Cool Stuff: Arabic and Indian Music

     Hooray for the final week of the semester! Today we're going to be discussing some cool stuff from the Middle East and India. I really enjoyed the Arabic music chapter, so I'm excited to share this blog with you! 

#1: The Music of Qatar 

    Qatar is a small, peninsular country located to the west of Saudi Arabia. It also happens to be where my sister has been stationed since July (☹️). Since I had some personal ties to the region I decided to research and see if there was any interesting music to discuss-- and there is! Of course all of the instruments and styles we discussed in class are there, but there is one style of music that is unique to the country, and it's something that I definitely didn't expect to find: sea shanties! As I mentioned, Qatar is a peninsula, meaning it is surrounded on three sides by water, so I guess when you think about it it isn't too surprising to find out that sea shanties are pretty popular, but I guess when I think of sea shanties I think of like, Ireland or something. 

    A sea shanty is a type of work song, with a very simple rhythm and melody, designed to accompany hard, repetitive labor aboard boats. In the past, one of Qatar's main exports and sources of labor was pearling-- diving for and retrieving pearls from the ocean. So, yeah, lots of hard work on boats make for pretty good sea shanty time. Of course, these particular shanties aren't like the ones that have been going viral on Tik-Tok lately, but they're still pretty cool, and I thought I would share. You can see that the melody is pretty simple, and like most sea shanties there's a call and response thing going on, but you also get aspects of Arabic melodic style and traditional instruments and, of course, the language

#2: Al-Ayyala 

    I decided to do some research on some popular Arab dances, since we didn't get to discuss it much, and came across the Al-Ayyala, which is an art form that combines music, dance, poetry, and a little bit of acting as well. It is traditionally performed in the UAE and Oman, as well as in neighboring countries such as Qatar and Bahrain, with some cultural variations. The dance is performed by about 20 men, who carry bamboo sticks to depict swords as they tell the story of a battle. There is drum music and chant poetry with a simple melodic and rhythmic line. The dance is very popular and performed many times a year, though the poem being sung will change depending on the event or reason for the dance being performed, like weddings or cultural celebrations. Here's a clip explaining more about Al-Ayyala and showing different groups performing the dance: 

#3: Ragas and Emotions 

    I loved discussing Raga and Tala in class! I think learning about different music theories has been my favorite part of this class so far, because it's just so interesting to see how different cultures interpret the same basic foundations so differently from us. Anyways, for my last cool stuff I wanted to share some info from an article I read on how different ragas were scientifically proven to elicit different emotional responses. You can read/browse the article here, though it has a lot of big terminology that I didn't enjoy trying to decipher, so you might not either. Here's a recap: The article primarily discusses Hindustani music which, as you may remember, is North Indian classical music, and the meaning/uses of ragas in Hindustani music. As you may remember, there are tons of ragas, which can be used for a specific celebration, time of day, feeling, etc. The article goes onto explain that a major reason ragas can have such a wide array of emotional interpretations is the different versions of consonance and dissonance that exist between all of them. Since they all have different patterns of intervals, they can elicit or at least express a huge amount of different emotional responses. I also found this cool graphic that shows the Indian names for intervals and their western equivalent. Fun stuff!