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Lebanese Music
The music of Lebanon has a long history. Beirut, the capital city of Lebanon, has long been known, especially in a period immediately following World War II, for its art and intellectualism. Several singers emerged in this period, among some of the most famous Fairuz, Sabah, Zaki Nassif, and Wadih El Safi. During the fifteen-year civil war and the Israeli occupation of Lebanon, most of the Lebanese music stars moved to Cairo or Paris, with a large music scene in Beirut only returning after 1992. Modern pop stars include Najwa Karam, Diana Haddad, Nawal Al Zoghbi, Elissa, Ragheb Alama, Haifa Wehbe, Nancy Ajram, Myriam Fares, Wael Jassar, and more. While traditional folk music is important to Lebanese music, other styles like rock, house and electronic music have gained popularity in Lebanon with the rise of Arabic influence in these music genres. Consequently, new Lebanese record labels have emerged to support artists in a variety of music styles. Music has also been used as a to ...
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Beirut
Beirut ( ; ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Lebanon. , Greater Beirut has a population of 2.5 million, just under half of Lebanon's population, which makes it the List of largest cities in the Levant region by population, fourth-largest city in the Levant region and the List of largest cities in the Arab world, sixteenth-largest in the Arab world. The city is situated on a peninsula at the midpoint of Lebanon's Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean coast. Beirut has been inhabited for more than 5,000 years, making it one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world. Beirut is Lebanon's seat of government and plays a central role in the Economy of Lebanon, Lebanese economy, with many banks and corporations based in the city. Beirut is an important Port of Beirut, seaport for the country and region, and rated a Global City, Beta- World City by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. Beirut was severely damaged by ...
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Myriam Fares
Myriam Fares (, ; born 3 May 1983) is a Lebanese singer, actress, and entertainer. She began her career in 2003, and released her debut single "Ana Wel Shoq". Following the success of that single, she released her self-titled debut studio album ''Myriam'' (2003). She is known in the Arab world as the "Queen of The Stage" for her unique choreographed dance routines and performances. Fares made her acting debut with the television series ''Itiham''. The following year, her fifth studio album '' Aman'' broke the record for being the most played album on the streaming service Anghami. In 2021, Fares starred in her own Netflix documentary film '' Myriam Fares: The Journey'', which made her the first Middle Eastern and Arab artist to release a documentary on Netflix, with it ranking at number 1 in several countries worldwide. Her 2018 single " Goumi" gained popularity on TikTok after a viral dance challenge Fares created surpassed 10 billion total views. Fares also collaborated wit ...
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Ziad Rahbani
Ziad Rahbani (, born 1956) is a Lebanese composer, pianist, playwright, and political commentator. He is the son of Fairouz, one of Lebanon and the Arab world's most famous singers, and Assi Rahbani, one of the founders of modern Arabic music. Many of his musicals satirize Lebanese politics both during and after the Lebanese Civil War, and are often critical of the traditional political establishment. Personal life Ziad Rahbani is the son of the Lebanese composer Assi Rahbani and Nouhad Haddad, the Lebanese female singer known as Fairuz. Rahbani was married to Dalal Karam, with whom he has a boy named "Assi" but he was later found out not to be his biological son. Their relationship later ended in divorce, prompting Karam to write a series of articles for the gossip magazine ''Ashabaka'' about their marriage. Rahbani composed a number of songs about their relationship, including "Marba el Dalal" and "Bisaraha". Rahbani has a long-standing relationship with Lebanese leftis ...
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Phonograph Cylinder
Phonograph cylinders (also referred to as Edison cylinders after its creator Thomas Edison) are the earliest commercial medium for Sound recording and reproduction, recording and reproducing sound. Commonly known simply as "records" in their heyday (c. 1896–1916), a name which has been passed on to Phonograph record, their disc-shaped successor, these hollow cylinder, cylindrical objects have an audio recording engraved on the outside surface which can be reproduced when they are played on a mechanical cylinder phonograph. The first cylinders were wrapped with tin foil but the improved version made of wax was created a decade later, after which they were commercialized. In the 1910s, the competing disc record system Format war, triumphed in the marketplace to become the dominant commercial audio medium. Early development In December 1877, Thomas Edison and his team invented the phonograph using a thin sheet of tin foil wrapped around a hand-cranked, grooved metal cylinder. Tin f ...
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Dabke
''Dabke'' ( also spelled ''dabka'', ''dabki'', ''dubki'', ''dabkeh'', plural ''dabkaat'') is a Levantine folk dance, particularly popular among Lebanese, Jordanian, Palestinian, and Syrian communities. Dabke combines circle dance and line dancing and is widely performed at weddings and other joyous occasions. The line forms from right to left and the leader of the ''dabke'' heads the line, alternating between facing the audience and the other dancers. Etymology The etymology of 'dabke' is uncertain but is thought to be derived from the Levantine Arabic word ''dabaka'' () meaning "stamping of the feet" or "to make a noise". History According to Youssef Ibrahim Yazbec, a Lebanese historian, journalist, and politician, the dabke descends from Phoenician dances thousands of years old. According to Palestinian folklorists Abdul-Latif Barghouthi and Awwad Sa'ud al-'Awwad, the dabke jumps may have originated in ancient Canaanite fertility rituals related to agriculture, chasi ...
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Melisma
Melisma (, , ; from , plural: ''melismata''), informally known as a vocal run and sometimes interchanged with the term roulade, is the singing of a single syllable of text while moving between several different notes in succession. Music sung in this style is referred to as ''melismatic'', as opposed to ''syllabic'', in which each syllable of text is matched to a single note. History General The term ''melisma'' may be used to describe music of any genre, including baroque singing, opera, and later gospel. Within the tradition of religious Jewish music, melisma is still commonly used in the chanting of Torah, readings from the Prophets, and in the body of a service. Melisma is prevalent in many forms of Gregorian chant (see e.g. Jubilus) as well as late-medieval sacred polyphony, notably in works by Guillaume de Machaut, John Dunstaple, and many early Tudor composers represented in the Eton, Caius, and Lambeth choirbooks. Today, melisma is commonly used in Middle Eastern, ...
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Zajal
''Zajal'' () is a traditional form of oral Strophic form, strophic poetry declaimed in a colloquial dialect. The earliest recorded zajal poet was Ibn Quzman of al-Andalus who lived from 1078 to 1160. Most scholars see the Andalusi Arabic ''zajal'', the Stress (linguistics), stress-syllable versification of which differs significantly from the quantitative meter of classical Arabic poetry, as a form of expression adapted from Iberian Romance languages, Romance languages' popular poetry traditions into Arabic—first at the folkloric level and then by lettered poets such as Ibn Quzman. It is generally conceded that the early ancestors of Levantine dialectical poetry were the Andalusian ''zajal'' and ''Muwashshah, muwashshaḥah'', brought to Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean by Moors fleeing Spain in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. An early master of Egyptian zajal was the fourteenth century ''zajjāl'' Abu ʿAbd Allāh al-Ghubārī. Zajal's origins may be ancient but it ...
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Levant
The Levant ( ) is the subregion that borders the Eastern Mediterranean, Eastern Mediterranean sea to the west, and forms the core of West Asia and the political term, Middle East, ''Middle East''. In its narrowest sense, which is in use today in archaeology and other cultural contexts, it is equivalent to Cyprus and a stretch of land bordering the Mediterranean Sea in Western AsiaGasiorowski, Mark (2016). ''The Government and Politics of the Middle East and North Africa''. p. 5: "... today the term ''Levantine'' can describe shared cultural products, such as Levantine cuisine or Levantine archaeology". .Steiner & Killebrew, p9: "The general limits ..., as defined here, begin at the Plain of 'Amuq in the north and extend south until the Wâdī al-Arish, along the northern coast of Sinai. ... The western coastline and the eastern deserts set the boundaries for the Levant ... The Euphrates and the area around Jebel el-Bishrī mark the eastern boundary of the northern Levant, as d ...
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Islam
Islam is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the Quran, and the teachings of Muhammad. Adherents of Islam are called Muslims, who are estimated to number Islam by country, 2 billion worldwide and are the world's Major religious groups, second-largest religious population after Christians. Muslims believe that Islam is the complete and universal version of a Fitra, primordial faith that was revealed many times through earlier Prophets and messengers in Islam, prophets and messengers, including Adam in Islam, Adam, Noah in Islam, Noah, Abraham in Islam, Abraham, Moses in Islam, Moses, and Jesus in Islam, Jesus. Muslims consider the Quran to be the verbatim word of God in Islam, God and the unaltered, final revelation. Alongside the Quran, Muslims also believe in previous Islamic holy books, revelations, such as the Torah in Islam, Tawrat (the Torah), the Zabur (Psalms), and the Gospel in Islam, Injil (Gospel). They believe that Muhammad in Islam ...
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Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived History of the Roman Empire, the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th centuryAD, it endured until the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453. The term 'Byzantine Empire' was coined only after its demise; its citizens used the term 'Roman Empire' and called themselves 'Romans'. During the early centuries of the Roman Empire, the western provinces were Romanization (cultural), Latinised, but the eastern parts kept their Hellenistic culture. Constantine the Great, Constantine I () legalised Christianity and moved the capital to Constantinople. Theodosius I, Theodosius I () made Christianity the state religion and Greek gradually replaced Latin for official use. The empire adopted a defensive strategy and, throughout its remaining history, expe ...
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Arameans
The Arameans, or Aramaeans (; ; , ), were a tribal Semitic people in the ancient Near East, first documented in historical sources from the late 12th century BCE. Their homeland, often referred to as the land of Aram, originally covered central regions of what is now Syria. The Arameans were not a single nation or group; Aram was a region with local centers of power spread throughout the Levant. That makes it almost impossible to establish a coherent ethnic category of "Aramean" based on extralinguistic identity markers, such as material culture, lifestyle, or religion. The people of Aram were called "Arameans" in Assyrian texts and the Hebrew Bible, but the terms "Aramean" and “Aram” were never used by later Aramean dynasts to refer to themselves or their country, except the king of Aram-Damascus, since his kingdom was also called Aram. "Arameans" is merely an appellation of the geographical term Aram given to 1st millennium BCE inhabitants of Syria. At the begi ...
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Bedouin
The Bedouin, Beduin, or Bedu ( ; , singular ) are pastorally nomadic Arab tribes who have historically inhabited the desert regions in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, the Levant, and Mesopotamia (Iraq). The Bedouin originated in the Syrian Desert and Arabian Desert but spread across the rest of the Arab world in West Asia and North Africa after the spread of Islam. The English word ''bedouin'' comes from the Arabic ''badawī'', which means "desert-dweller", and is traditionally contrasted with ''ḥāḍir'', the term for sedentary people. Bedouin territory stretches from the vast deserts of North Africa to the rocky ones of the Middle East. They are sometimes traditionally divided into tribes, or clans (known in Arabic as ''ʿašāʾir''; or ''qabāʾil'' ), and historically share a common culture of herding camels, sheep and goats. The vast majority of Bedouins adhere to Islam, although there are some fewer numbers of Christian Bedouins present in the Fertile Cres ...
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