osiris in turn used as part of his effort to civilize the world. The earliest material and representational evidence of Egyptian musical instruments dates to the Predyanstic period, but the evidence is more securely attested in the Old Kingdom when harps, flutes and double clarinets were played.^[1] Percussion instruments, lyres and lutes were added to orchestras by the Middle Kingdom. Cymbals^[2] frequently accompanied music and dance, much as they still do in Egypt today. Egyptian folk music, including the traditional Sufi zikr rituals, are the closest contemporary music genre to ancient Egyptian music, having preserved many of its features, rhythms and instruments.^[3]^[4]

In general, modern Egyptian music blends these indigenous traditions with Turkish, Arabic, and Western elements. Arabic music is usually said to have begun in the 7th century in Syria during the Umayyad dynasty. Early Arabic music was influenced by Byzantine, Indian and Persian forms, which were themselves heavily influenced by earlier Greek, Semitic, and ancient Egyptian music. The tonal structure of Arabic music is defined by the maqamat, loosely similar to Western modes, while the rhythm of Arabic music is governed by the awzan (wazn, sing.), formed by combinations of accented and unaccented beats and rests.

Front and rear views of the oud.

Since the 1970s, Egyptian pop music has become increasingly important in Egyptian culture, particularly among the large youth population of Egypt. Egyptian folk music continues to be played during weddings and other traditional festivities. In the last quarter of the 20th century, Egyptian music was a way to communicate social and class issues. Among some of the most popular Egyptian pop singers today are Mohamed Mounir and Amr Diab.

Religious music remains an essential part of traditional Muslim and Coptic celebrations called mulids. Mulids are held in Egypt to celebrate the saint of a particular mosque or church. Muslim mulids are related to the Sufi zikr ritual. The Egyptian flute, called the ney, is commonly played at mulids. The liturgical music of the Coptic Church also constitutes an important element of Egyptian music and is said to have preserved many features of ancient Egyptian music.

Modern pop and folk traditions

Contemporary Egyptian music traces its beginnings to the creative work of luminaries such as Abdu-l Hamuli, Almaz and Mahmud Osman, who were all patronized by Khedive Ismail, and who influenced the later work of Sayed Darwish, Umm Kulthum, Mohammed Abdel Wahab, Abdel Halim Hafez, Zakariyya Ahmad and other Egyptian music giants.

Egyptian music began its recorded history in the 1910s, around the time composers such as Sayed Darwish were incorporating western musical forms into their work. Some of the Middle East's biggest musical stars have been Egyptian. Kulthum was especially popular, and is considered the most successful Egyptian recording artist in history. Most of these stars, including Kulthum, were part of the classical Egyptian and Arabic music tradition. Some, like Abd el-Halim Hafez, were associated with the Egyptian nationalist movement in 1952.

Folk and roots revival

The 20th century has seen Cairo become associated with a roots revival. Musicians from across Egypt are keeping folk traditions alive, such as those of rural Egyptians (fellahin), the Nubians, and the Arab and Berber Bedouins. Mixtures of folk and pop have also risen from the Cairo hit factory.

Sawahli (coastal) music is a type of popular music from the northern coast, and is based around the simsimaya, an indigenous stringed instrument. Well-known singers include Abdo'l Iskandrani and Aid el-Gannirni.

Coptic

Main article: Coptic music

Coptic Deacons chanting with the cymbals

Coptic music is the liturgical music of the Coptic Church. It consists mainly of chanted hymns in rhythm with instruments such as cymbals (hand and large size) and the triangle. It has preserved some features of ancient Egyptian music, and few of its melodies are identified and labeled as Syrian (called Shamy in the Coptic Church) or Byzantine (called Roumy or Roman in the Coptic Church).

Bedouin

Bedouin music is found in the deserts of the west, near Libya, and the eastern Sinai area. The mizmar, a twin-pipe clarinet, is the most popular folk instrument, and popular singers include Awad e'Medic.

Saidi (Upper Egyptian)

Egyptian musicians from Upper Egypt play a form of folk music called saidi (Upper Egyptian). Metqal Qenawi's Les Musiciens du Nil are the most popular saidi group, and were chosen by the government to represent Egyptian folk music abroad. Other performers include Shoukoukou, Ahmad Ismail, Omar Gharzawi, Sohar Magdy and Ahmed Mougahid.

Nubian

Nubians are native to the south of Egypt and northern Sudan, though many live in Cairo and other cities. Nubian folk music can still be heard, but migration and intercultural contact with Egyptian and other musical genres have produced new innovations. Ali Hassan Kuban's jazz fusions had made him a regular on the world music scene, while Mohamed Mounir's social criticism and sophisticated pop have made him a star among Nubians, Egyptians, and other people worldwide. Ahmed Mounib, Mohamed Mounir's mentor, was by far the most notable Nubian singer to hit the Egyptian music scene, singing in both Egyptian Arabic and his native Nobiin. Hamza El Din is another popular Nubian artist, well-known on the world music scene and has collaborared with the Kronos Quartet.

Popular music

Until the late 1980s, classical singers like Umm Kulthum were Egypt's biggest pop stars. By the middle of the 1990s, though, el gil and shaabi music had taken over, especially among young audiences.

Starting in the late 1960s, light song emerged as the first modern Egyptian pop tradition. Often nationalist in tone, light songs were humorous and sometimes risqué. It was dominated by singers like Aida el-Shah and Layla Nazmy, who were popular in middle-class communities. The working class youth of Egypt reacted against light songs and shaabi music evolved out of Cairo's poorest districts. Shaabi began entering the mainstream of Egyptian society in 1971, with the breakthrough success of Ahmed Adaweyah.

Shaabi

Adaweyah, by far the most popular Egyptian shaabi singer in the history of Egyptian music, initially gained controversy for his lyrics, which were often humorous, salacious and highly critical of social rules and respectable society. By the 1980s, shaabi was being influenced by music from the United Kingdom and United States, as well as other Egyptian pop stars. Electric guitars, synthesizers, and later beat boxes, were integrated into the music, which is now highly-polished and meant for mainstream consumption. Today, the most popular shaabi stars are Hakeem and Shaaban Abdel Rahim.

el Gil

el gil music genre arose in the 70s. It was dance-pop modeled after foreign rock and roll and pop music with a background rhythm similar to reggae, and it included distinctively Egyptian characteristics. Hamid el Shaery, a Libyan living in Egypt, was the most influential of el-Gil''s early performers.

External links

Notes

1. ^ Music of Ancient Egypt. Kelsey Museum. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
2. ^ image
3. ^ Hickmann, Hans. "Un Zikr Dans le Mastaba de Debhen, Guîzah (IVème Dynastie)." Journal of the International Folk Music Council. Vol. 9. (1957), pp. 59-62.
4. ^ ______. "Rythme, mètre et mesure de la musique instrumentale et vocale des anciens Egyptiens." Acta Musicologica, Vol. 32, Fasc. 1. (Jan. - Mar., 1960), pp. 11-22.

References

Lodge, David and Bill Badley. "Partner of Poetry". 2000. In Broughton, Simon and Ellingham, Mark with McConnachie, James and Duane, Orla (Ed.), World Music, Vol. 1: Africa, Europe and the Middle East, pp 323-331. Rough Guides Ltd, Penguin Books. ISBN 1-85828-636-0

• • [ e] Middle Eastern music
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The Culture of Egypt has five thousand years of recorded history. Ancient Egypt was among the earliest civilizations. For millennia, Egypt maintained a strikingly complex and stable culture that influenced later cultures of Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
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Egyptians (Egyptian: rmṯnkm.t; Coptic: ni.ramenkīmi; Arabic: مِصريّون miṣriyūn
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Thoth (his Greek name derived from the Egyptian *ḏiḥautī, written by Egyptians as ḏḥwty
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OSIRIS (OH-Suppressing Infrared Integral Field Spectrograph) is an integral field spectrograph for the Keck II telescope in Hawaii. As an integral field spectrograph, it can obtain many spectra simultaneously covering a small region of the sky.
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Dynasties of Pharaohs
in Ancient Egypt
Predynastic Egypt
Protodynastic Period
Early Dynastic Period
1st 2nd
Old Kingdom
3rd 4th 5th 6th
First Intermediate Period
7th 8th 9th 10th
11th (Thebes only)

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The Old Kingdom is the name commonly given to that period in the 3rd millennium BC when Egypt attained its first continuous peak of civilization in complexity and achievement – this was the first of three so-called "Kingdom" periods, which mark the high points of civilization
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The harp is a stringed instrument which has the plane of its strings positioned perpendicular to the soundboard. All harps have a neck, resonator and strings. Some, known as frame harps, also have a forepillar; those lacking the forepillar are referred to as
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flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike other woodwind instruments, a flute produces its sound from the flow of air against an edge, instead of using a reed.
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The term double clarinet refers to any of several woodwind instruments consisting of two parallel pipes made of cane, bird bone, or metal, played simultaneously, with a single reed for each.
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percussion instrument is any object which produces a sound by being hit with an implement, shaken, rubbed, scraped, or by any other action which sets the object into vibration. The term usually applies to an object used in a rhythmic context and/or with musical intent.
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lyre is a stringed musical instrument well known for its use in Classical Antiquity and later. The recitations of the Ancient Greeks were accompanied by lyre playing. The lyre of Classical Antiquity was ordinarily played by being strummed with a plectrum, like a guitar or a zither,
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Lute can generally refer to any plucked string instrument with a neck (either fretted or unfretted) and a deep round back, or a specific instrument from the family of European lutes.
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Cymbals (Fr. cymbales; Ger. Becken; Ital. piatti or cinelli; Por. pratos), are a modern percussion instrument. Cymbals consist of thin, normally round plates of various cymbal alloys; see cymbal making for a discussion of their
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Gumhūriyyat Miṣr al-ʿArabiyyah

Arab Republic of Egypt

Flag Coat of arms
Anthem
Bilady, Bilady, Bilady
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Folk music can have a number of different meanings, including:

Traditional music: The original meaning of the term "folk music" was synonymous with the term "Traditional music", also often including World Music and Roots music; the term "Traditional music" was given

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Sufism is a mystic tradition within Islam that encompasses a diverse range of beliefs and practices dedicated to Divine love and the cultivation of the elements of the Divine within the individual human being.
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A music genre is a term that describes the process of dividing popular music into categories. Some treat the terms genre and style as the same, and state that genre should be defined as pieces of music that share a certain style or "basic musical language.
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The music of Turkey includes diverse elements ranging from Central Asian folk music and music from Ottoman Empire dominions such as Persian music, Balkan music and ancient Byzantine music, as well as more modern European and American popular music influences.
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Arabic music (Arabic,الموسيقى العربية) includes several genres and styles of music ranging from Arab classical to Arabic pop music and from secular to sacred music.
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The 7th century is the period from 601 to 700 in accordance with the Julian calendar in the Christian Era.

Overview

During this century, the Eastern Roman Empire continued suffering setbacks, which increased after the 630s, when the Arab prophet Muhammad militantly
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Anthem
Homat el Diyar
Guardians of the Land

Capital
(and largest city) Damascus

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AD Tulunid dynasty 868-905 Hamdanid dynasty 890-1004 Ikhshidid dynasty 935-969 Uqaylid Dynasty 990-1096 Zengid dynasty 1127-1250 Ayyubid dynasty 1171-1246 Bahri dynasty 1250-1382 Burji dynasty 1382–1517

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Byzantine music is the music of the Byzantine Empire (Eastern Roman Empire) and by extension the music of its culture(s) as they continued in the Orthodox Christian parts of the population after the fall of the empire to the rule of the Ottoman Empire.
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The music of India includes multiple varieties of folk, popular, pop, and classical music. India's classical music tradition, including Carnatic and Hindustani music, has a history spanning millennia and, developed over several eras, remains fundamental to the lives of
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music of Iran has thousands of years of history dating back to the Neolithic age, as seen in the archeological evidence of Elam, one of the earliest world civilizations, which was located in southwestern Iran.
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Motto
Ελευθερία ή θάνατος
Eleftheria i thanatos
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In linguistics and ethnology, Semitic (from the Biblical "Shem", Hebrew: שם, translated as "name", Arabic: ساميّ) was first used to refer to a language family of largely Middle Eastern origin, now called the Semitic languages.
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