A significant gap in English-language literature on Arab music for the generalist reader has arguably existed since the 1996 publication of The Music of the Arabs by the late Palestinian musicologist Habib Hassan Touma. This translation of his 1975 book Musik der Araber has served as a competent overview of Arab music history, theory, aesthetics, and praxis, surveying the entire Arab world: the Arabian Peninsula/Gulf, Levant (Mashriq), Egypt, and Maghreb (North Africa).

Inside Arabic Music by Johnny Farraj and Sami Abu Shumays offers 200 more pages than the Touma volume and a decidedly more technical focus, with its scope limited to the Levantine/Egyptian musical tradition. This book includes a brief introductory section that reviews important performers of the “Golden Age” of Arab music (1930-1970) along with basic concepts underlying Arab music praxis and pedagogy, such as oral transmission, the “communal character” of the music, and the “formal” nature of performance protocols. In addition to extensive material on ajnas and maqamat, chapters are devoted to musical instruments, ensembles, ornamentation, rhythm, vocal and instrumental forms, arrangement, tuning systems, notation, improvisation, and tarab. An eight-page glossary and five-page select bibliography, including Arabic sources such as al-Hilu, al-Jabaqji, and al-Mahdi, Orientalist writer d’Erlanger, and prominent contemporary American/Canadian ethnomusicologists (Racy, Danielson, Marcus, Rasmussen, Sawa), extend the reference value of this book, although the absence of a consolidated discography/videography is disappointing, especially since classical-era and current musicians and ensembles are cited throughout the book.

The core focus of Inside Arabic Music, as indicated by its subtitle, is the maqam (pl., maqamat); defined in the glossary as a “melodic mode/scale associated with a rich oral tradition defining correct intonation, idiomatic melodic phrases, notes of emphasis, and modulation possibilities” (422). This succinct explanation belies the complicated process of constructing the maqam from its component ajnas (s., jins), with jins defined as a “scale fragment of 3 to 6 notes that forms the basic melodic unit of Arabic music.” The authors indicate that each jins is associated with a “distinctive mood” (421)—a crucial element in shaping the affective experience of Arab music for both performer and listener.

Illustrative diagrams and other graphics add clarity to the authors’ presentation of the technical analysis of ajnas, maqamat, and iqa‘at (rhythms), with a “Maqam Index” serving as an appendix. Yet this book is no dry tome, despite its technical orientation. In exploring metaphors that might best describe the conceptualization of melody, Farraj and Abu Shumays proffer the staircase, chain, tree with branches, subway map, house with rooms, and network (277-80), transforming what could otherwise be a daunting set of explanations into a more accessible discussion. In addition, they continually connect theory to repertoire in linking ajnas/maqamat to musical examples; e.g. Jins Hijaz to “Zeina” (Abdel Wahab) and “Tila‘li il-biki” (Fairouz) as well as Orientalist compositions by Saint-Saens and Rimsky-Korsakov (217-18). While such examples are readily recognizable by those already familiar with the classic Arab repertoire, they will be less helpful to readers without this background (in this regard, an accompanying CD or link to sound samples would be useful).

The scope of content that might have produced two volumes is densely packed within one highly readable book, making Inside Arabic Music an indispensable vade mecum for the English-speaking scholar, educator, musician, or enthusiast—while a marginal choice for the reader of Arabic who enjoys a multitude of options in that language. The elements of theory are not present in a vacuum, but rather in the context of contributing to the aesthetic experience of the performer and audience via modulation, vocal ornamentation and improvisation (layali), and instrumental improvisation (taqsim)—a technique which, the authors note, is “anchored in a maqam” (425). The significance of these musical conventions in Arab culture, they maintain, must not be underestimated; a skillful jins modulation carries the potential to become “one of the key ingredients of tarab (musical joy), because the musician can rely on the listeners to react to even the minutest of changes” (203). Elsewhere in the book, they colloquially refer to tarab as “a state of being in the groove” (362). Citing Ali Jihad Racy, the “feedback loop” existing between performers and listeners inspires tarab through cycles of audience reaction and musician response (367)—with the vocalist (mutrib/a) functioning as the “person who causes tarab” (145), as indicated by the common t-r-b root). Not surprisingly, the legendary Egyptian vocalist Umm Kulthum is frequently cited for her mastery of the techniques evoking tarab.

The book’s subtitle indicates the limitation of its scope to the twentieth century, which explains the omission of material on important historical treatises such as those of al-Farabi or al-Isfahani—thus positioning Inside Arabic Music as a “snapshot” of the time-frame ranging from the “Golden Age” of the 1930s through the remainder of the century, coinciding with the period of rampant European colonialism within the Arab world. Accordingly, the authors infuse their discussion with reflections on Western influence on Arab musical culture; commenting on the incompatibility of harmony with the Arabic maqam system even while harmony and chords were incorporated as ornamentations “as European music’s influence grew in the Arab world, and Western instruments such as the piano became commonplace” (156). They further cite the use of Western notation by “leading Arab musicians in Egypt and Syria” in the early twentieth century as a collateral effect of British and French colonialism along with an increased “contact between Arabic musicians and Western classical music” (180). Farraj and Abu Shumays examine the “impact of adopting Western notation” which, although “deeply entrenched in Arabic music today” at the expense of the tradition of oral transmission, has resulted in “a loss of the finer details of intonation and ornamentation and the blurring of regional particularities” (190-91). They lament: “When notated, Arabic music becomes one music, or worse, it becomes one with Western music” (191).

With this cautionary message, the authors’ narrative dovetails with that of Touma, whose periodization scheme of Arab music begins with “The Pre-Islamic Period Until 632: The Qaynah School” and concludes with the bleak period he dubs “The Twentieth Century: Alienation from the Authentic Musical Language”—based on the “corrupting” European cultural influence experienced during colonialism, which he deems no less than a “kind of cultural catastrophe” (Habib Hassan Touma, The Music of the Arabs, expanded edition, translated by Laurie Schwartz, Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 2003, 16). These more recent musings of Farraj and Abu Shumays on the deterioration of the traditional praxis of Arab music invite a new inquiry into the extent to which this “alienation” is continuing into the twenty-first century.

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[Review length: 1083 words • Review posted on February 11, 2021]