Arabic music in the context of "Music of Iraq"

Arab culture is the culture of the Arabs, from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Arabian Sea in the east, in a region of the Middle East and North Africa known as the Arab world. The various religions the Arabs have adopted throughout their history and the various empires and kingdoms that have ruled and took lead of the civilization have contributed to the ethnogenesis and formation of modern Arab culture. Language, literature, gastronomy, art, architecture, music, spirituality, philosophy and mysticism are all part of the cultural heritage of the Arabs.

The countries of the Arab world, from Morocco to Iraq, share a common culture, traditions, language and history that give the region a distinct identity and distinguish it from other parts of the Muslim world. The Arab world is sometimes divided into separate regions depending on different cultures, dialects and traditions, such as the Arabian Peninsula (Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates), Egypt, the Levant (Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Jordan), the Maghreb (Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Mauritania), Mesopotamia (Iraq), and Sudan.

Arabization or Arabicization (Arabic: تعريب, romanized: taʻrīb) is a sociological process of cultural change in which a non-Arab society becomes Arab, meaning it either directly adopts, is forced to accept, or becomes strongly influenced by the Arabic language, culture, literature, art, music, and ethnic identity as well as other socio-cultural factors. It is a specific form of cultural assimilation that often includes a language shift or linguistic imperialism. The term applies not only to cultures, but also to individuals, as they acclimate to Arab culture and become "Arabized". Arabization took place after the Muslim conquest of the Middle East and North Africa, as well as during the more recent Arab nationalist policies toward non-Arabic speaking minorities in modern Arab states, such as Algeria, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Bahrain, and Sudan.

After the rise of Islam in the Hejaz and subsequent Muslims conquests, Arab culture and language spread outside the Arabian Peninsula through trade and intermarriages between members of the non-Arab local population and the peninsular Arabs. The Arabic language began to serve as a lingua franca in these areas and various dialects were formed. This process was accelerated by the migration of various Arab tribes outside of Arabia, such as the Arab migrations to the Maghreb and the Levant.

The tambourine is a musical instrument in the percussion family consisting of a frame, often of wood or plastic, with pairs of small metal jingles, called "zills". Classically the term tambourine denotes an instrument with a drumhead, though some variants may not have a head. Tambourines are often used with regular percussion sets. They can be mounted, for example on a stand as part of a drum kit (and played with drum sticks), or they can be held in the hand and played by tapping, hitting, or shaking the instrument.

Tambourines come in many shapes with the most common being circular. It is found in many forms of music: Albanian folk music, Arabic folk music, Balkan folk music, Israeli folk music, Turkish folk music, Greek folk music, Italian folk music, French folk music, classical music, Spanish folk music, Persian music, samba, gospel music, pop music, country music, and rock music.

Muwashshah (Arabic: مُوَشَّح muwaššaḥ 'girdled'; plural مُوَشَّحَات muwaššaḥāt; also تَوْشِيْح tawšīḥ 'girdling,' pl. تَوَاشِيْح tawāšīḥ) is a strophic poetic form that developed in al-Andalus in the late 10th and early 11th centuries. The muwaššaḥ, embodying the Iberian rhyme revolution, was the major Andalusi innovation in Arabic poetry, and it was sung and performed musically. The muwaššaḥ features a complex rhyme and metrical scheme usually containing five aghṣān (أَغْصَان 'branches'; sing. غُصْن ghuṣn), with uniform rhyme within each strophe, interspersed with asmāṭ (أَسْمَاط 'threads for stringing pearls'; sing. سِمْط simṭ) with common rhyme throughout the song, as well as a terminal kharja (خَرْجَة 'exit'), the song's final simṭ, which could be in a different language. Sephardic poets also composed muwaššaḥāt in Hebrew, sometimes as contrafacta imitating the rhyme and metrical scheme of a particular poem in Hebrew or in Arabic. This poetic imitation, called muʿāraḍa (مُعَارَضَة 'contrafaction'), is a tradition in Arabic poetry.

The kharja, or the markaz (مَـْركَز 'center') of the muwaššaḥ, its final verses, can be in a language that is different from the body; a muwaššaḥ in literary Arabic might have a kharja in vernacular Andalusi Arabic or in a mix of Arabic and Andalusi Romance, while a muwaššaḥ in Hebrew might contain a kharja in Arabic, Romance, Hebrew, or a mix.

The rich and varied music of Sudan has traditional, rural, northeastern African roots and also shows Arabic, Western or other African influences, especially on the popular urban music from the early 20th century onwards. Since the establishment of big cities like Khartoum as melting pots for people of diverse backgrounds, their cultural heritage and tastes have shaped numerous forms of modern popular music. In the globalized world of today, the creation and consumption of music through satellite TV or on the Internet is a driving force for cultural change in Sudan, popular with local audiences as well as with Sudanese living abroad.

Even after the secession of South Sudan in 2011, the Sudan of today is very diverse, with five hundred plus ethnic groups spread across the territory of what is the third largest country in Africa. The cultures of its ethnic and social groups have been marked by a complex cultural legacy, going back to the spread of Islam, the regional history of the slave trade and by indigenous African and Arab cultural heritage. Though some of the ethnic groups still maintain their own African language, most Sudanese today use the distinct Sudanese version of Arabic.