What are Arabs Listening to? Contemporary Arab Music: Categorization and Musical Understanding
What are Arabs Listening to? Contemporary Arab Music: Categorization and Musical Understanding

Summary/Abstract: Contemporary Arab music, as a category that holds all Arab musical productions since the 1970s, has grown to occupy the vast majority of listening practices in the regional culture. Despite its massive appeal to the contemporary Arab society, scholarship has yet to explore this category from a strictly musical perspective. The present research categorizes and explores the various types of music that fall under the umbrella of “contemporary Arab music”. The author begins by highlighting the three subcategories of contemporary music in the Arab world: Popular, Alternative, and Instrumental, and identifies the genres or forms that they encompass. With reference to musicians, songs, and pieces, the paper underpins the main stylistic features, and compositional and performance techniques, used in contemporary music productions. The author concludes by acknowledging the significance of this music to the Arab culture and urges the need to reconsider approaches to the field of contemporary Arab music.

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