Rhythms in Arabic music are rich and very

diverse Diversity, diversify, or diverse may refer to: Business *Diversity (business), the inclusion of people of different identities (ethnicity, gender, age) in the workforce * Diversity marketing, marketing communication targeting diverse customers ...

, as they cover a huge region and peoples from Northern Africa to Western Asia. Rhymes are mainly analysed by means of rhythmic units called ''awzan'' and ''iqa'at''.

Wazn and Iqa'

rhythmic pattern Rhythm (from Ancient Greek, Greek , ''rhythmos'', "any regular repetition (music), recurring motion, symmetry#Symmetry in music, symmetry") generally means a "motion, movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of ...

cycle Cycle, cycles, or cyclic may refer to: Anthropology and social sciences * Cyclic history, a theory of history * Cyclical theory, a theory of American political history associated with Arthur Schlesinger, Sr. * Social cycle, various cycles in ...

Arabic music Arabic music () is the music of the Arab world with all its diverse List of music styles, music styles and genres. Arabic countries have many rich and varied styles of music and also many linguistic Varieties of Arabic, dialects, with each countr ...

is called a "wazn" (;

plural In many languages, a plural (sometimes list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated as pl., pl, , or ), is one of the values of the grammatical number, grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than ...

أوزان / ''awzān''), literally a " measure". A ''wazn'' is only used in

musical genre A music genre is a conventional category that identifies some pieces of music as belonging to a shared tradition or set of conventions. Genre is to be distinguished from musical form and musical style, although in practice these terms are sometim ...

s with a fixed rhythmic-temporal organization including recurring measures, motifs, and

meter The metre (or meter in US spelling; symbol: m) is the base unit of length in the International System of Units (SI). Since 2019, the metre has been defined as the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of of ...

pulse In medicine, the pulse refers to the rhythmic pulsations (expansion and contraction) of an artery in response to the cardiac cycle (heartbeat). The pulse may be felt ( palpated) in any place that allows an artery to be compressed near the surfac ...

. It consists of two or more regularly recurring time segments, each time segment consisting of at least two beats (''naqarāt'', plural of ''naqrah''). There are approximately one hundred different cycles used in the repertoire of Arabic music, many of them shared with other regional music, also found in some South European styles like

Spanish music Spanish music may refer to: *Music of Spain, music of the Spanish people in Spain *Latin music, though note that not all Latin music are in Spanish ''Spanish music'' may also refer to the music of Spanish-speaking countries: *Music of Argentina * ...

. They are recorded and remembered through

onomatopoetic Onomatopoeia (or rarely echoism) is a type of word, or the process of creating a word, that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Common onomatopoeias in English include animal noises such as ''oink'', '' ...

syllables and the written symbols O and I. ''Wazn'' may be as large as 176 units of time. ''Iqa''' ( / ''īqā‘''; plural إيقاعات / ''īqā‘āt'') are

rhythmic mode In medieval music, the rhythmic modes were set patterns of long and short duration (music), durations (or rhythms). The value of each musical notation, note is not determined by the form of the written note (as is the case with more recent Europea ...

s or patterns in

. There are reputed to be over 100 ''iqa'at'',Randel, Apel, ''The New Harvard Dictionary of Music'' but many of them have fallen out of fashion and are rarely if ever used in performance. The greatest variety of ''iqa'at'' (ranging from two to 48 beats) are used in the ''

muwashshah ''Muwashshah'' ( ' ' girdled'; plural '; also ' 'girdling,' pl. ') is a strophic poetic form that developed in al-Andalus in the late 10th and early 11th centuries. The ', embodying the Iberian rhyme revolution, was the major Andalusi inno ...

''.

References

Cited sources

Habib Hassan Touma Habib Hassan Touma () (12 December 1934 – 10 August 1998) was a Palestinian composer and ethnomusicologist who lived and worked for many years in Berlin, Germany. Life and career Habib Hassan Touma was born in Nazareth on 12 December 1934. ...

(1996). ''The Music of the Arabs'', trans. Laurie Schwartz. Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press. .

External links

Arabic Rhythms page
from Maqam World {{rhythm and meter Arabic music Middle Eastern music Music of North Africa Arabic music theory

Wazn and Iqa'

See also

References

Cited sources

External links