Arabic music or Arab music is the music of the Arab world with all its diverse music styles and genres. Arabic countries have many rich and varied styles of music and also many linguistic dialects, with each country and region having their own traditional music.
Salamone Rossi or Salomone Rossi was an Italian Jewish violinist and composer. He was a transitional figure between the late Italian Renaissance period and early Baroque.
Sephardic music is an umbrella term used to refer to the music of the Sephardic Jewish community. Sephardic Jews have a diverse repertoire the origins of which center primarily around the Mediterranean basin. In the secular tradition, material is usually sung in dialects of Judeo-Spanish, though other languages including Hebrew, Turkish, Greek, and other local languages of the Sephardic diaspora are widely used. Sephardim maintain geographically unique liturgical and para-liturgical traditions.
"Misirlou" is a folk song from the Eastern Mediterranean region. The original author of the song is not known, but Arabic, Greek, and Jewish musicians were playing it by the 1920s. The earliest known recording of the song is a 1927 Greek rebetiko/tsifteteli composition. There are also Arabic belly dancing, Albanian, Armenian, Serbian, Persian, Indian and Turkish versions of the song. This song was popular from the 1920s onwards in the Arab American, Armenian American and Greek American communities who settled in the United States.
Moroccan Jews constitute an ancient community. Before the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, there were about 250,000 to 350,000 Jews in the country, which gave Morocco the largest Jewish community in the Muslim world, but by 2017 only 2,000 or so remain. Jews in Morocco, originally speakers of Berber languages, Judeo-Moroccan Arabic or Judaeo-Spanish, were the first in the country to adopt the French language in the mid-19th century, and unlike the Muslim population French remains the main language of members of the Jewish community there.
Joel Cohen is an American musician specializing in early music repertoires. Cohen graduated from Classical High School in Providence, Rhode Island in 1959, and Brown University in 1963. He continued graduate education at Harvard University. From 1968 to 2008, he was the director of the Boston Camerata, a prominent American early music ensemble. He remains connected to the Boston Camerata as Music Director Emeritus. Cohen founded the Camerata Mediterranea in 1990 and incorporated it as a nonprofit research institute in France in 2007. He performs, playing the lute and guitar, as well as singing. He is best known as an organizer and creator of concert programs and sound recordings. He has also written extensively on musical topics. In recent years, Cohen's research and performance activities have centered on early American repertoires, as well as southern European repertoires of the Middle Ages. Many of his projects in this latter category involve collaboration with Middle Eastern musicians.
Anne Azéma is a French-born soprano, scholar, and stage director. She is currently artistic director of the Boston Camerata. She has been an important or leading singer of early music since 1993. She has created and directed programs for the Boston Camerata and is also noted as a music scholar. She is perhaps best known for performing music from the Middle Ages, lute songs from the Renaissance period, Baroque sacred music, Shaker song, and contemporary music theater. She is also a music educator and a researcher. She has performed in Japan, Germany, the US, Australia and elsewhere.
Mizrahi music refers to a music genre in Israel that combines elements from Europe, the Middle East and North Africa; and is mostly performed by Israelis of Mizrahi Jewish descent. It is usually sung in Modern Hebrew, or literary Hebrew.
Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert is a commune in the Hérault department in the Occitanie region in southern France. Situated where the Gellone river's narrow valley meets the steep-sided gorge of the river Hérault, Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert is essentially a medieval village located on the Chemin de St-Jacques pilgrim route to Santiago de Compostella.
The Song of the Sibyl is a liturgical drama and a Gregorian chant, the lyrics of which comprise a prophecy describing the Apocalypse, which has been performed in churches on Majorca and Alghero, and some Catalan churches, in the Catalan language on Christmas Eve nearly uninterruptedly since medieval times. It was declared a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO on 16 November 2010.
André Azoulay is a Moroccan Jewish senior adviser to king Mohammed VI of Morocco. He previously advised Mohammed's father, king Hassan II. He currently presides over the Anna Lindh Euro-Mediterranean Foundation for the Dialogue Between Cultures, based in Alexandria, Egypt. He is also President of the executive committee of the Foundation for the Three Cultures and the Three Religions, based in Seville, Spain, a founding member of the C-100 Davos Forum for the Dialogue of Civilisations and religions, and was formerly Executive Vice-president of the BNP Paribas, Paris. His daughter is UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay.
Françoise Atlan is a French singer and ethnomusicologist, born in a Sephardic Jewish family in Narbonne, France on 27 July 1964. Her father was a lawyer and native of Béjaïa, Algeria, and her mother was a pianist and a lyrical singer.
The Play of Daniel, or Ludus Danielis, is either of two medieval Latin liturgical dramas based on the biblical Book of Daniel, one of which is accompanied by monophonic music.
Karim Nagi is an Egyptian musician, composer, ethnic dance artist, and DJ. He specializes in traditional Arabic music but is widely known for his innovative approach. In total he has released fourteen CDs and six DVDs, and he tours internationally performing and teaching.
The Boston Camerata is an early music ensemble based in Boston, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1954 by Narcissa Williamson, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, as an adjunct to that museum's musical instrument collection.
A camerata is a small chamber orchestra or choir, with up to 40 to 60 musicians.
Fez or Fes is a city in northern inland Morocco and the capital of the Fès-Meknès administrative region. It is the second largest city in Morocco, with a population of 1.11 million according to the 2014 census. Located to the north west of the Atlas Mountains, Fez is linked to several important cities of different regions; it is 206 km (128 mi) from Tangier to the northwest, 246 km (153 mi) from Casablanca, 189 km (117 mi) from Rabat to the west, and 387 km (240 mi) from Marrakesh to the southwest. It is surrounded by hills and the old city is centered around the Fez River flowing from west to east.
The International Institute for Languages and Cultures, Fès, Morocco (INLAC) is a private institute for teaching and learning Arabic, located in the old city (medina) of Fez. It offers undergraduate and graduate credit programs.
Judith Rita Cohen is a Canadian ethnomusicologist, music educator, and performer. Her research interests include Judeo-Spanish (Ladino) songs; medieval and traditional music from the Balkans, Portugal, French Canada, and Yiddish; pan-European balladry; and songs from Crypto-Jewish regions in Portugal. She has received numerous research and travel grants to do fieldwork in Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Israel, Turkey, Greece, France, Belgium, Canada, and the United States, and has published many journal articles, papers, and book chapters. She plays a variety of medieval musical instruments, and sings and performs as part of her lectures and in concerts and solo recitals. She is also the editor of the Alan Lomax Spanish collection maintained by the Association for Cultural Equity.
