arabic sounds

Woebot

Woebot

Well-known member
a friend (who will remain nameless) asked me about vintage arabic music for samples.

the best i can come up with really is oum kalsoum's stuff. not really the tightly cropped "singles" stuff, but the lps where she stretches out and things get madly losmic.

and there's the tangent/jean jenkins "voices of islam" lp which eno used on my life in the bush of ghosts as well.

anyone have some suggestions?
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Dunno where it's from, but there's some extremely mournful-sounding Arabic singing by a woman on the track 'Hizbollah' by Ministry, on their 1988 record The Land Of Rape And Honey. Don't suppose and Ministry buffs know where it's from?
 
D

Don Rosco

Well-known member
Well, if it's for sampling, then surely some call-to-prayer type action would be perfect? There's got to be tons of that floating around, provided they're not fussed about some extreme sacreliciousness.
 
Z

zhao

there are no accidents
OCORA, UNESCO, and AUVIDIS have some great vintage Arabic recordings. I have most of the titles. Celestial Harmonies' Music of Islam series is fantastic, spanning many continents over something like 20+ discs. the now defunct Al Sur (meaning the Wall in Arabic) covers a lot of traditional as well as modern(ish) music.

you can fund a lot of these (for instance almost the entire OCORA catalog - some 300+ discs, as well as an equally jaw-dropping number of Al Sur discs), for free download here. you need to register first to see the full list of sections.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Don Rosco said:
I wish I could take the credit, but I think it's from the mouth of Homer Simpson.
Click to expand...

Homer: Oh, Lord! Why do You mock me?
Marge: Homer, that's not God. That's a waffle Bart stuck to the ceiling.
(Marge pries the waffle off the ceiling.)
Homer: Lord, I know I shouldn't eat Thee, but... *gromph* mmm... sacrelicious.

:)
 
R

ripley

Well-known member
Is there a more specific style or production description than "vintage"?

but I'd have to shout out the superstar Hakim. dunno if he's vintage enough.

there's lots of ridiculous awesome stuff on bellydance-music albums from the 1960s - is that the right kind of vintage?
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
"there's lots of ridiculous awesome stuff on bellydance-music albums from the 1960s - is that the right kind of vintage?"
Click to expand...
There's a guy called Omar Khorshid who did some albums with belly-dance in the title (and some others) although the actual sound seems to be more of an amalgamation of what you might imagine and fairly aggressive surf-sounding guitar (I guess that in general surf guitar actually shows an eastern influence, isn't Dick Dale of Lebanese extraction?). Pretty cool stuff though it often tends to be fairly expensive in my experience.
In a similar vein I've got an album by some guy Elias Rahbani but I can't remember what it's called. I think he was/is fairly famous and has done a lot of stuff some of which may be a little weak though so be careful.
 
F

flashos

Well-known member
Elias Rahbani and his brother did a lot of music for Fairuz (famous Lebanese singer from the late 60's and 70's, successor to Oum Kalthoum). Their solo stuff can be quite cheesy at times but can also deliver some great moments...Turkish psych can also provide some great things to sample...depends on what he's looking for really, is he looking for drums, strings, vocals?...traditional or more modern sounding stuff?
 
lazybones

lazybones

f, d , d+f , p.
can register with that skarastapunk website for some reason...would love to hear some of those records...
 
B

borderpolice

Well-known member
I have always wondered about what arabic sound is musically. can any of the resident musos enlighten me? What kind of scales are used in arabic music? Clearly, Harmonic Minor, when considered a melodic scale, has an arabic inflexion. I sometimes also wonder if there might not be a different tuning system involved, not equal temperament.

Maybe somebody can fill my musical gaps?
 
G

gumdrops

Well-known member
i have some iranian sufi stuff which im sure wiley has heard seeing as he seems to like shopping at sterns. theres one track in particular where the rhythms are quite similar to some of his earlier stuff like blizzard.
 
M

mms

sometimes
borderpolice said:
I have always wondered about what arabic sound is musically. can any of the resident musos enlighten me? What kind of scales are used in arabic music? Clearly, Harmonic Minor, when considered a melodic scale, has an arabic inflexion. I sometimes also wonder if there might not be a different tuning system involved, not equal temperament.

Maybe somebody can fill my musical gaps?
Click to expand...

arabic music is uses a different scale to western music called the arabic scale

here is wikipedia to explain it better than me
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_scale

ethiopia's unique modal pentatonic scale is an interesting one, and gamelan uses a similar odd pentatonic scale.

here is another interesting wiki on musical modes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_modes
 
B

borderpolice

Well-known member
mms said:
arabic music is uses a different scale to western music called the arabic scale

here is wikipedia to explain it better than me
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_scale

ethiopia's unique modal pentatonic scale is an interesting one, and gamelan uses a similar odd pentatonic scale.

here is another interesting wiki on musical modes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_modes
Click to expand...

Thanks very much! Double Harmonic Minor! that makes a lot of sense. though
i still feel like that's not the whole story. i still wonder if there's a different tuning
system involved.
 
Z

zhao

there are no accidents
no expert in tuning but isn't major/minor an entirely western construction? I don't think arabs or indians think of it that way at all.

back to original question, it is such a vast area, with literally hundreds of "sub-genres" from different regions, all kinds of religious and secular musics from different time periods that it is impossible to say like, here, these are the best vintage arabic records...
 
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